Solar farms 'will not spread unrestricted across British countryside' | Environment | theguardian.com

Carmaker Jaguar announced the completion of the UK’s largest rooftop solar array, with 21,000 panels on the roof of their engine factory in Staffordshire providing a capacity of 5.8MW. Photograph: Jaguar Land Rover press office

Solar farms must not spread unrestricted across the British countryside and become as controversial as onshore wind turbines, a minister warned on Friday.

Instead, solar panels will be rolled out on millions of homes, businesses, schools and government buildings, said energy and climate change minister Greg Barker.

Barker, one the greenest Conservative ministers, launched the government's first solar power strategy at the end of a week in which senior Tory sources revealed their plans to heavily curb or even dismantle windfarms after the next election.

The number of large solar farms, often housing more than 100,000 panels, has doubled in the first three months of 2014 but some have attracted local protests.

At the opening of a new Sunsolar panel factory in Birmingham, Barker told the Guardian: "I do not want solar farms to become the new onshore wind. Solar power enjoys huge popularity, so we have to be careful. I do not want to see unrestricted growth of solar farms in the British countryside."

Barker has previously called large farms "monsters" and, due the subsidies they receive, "gold-diggers".

But he said there was a great opportunity elsewhere for solar power, which has fallen in price by two-thirds in the last four years. Barker said he expected the 500,000 homes with solar panels to double by the end of 2015.

He also announced streamlined planning rules to make it simpler to put panels on large industrial and commercial roofs. Putting panels on just one in six roofs would generate electricity equivalent to two nuclear power stations. On Thursday, carmaker Jaguar announced the completion of the UK's largest rooftop solar array, with 21,000 panels on the roof of their engine factory in Staffordshire providing a capacity of 5.8MW.

Barker also announced a programme to put up to 4m solar panels (1GW), on the roofs of government-owned buildings across the UK before the end of the next parliament in 2020. A new unit in the Cabinet Office, under Francis Maude, is working on this programme, which will be funded by the private sector.

Cheap Solar Power Is Fueling Global Renewable Energy Growth: Report

From Climate Central's Bobby Magill:

The share of total global electricity production generated by renewable energy is climbing, mainly because solar photovoltaic systems are becoming less expensive,according to a report released Monday by the United Nations Environment Programme and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Wind, solar and other renewables, excluding hydropower, were 8.5 percent of total global electric power generation last year, up from 7.8 percent in 2012, the report says.

That comes just after Bloomberg and Pew Charitable Trusts issued a report last weeksaying investments in renewables worldwide has been declining since their peak in 2011, with the U.S. lagging behind China in overall investments in wind, solar and other renewables.

The reports come about a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the second part to its fifth assessment report, stating with certainty that humans are going to have to adapt to a world enduring climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from people burning fossil fuels. Renewables help reduce the climate-changing, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

India's hunger for energy: BJP plans solar power revolution - The Times of India

NEW DELHI: Sunny side up. That's how the BJP plans to serve its menu to satisfy India's hunger for energy, along with incentives for ramping up domestic production of coal, oil and gas. 

The party's manifesto indicates a countrywide solar power revolution, building on the model successfully implemented in Gujarat by the state government led by PM candidate Narendra Modi. 

Gujarat was the first state to announce incentives for solar projects in 2009, a year before UPA-2 launched the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. Latest government data shows the state accounted for a third of the growth in green energy projects. 

The Gujarat solar power experience is an inspiration for the party. Though the manifesto does not go into detail, we recognize different regions would require different solutions," BJP's energy advisor Narendra Taneja told TOI. 

The manifesto also indicates giving power to people — a sort of swaraj — for remote, hilly regions by promising to build a network of small hydel projects. 

The manifesto indicates the party's willingness to continue subsidies but target them better. That means pushing ahead with reforms such as market pricing of energy to spur investment and growth, while taking care of the poor through subsidy. 

There is a clear stress on raising coal output, indicating the party would rather bank on building generation capacity on an abundantly available domestic fuel than chasing the uncertainty associated with availability of domestic gas. 

The party promises to replicate throughout the country another success story from Gujarat by unifying the country through a national gas grid for equitable distribution of access to clean fuel. Under Modi, Gujarat was the first state to have planned and implemented a statewide gas pipeline network. It is also the only state in the country to own a blue chip oil and gas company.