{"id":289785,"date":"2018-07-31T14:20:30","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.agriland.ie\/?p=289785"},"modified":"2018-07-31T13:58:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T12:58:00","slug":"solar-scheme-a-missed-opportunity-for-communities-and-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/farming-news\/solar-scheme-a-missed-opportunity-for-communities-and-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar scheme a ‘missed opportunity’ for communities and farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s announcement of a rooftop solar grant scheme<\/a> has been described by the Environmental Pillar as a “step in the right direction”, but also a “missed opportunity” to reward communities and farmers for playing their role in bringing down our out of control emissions.<\/p>\n

Published today, it is difficult to see how the plan will play a role in significantly bumping up “virtually non-existent” rooftop solar capacity to supply renewable electricity to the grid, the group claims.<\/p>\n

The scheme will offer a grant as opposed to giving individuals a right to sell surplus electricity back to the grid at a fixed price, the organisation notes.<\/p>\n

The grant will also only apply to owner-occupied dwellings, leaving out commercial enterprises and community buildings.<\/p>\n

This means that business owners, community centres and farmers with large warehouse, factory and shed rooftop space will miss out on the support on offer.<\/div>\n

They will instead end up having to try and compete with developers through the new auction system announced last week in the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS).<\/p>\n

Echoing similar calls from the Micro Renewable Energy Federation, the Environmental Pillar is urging the Government to go further than today’s launch.<\/p>\n

<\/div>Also Read: <\/strong>Grant scheme promoting commercial rooftop solar on farms called for<\/span><\/a>
<\/div>\n

Environmental Pillar spokesperson, Oisin Coghlan, said: “The scheme is a small step in the right direction but the Government has missed a great opportunity to include a payment for electricity exported to the grid by individual families, and – crucially – community buildings such as schools, parish halls and sports halls, and farm buildings.<\/p>\n

“As part of the EU we have agreed that in the future people will have to get paid for their contribution to tackling climate change through their energy choices.<\/p>\n

So the minister and the department should immediately start work to build on today’s pilot scheme by preparing a payment scheme for rooftop solar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“For once we have an opportunity not to be behind the curve on EU schemes; let’s build immediately on this stopgap measure with a full future-proof scheme.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s announcement of a rooftop solar grant scheme has been described by the Environmental Pillar as a “step in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3432,"featured_media":233149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[8701,8085,3385],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3432"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightsail.agriland.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}