Miguel's Comments

As University College Cork is my alma mater, I am delighted to see them developing such a globally useful technology, and the government bringing it through to commercial viability with a feed-in tariff. Great news! The Irish are getting very serious about clean energy - they won't deal with nuclear, the people vigourously oppose incinerators and they do not, by and large, have the same NIMBY attitudes as many other English-speaking countries to wind power.

To Paul Johnson: I appreciate your comments and will try to respond briefly. At the household level: you buy your PV panels; tell the supplier; set up a contract for 20 years to sell them surplus electricity; buy or rent a meter to record outgoing energy. From here, you sell excess energy back to the grid for a premium, in Germany it is around 4 times the cost of conventional energy. All of this is guaranteed and protected by the law. They cannot refuse to buy your electricity, and the rate is set for 20 years. The rates decline each year, to drive fast take-up and efficiency improvements. If you're going to receive a lower tariff rate if you wait, you want to install this year, and also you want companies to increase efficiency so that panels are cheaper and more productive.

To Paul, cont.

The reasons suggested for why it is not adopted everywhere vary. Neo-liberal market ideology is one (UK, US); utility monopolies is another (Japan); ignorance of the law and its outcomes is another. FITs clearly threaten market dominance by large corporations who do not want competition from independent power producers. The basic guarantee of access is said to prevented in the UK, US and Japan quota systems by their high investment risk - the opposite of FITs.

If you have more questions, please contact me through REA, and I'd be happy to assist.