"Frustrated" Solarcentury finds sun is shining on European markets

One of the UK's leading renewable energy firms has revealed that it will continue to focus its expansion plans on the continent, despite the release of the government's long-awaited plans for a new feed-in tariff incentive scheme for small-scale generation technologies.

The government confirmed last week that it is to introduce a Clean Energy Cash Back scheme that will pay households and business an above-market rate for energy they produce using onsite generation technologies such as solar panels and micro wind turbines.

It set out proposals for a variety of tariffs for different technologies, ranging from 36.5p/Kwh for certain solar photovoltaic systems to 4.5p/Kwh for the most efficient biomass, wind and hydroelectric technologies.

But Jeremy Leggett, founder and executive chairman of the UK's largest solar panel provider Solarcentury, told BusinessGreen.com that the proposed tariffs are insufficient to deliver the kind of rapid growth experienced by the solar energy sector under similar feed-in tariff schemes across Europe.

"They will accelerate the market a bit, but we will not grow explosively as has been the case in other countries such as Germany, France and Spain," he said. "If you want to illustrate the difference in mentality, just consider that the European Photovoltaic Industry Association expects that PV will provide 12 per cent of all electricity by 2020, while the UK government assumes all six families of micro-generation will provide just two per cent of electricity by the same date."

Leggett said that as a result of "frustratingly slow" progress in the UK market, Solarcentury's expansion plans were focused firmly on the continent.

He declined to give precise details, but admitted that with the company already running offices in Milan, Madrid and La Rochelle, the company was now investigating expanding "to the west and east".

"Our goal is to be one of the world's leading companies in building-mounted solar PV," he said. "The market has focused a lot on ground-mounted systems, but building-integrated PV has huge potential."