It’s not un-common to hear people say ‘We need Feed in Tariffs in the UK, like they have in Germany – they’ve got umpteen Gigawatts of renewables from it’. And fair enough they do. It’s important not to confuse large scale FITs with micro though.

The problem for onshore wind (large scale) in the UK is planning not financial and therefore FITs just can’t help. We need German planning laws to emulate German success, in large scale wind.

But what about micro generation; Are feed in tariffs the answer to better deliver this?

Planning used to be a barrier to micro generation but no longer. The problem is just that the numbers don’t stack up. It’s a financial problem, the territory of FITs.

German FITs pay well for micro generation – more than 30p per unit. No wonder much more gets built there than here with our 10p or so. That’s how it works. It’s nothing to do with it being an easy system to use or anything else, just much more money.

But multiple ROCs would do the same job here. They recently doubled and it would be easy enough to have them quadruple (to emulate the value of German FITs) – much easier than to set up a new scheme. And here’s why.

Export from home generation cannot be economically metered, so the ‘system’ cannot attribute it to individual suppliers, it just reduces grid losses. FITs require an electricity distribution company to pay for the power, one who operates the grid – and who then passes on the cost to electricity suppliers working in that region. That’s how it works in Germany. It would be complex to set up and run – compared to multiple ROCs. And it would require new legislation, no small issue.

And would FITs for micro generation give us shed loads of renewables, like Germany? Well yes and no – it would be a boost, but let’s not overestimate how much they have in Germany – from micro gen. Germany’s incredible 12% renewables contribution is often described as coming from ‘wind and solar’ – giving the impression that solar (micro generation) plays a large part. It doesn’t.

Solar actually makes up 0.3% of Germany’s electricity – wind and other large scale renewables produce 11.7%. Put another way micro generation makes up just 4% of the electricity supported under FITs in Germany. It’s good but not as good as it’s cracked up to be.

FITs are good at stimulating micro generation simply because they pay well. Money is really what stimulates micro generation. FITs are a mechanism that works in Germany to provide that money, they could be made to work here but not easily. Whereas multiple ROCs could readily do the same job. The system and the legislation is in place and it works in a UK market context. There’s nothing clever about FITs, they just pay well. That’s easy to emulate. You’d think.

Our German friends do have something we lack – commitment to renewables. That’s what we need. German style commitment to Planning for large wind that works and Finance for micro generation that works.

(Feed in Tariffs – FITs – are a system of fixed prices for renewable energy paid to the generator by the ‘grid company’. The fixed price is above the ‘market’ price and hence provides financial support to enable more renewable capacity to be built.)

So what’s wrong with Feed in Tariffs?

Well, actually nothing. It’s a good way to financially support renewable technologies and so encourage their wider use. It’s worked brilliantly in Germany.

But do they have anything to offer the UK? That’s a different question altogether and my answer to that is a definite no. The reasons are simple enough -

Feed in Tariffs are the right answer to the wrong question.

The UK RO (Renewables Obligation) scheme does the same job. It provides support above that which the ‘market’ alone would give.

FITs work well, so does the RO. The RO is not the problem, so swapping it for FITs won’t achieve anything.

The dominant renewable technology in the UK is on shore wind – it’s technically mature, in mass production and it’s economic. We have enough of it to power the whole country several times over (we have 40% of Europe’s wind resource), and it’s expected to deliver the lion’s share of our renewable targets.

Does it need additional financial support? No, it does not. The government only recently resisted the temptation to reduce the support that wind currently gets through the RO – the trend here is reduced support not increased, because wind clearly has what it needs.

The one thing preventing the UK from having a massive contribution to energy needs from our wind resource is the planning system. And FITs won’t and can’t fix that. Feed in Tariffs are about financial support and that is not the problem. It’s really that simple.

There are technologies other than wind of course, like wave power for example, and they need more support (money) to work than wind does, but they are getting this through the existing RO mechanism – which is now giving multiple ROCs (Renewable Obligation Certificates) to certain technologies, like wave and tidal power. It’s as effective as feed in tariffs at this job.

Feed in Tariffs were a great idea 15 years ago and would have helped the UK then, but we finally got our act together with the RO some years ago (it’s our Feed in Tariff by another name) – and our problems today are not money, they are planning – only planning. Let’s discuss instead adopting German planning laws – now there’s an idea David….

You can now see part two in this series on Feed-in Tariffs here.