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Two of Britain’s leading clean energy firms have gone into administration within hours of each other and a third has sold its UK business. Two of them have blamed the government’s about-turn on energy policy.
Onshore wind support cut – government to reduce support for the cheapest large-scale renewable energy option
Nearly a thousand staff have been laid off as the Mark Group, one of the UK’s leading solar-panel installers, fell into administration yesterday.
On the day same, Climate Energy, which describes itself as ‘the UK’s largest provider of energy efficiency solutions’, posted a notice on its website saying it has gone into administration.
Speaking to Greenpeace’s Energydesk, world-leading solar clean tech giant SunEdison, which sold the Mark Group just months after acquiring it, blamed the government’s ‘draconian policy proposals’, which it said ‘will essentially eliminate the solar PV market in the UK’.
The Mark Group management told local media that ‘recent changes to government policy on energy efficiency put a lot of pressure on the business.’
The news comes just a day after the prime minister, David Cameron, boasted that there is ‘more foreign investment flooding into our country than anywhere else in Europe’ in his speech at the Conservative party conference. It followed a speech by George Osborne in which the chancellor insisted on the need to build more infrastructure projects.
‘For all his rhetoric about building, it’s not scaffolding George Osborne is bringing to Britain’s clean energy sector but a wrecking ball. Evidence is growing that the Chancellor’s policies are putting people out of jobs, damaging investment, and harming one of the country’s most promising industries.
‘This should be a wake-up call for David Cameron, who faces international embarrassment ahead of crucial climate talks. As prime minister, he has a duty to leave internal party politics aside and rein back a rogue Chancellor who’s putting investment, jobs, and growth at risk.’
Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK chief scientist
In a further embarrassment to government claims that consumers are top priority, new Bloomberg data has shown the costs of wind and solar keep falling. It also shows onshore wind is now the cheapest source of power in the UK.
Last month, a report by financial consultancy EY said the government’s policies on renewable energy threatened to undermine investor confidence in fracking and nuclear projects, as well as in the green sector.
In a strongly worded report, the firm said the Conservatives had sentenced the renewables industry to ‘death by a thousand cuts’.
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