Home solar power subsidies to be slashed by 64%

Government subsidies for solar panels on homes are to be cut by 64 per cent, it has been announced.

Ministers will reduce payments made under the 'feed-in tariff', which rewards people with solar panels for the energy they have generated.

The cuts in the payments are not as severe as originally planned - when a reduction of 87 per cent in domestic solar electricity subsidies was proposed - but the solar industry has hit back, saying the new tariffs were not high enough.

Solar power companies had warned the cuts could mean tens of thousands of job losses, and said the government should be doing more to boost the solar industry in the face of climate change challenges.

The changes mean people who have domestic solar panels fitted will be given 4.39p per kilowatt hour of renewable electricity generated, down from 12p.

Green campaigners today slammed the decision, calling them "misguided" - especially in the wake of an international climate change agreement in Paris, which vowed to keep the global temperate increase "well below" 2C.

Friends of the Earth renewable energy campaigner Alasdair Cameron said the announcement undermined the government's official position on the environment.

Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Barbara Stoll warned that the government's support for nuclear power, rather than investing in solar, risked increasing bills for taxpayers.

Just one nuclear power plant would take up four years' worth of subsidies for the whole solar sector in just one month, she claimed.