After Britain generated more electricity from solar power than coal for the first time, the solar industry faces an uncertain future. While solar capacity and investment has grown rapidly in recent years due to falling costs and government subsidies, support has now been cut back. This threatens the estimated 10,000 jobs in the UK solar industry as companies struggle without subsidies. Supporters argue solar is now cost competitive and could become self-sufficient in the near future, but the government aims to reduce consumer costs and create a sustainable industry without subsidies. The future of the promising UK solar industry remains unclear as the debate around costs and subsidies continues.

1. Clouds gather over solar power after golden years of success
After a day in which Britain generated more power from the sun than from coal for the first time, the
industry should be rejoicing. But the mood is fearful
Given that the government is determined to avoid playing a financial role in the planned new nuclear
plant at Hinkley Point, it is perhaps surprising that it is involved in the UK’s largest solar array.
The 70-megawatt Lyneham photovoltaic farm – big enough to provide light and heat to 20,000 homes – is
located at a former RAF base in Wiltshire owned and rented out by the Ministry of Defence.
Lyneham opened last summer with the help of private operator British Solar Renewables, but is only one
of a series of projects that were planned for publicly owned sites. And it is good business.
Many associate Whitehall with the government’s recent cuts to solar subsidies, but the state has cashed in
on a wider solar boom by providing land – as well as benefiting from the low carbon emissions that come
from green energy.
Last week a milestone was passed when it was revealed that, for the first time, the sun provided more UK
electricity from photovoltaic panels than heavily polluting coal-fired plants over a full 24-hour period. Just
under 30 gigawatt hours – or 4% of national demand – was met by solar, the latest in a series of records
set by the wider renewable energy sector in recent months.
In December wind turbines supplied 17% of Britain’s electricity demand while clean power sources in total
provided almost a quarter of UK electricity in the first three months of this year.
The latest solar milestone was particular symbolic, as it was announced on the day that the world’s
largest coalmining group, Peabody Energy, applied for bankruptcy protection in the US. And it is less than
a month since Longannet, the last coal-fired power station in Scotland, closed its doors after half a
century of power generation and the last deep coalmine in Britain shut at Kellingley.
The energy world is being revolutionised by a variety of factors, but undoubtedly the most important are
based around the need to beat global warming and move away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner
technologies. Governments of all hues have incentivised solar, wind and biomass while increasingly
tightening regulations and costs around carbon-heavy coal.
Wind power has had the faster take-off in Britain, with the government continuing to provide major
subsidies to support huge projects offshore. Solar – made up of many smaller facilities including
thousands of household rooftop arrays – has been on a slower burn.
The record set when solar put coal in the shade resulted from the enormous decline in coal usage as much
as the enormous growth in solar. But sun power has more than 9GW of installed capacity in place, out of
a total of 80 to 90GW of total power capacity in Britain.
Peter Atherton is a hard-nosed energy analyst at Jefferies investment bank in the City of London with a
keen interest in whether Britain can keep the lights on, and even he admits that solar growth in the
country has been “explosive”.
And it is not just in Britain. Worldwide solar investment topped $160bn (£113bn) last year – more than
gas and coal together. China alone is expected to add 100GW of new capacity in the years to 2020 while
India will not be far behind.
The latest edition of the Economist declares solar could be a world-beater: “The intermittency of the sun
will remain an issue. But if storage costs continue to decline, the possibility of combining batteries on land
with energy from the giant battery pack in the sky could be unbeatable.”
The success so far has been driven by a combination of falling product prices – solar panels are 80%
cheaper now than they were five years ago – but also by generous subsidies ultimately paid for by the
consumer.
The British solar industry barely existed at the turn of the decade, with a tiny 65MW of capacity installed
across the country. The introduction of the generous feed-in tariff (FiT) aid scheme in 2010 kickstarted a
revolution. By 2011 around 1GW of solar had been installed, with this figure doubling over the next 12
months even though FiT rates had been cut in half.
By 2013, helped in part by the use of another subsidy scheme set up for wind, the renewables obligation
(RO), large ground-mounted arrays began to be put in place. Solar capacity had burst through the 3GW
level, rising to 9.2GW by the end of 2015. The industry now believes the figure is close to 10GW and
could hit 11GW by the end of 2016.
But over the last year both the RO and FiT support mechanisms have been either removed or wound
dramatically further down – with the government arguing the industry should largely be fending for itself
while bill payers should be spared unnecessary cost.
A spokesperson for the Department ofEnergy and Climate Change (Decc) said: “Solar, nuclear, offshore
wind and shale gas all have an important part to play in our future energy mix – this diversity is essential
so we can deliver secure, affordable and clean energy for future generations.
“The costs of solar continue to fall and we are working to create a sustainable industry that delivers
without subsidy.”

2. But the solar industry argues it is being abandoned at the worst possible moment – just a few years
before becoming self-sufficient, and at a time ministers seem prepared to back much more expensive
nuclear or offshore wind power projects.
As many as 2,000 solar jobs are estimated to have been lost over the last 12 months and Decc’s own
worst case scenarios warn of 18,700 jobs on the line.
Lightsource Renewable Energy, the largest owner of solar assets in Britain, cut 25% of its staff last week,
while other companies such as Absolute Renewable Energy and Eco Juice have just called in the
liquidators. The biggest collapse came last autumn, when the Mark Group failed, leaving almost 1,000
jobless.
The industry that will come together on 26 April for a clean energy summit at Twickenham stadium is
angry.
“Solar is highly reliable. It can be deployed rapidly and it can be ac curately forecast ahead,” said Leonie
Greene from the Solar Trade Association lobby group.
“The current UK policy of suppressing solar’s potential needs an urgent rethink if we are serious about
saving bill-payers money while modernising our power system at the pace climate change demands.”
The key to any debate about solar is cost – but assessing like-for-like figures is complex and hotly
disputed. The price of energy from any new Hinkley nuclear reactors has been pinned at £92.50 per
megawatt hour (MWh) over a 35-year period.
By comparison, Lightsource says it won a “contract for difference” deal in a recent auction under a
government scheme at the competitive subsidy price of £79.82 over 15 years. But Decc estimated in
2013 that large solar will generally cost about £160 per MWh, offshore wind £115 – and gas only £80.
Nick Boyle, the chief executive of Lightsource, is unhappy about the way some solar subsidies were
hacked back and the fact that even government now only expects 13GW of capacity to be installed by
2020, but says the row has obscured a much better story.
“No one believed that this industry could be built up so efficiently and so fast. To go to 10GW from almost
a standing start in a couple of years and at a cost lower than any other European country should be
celebrated. Solar in Britain has been an amazing success.”
Terry Macalister. The Guardian. 16/04/2016
SOLAR IN NUMBERS
■ 99% of the UK’s solar photovoltaic capacity has been deployed since May 2010
■ 9.2GW of solar capacity has been installed in the UK, enough to power 2.2 million British homes
■ 3.6GW of capacity was installed in 2015 alone
■ 2.2% of the total electricity generated in the UK in 2015 was from solar sources
■ 49% of the total EU investment in solar photovoltaics was made in the UK
■ 13GW of solar capacity in total is expected to have been installed in Britain by 2020
Student B:
I Select 15 words / phrases and devise a vocab-searching activity along the lines of those we've been
doing this semester:
Important: Do not underline or highlight anwers in the text in anyway! Write the key to your
exercise on a separate piece of paper.
1. (adjective) lacking material substance: immaterial, intangible.
2. (noun) a person who has committed a crime or done something wrong, the source or cause of a
problem.
II Identify the main ideas and supporting details in the text and devise a reading comprehension test
comprising 10 questions. (I'll explain).

3. Vocab.-searching activity:
Type of word Definition Solution (for
student A!)
Reading comprehension questions: