Wednesday 13 November 2013

Going off-grid? Changing policy means firms are "running to stand still"

Changing government policy and regulation is the biggest challenge for business looking to go ‘off the grid’ by generating their own power, according to the Head of Energy Management at Scottish Water.

Speaking at Energy Live 2013, Rob Crusher said: “You’re almost running to stand still and keep abreast of what’s happening next.”

He told the ‘off the grid’ seminar he had a whole team of people working on government policy – analysing how it will affect their business and how they can respond.

Mr Crusher drew attention to the Feed-in-Tariff cut for solar in 2011 as an example of the problem: “It happened for good reasons but as an end user it doesn’t make your investment decision any easier. When you have to go to your board and say we’ve changed our mind here because something happened outside of our control, it dents your credibility and reduces their confidence that you’re doing the right thing.”

Zosia Riesner, Head of Renewables at Utlilyx agreed with him, saying that for small renewable developers: “Keeping on top of the terms that come out of DECC regularly and the ever changing policy environment, I suppose that’s their number one challenge.”