More please

Since the government announced provisional plans for a feed-in tariff last year, Friends of the Earth and others, including housing and fuel poverty organisations, have demanded a more ambitious scheme.

Under the proposals, the UK would generate just two per cent of its electricity from small-scale renewable electricity sources, yet government studies show that, with higher tariff payments, three times that amount could be produced by 2020.

We argued that the proposed low tariffs (the long-term fixed payments for generating green electricity) meant that the only people likely to take advantage of the scheme were owner-occupiers with enough cash to buy micro-renewables outright.

Social landlords would not get the returns required to fund installations. Far from limiting the impact on vulnerable groups (the cost of the tariff will be added to electricity bills), the proposals exclude them from benefiting from renewable electricity technologies and lower bills overall.

The final scheme is classic Whitehall fudge. It is less ambitious than originally proposed - generating just 1.6 per cent of UK electricity by 2020, the potential income for community-scale wind schemes has been cut and biomass generation removed entirely.

However, payments for solar photovoltaic panels, smaller-scale wind and hydro schemes increased, which will mean greater interest from consumers and high enough returns to encourage banks to lend.

The question for social housing is whether the tariffs are now high enough to give these installations an acceptable payback after costs.

But tariffs for solar PV are now high enough to make this technology attractive as part of a wider retrofit programme. And with calls being raised for a more ambitious decent homes programme, this could be a very welcome development.

Dave Timms is a green homes campaigner at Friends of the Earth