Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans she has to encourage greater uptake of rooftop solar PV.

Low carbon electricity, including solar – whether at the household level or the national level – is central to the transition to the smart and flexible energy systems of the future.

Since 2010, we have quadrupled the electricity we generate from renewables – installing 99% of the UK’s solar capacity and over 800,000 installations – exceeding our historic projections on solar PV deployment. We now have over 13.3GW of solar capacity installed in the UK, which is enough to power over 3 million UK homes.

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), which came into force on 1 January 2020, gives small scale low-carbon electricity generators, such as homes with solar panels, the right to be paid for the renewable electricity they export to the grid. Renewable generators now have a several competitive SEG tariffs to choose from, in some cases even higher than the FIT export tariff.

Permitted development rights have been introduced allowing the installation of solar panels up to 1 megawatt on domestic properties, schools, businesses and farm buildings without any need for planning permission.