Renewables developers and the public will no longer have the same interests

Today I’m looking at the growing tensions to come between developers and regulators.

Until recently, and despite the bitterness and polarized nature of the debate on renewables, there was actually a fairly strong alignment of interest between the general public and developers. Despite claims to the contrary, renewables did not increase costs for customers (and indeed protected them from the volatility of gas prices, in the case of fixed price regulated tariffs or equivalent CfDs), did not weaken the grid and did reduce the use, and dependency on imports, of fossil fuels. Offering renewables protection from short term price volatility made economic sense as it allowed them to attract cheaper capital and thus deliver significantly cheaper electricity.

The macro-level reality is that renewables have displaced, and reduced the revenues of, fossil fuel plants, and the subsidies that did exist in the early days were effectively paid by the incumbent generators rather than by consumers - thus their lasting hostility, and propaganda, against renewables. The rest has largely been noise.

But now, we are in a new situation, fuelled by the continued boom of solar. That trend is showing no signs of slowing down, boosted by record low prices for solar panels and increasingly by the self-interested demand from small to medium scale commercial users of electricity. It will continue unabated, even in the absence of favorable policies, as the cost advantage for these customers is increasingly the key driver for investment volumes rather than policies for utility-scale solar farms.