A green electricity initiative that promised big returns for energy producers has led to hundreds of acres of countryside disappearing beneath solar panels in the past few months. The Feed-In Tariff scheme, launched in April last year, promised to pay four times the going rate for electricity generated by solar power for 25 years. The scheme promised such good returns that companies from China, Germany and the US rushed to cash in. --Simon de Bruxelles, The Times, 30 August 2011 [Registration required]
Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives, and nobody notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%. Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only that the scam should be expanded. On 1 April the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn't know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient. --George Monbiot, The Guardian 1 March 2010
