London expands scheme to boost solar panels

The Mayor of London hopes to increase solar power capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2030.

To do this, City Hall has introduced a scheme to allow small businesses and residents to buy solar panels at reduced costs. The initiative, called Solar Together, has proved popular and 4,000 people have already signed up across four London boroughs.

As a result of this early success, the scheme has now been extended to include eight other major areas in the capital, including Camden, Islington, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I’m delighted to launch the second phase of Solar Together London. This will offer even more Londoners the opportunity to buy and install solar panels for their homes and small businesses at a significant saving.”

The news comes at the launch of a new Solar Action Plan to accelerate the uptake of the renewable technology across the capital. The Mayor’s ambition of making London a zero-carbon city by 2050 will require expanding solar capacity to an estimated 2 gigawatts, twenty times the current amount of 108 megawatts.

“Solar offers an increasingly low-cost source of energy for Londoners and we need to speed up its roll out across the capital. City Hall are doing all we can through our new Solar Action Plan but more needs to be done at a national level.”

He went on to urge the government to outline a future form of financial support for solar power to replace the Feed-in Tariff, which is scheduled to close early in April 2019. The subsidy scheme has helped support solar power’s huge growth in the United Kingdom since 2010.

Director of Advocacy & New Markets at the Solar Trade Association, Leonie Greene, said the new initiative would enable thousands of Londoners to install solar “at a competitive price”.

“Solar Together London genuinely empowers Londoners to do their bit to spread solar across the capital's roofs. This technology is so important to scale up fast if we are to tackle climate change and clean up the air we breathe."

 

Photo Credit: Philafrenzy/CC