A solar shambles

IT IS all too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction against solar energy.

There are many who think the panels on homes are unsightly and that in cold and damp Britain the expensive equipment is practically pointless.

But when you see how much money Tony Hazell has saved in one year, and look at the cost of producing this energy compared with other forms, you can quickly become converted.

Certainly, I wouldn’t like to see solar panels just shoved on the roofs of 400-year-old Cotswold cottages. But why shouldn’t those living in modern townhouses in cities and suburbs have them? It’s not an eyesore, it’s just different. And it baffles me why house builders aren’t forced to put panels on all new properties that would benefit.

If it costs £5,000 for an ordinary homeowner to get them installed — the price for developers must be a fraction of this. Every drop of energy a property can generate to make them self-sufficient is money saved from the National Grid.

So startling has been the uptake of solar panels that the Government’s target of 750,000 properties has already been passed — four years ahead of schedule. This surprising popularity has caught out the Treasury, which fears the subsidies offered to solar generators are much too generous. That’s certainly true.

But to strip these subsidies back to almost nothing will practically kill the sector.

It will save homeowners — who fund these subsidies for solar — about £6 a year. That’s if the reduction in costs is passed on, which I very much doubt will happen.

And the £6 saving is a drop in the ocean compared to the savings consumers could get if the energy market actually operated in a fair and transparent way.

A recent report by the Competition and Markets Authority suggested homeowners should be paying anywhere between £69 and £232 less a year if they were on the right tariff.

I realise I sound like an eco-warrior, but our thirst for generated power cannot be sustained through mined oil, gas or coal or from fracking.

A mix of renewables, solar in particular, plus nuclear seems the answer.

Tony Hazell’s neurotic behaviour in his drive to use less power may seem the stuff of a sitcom, but his cash-saving efforts should be applauded.

The country is currently spending £11 billion installing smart meters, which monitor how much power is used, in every home nationwide. The argument behind this extravagance is that seeing how much power they use will help homeowners lower bills.

What hokum. My experience of these gadgets is that people are interested in them for a couple of weeks and then go back to normal.

Instead, they give energy firms access to your usage — who then set tariffs accordingly.

Meanwhile, every person you meet with solar panels knows exactly what power they use and when.

We’re never going to encourage homeowners to think practically about the energy they use, and help them pay less, if we penalise those who are already helping the nation by becoming more self-sufficient and producing lower-cost and cleaner energy for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, the state seems set on handing out subsidies to nuclear and stripping them from ordinary homeowners.

It seems that as far as the Government is concerned, anyone who has recently installed solar panels can stick them where the sun don’t shine.

Pension fears

TOO often pensions are marketed as a financial product for the elderly.

This needs rethinking, because really the target market should be younger people. The earlier you start saving, the easier it is to build a big pot.

However, the limited amounts being put into new auto-enrolled pensions are duping those under 40 into thinking that they will enjoy a well-funded retirement.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

And if policymakers don’t do more to encourage bigger contributions from younger people now, then it could be too late to save future generations from pension poverty.