The death of the solar subsidy
This looks like a good idea:
Britain's solar boom is over after ministers announced they would offer virtually no subsidies for people to install panels on their homes.
For there's no actual reason for the UK to offer such subsidies. Despite these claims:
Alasdair Cameron, from Friends of the Earth, said: “From California to China, the world is reaping the benefits of a solar revolution, yet incredibly in the UK David Cameron is actually trying to shut rooftop solar down. “These absurd solar cuts will send UK energy policy massively in the wrong direction and prevent almost a million homes, schools and hospitals from plugging in to clean, renewable energy.” Dr Doug Parr, from Greenpeace, said: "The timing couldn't be worse as the young and potentially booming solar industry is on track to go subsidy free but if these cuts happen, it will be too sudden, too soon and too dramatic. It is highly likely to irrevocably damage the domestic solar industry.”
Solar power has indeed been getting cheaper at a remarkable rate. But it's been absolutely nothing at all to do with any subsidies being offered by the UK government nor any feed in tariffs gouged out of the energy consumers of Britain.
This is not, by the way, anything at all to do with the arguments over global warming exists, whether we need to do something about it nor anything else like that. It's a simple public goods argument. Let us assume that the problem is real and we do want to do something about it. That something being, well, we'd like solar power to become cheap enough to use effectively.
So, should British people have to pay more for their electricity to make this happen?
Nope, they most certainly don't need to at least. How cheap solar becomes will be driven by technological breakthrough. And that will be driven by the wall of money that countries like China, Germany and the US are throwing at it. The technology, when it arrives, will be a public good: we Brits will be able to use it when it arrives just like everyone else will.
So, the correct thing to do is let everyone else spend their money on such subsidies and we install it when it actually works. The removal of the British subsidies makes no difference at all to the date at which this wonder-technology will arrive but it makes us all better off while we wait for it. Thus a good decision.