We’ve always believed that decentralised generation – generating energy at home and in communities -- is vital for Britain’s future energy security as well as for cutting carbon emissions.

When people understand where their energy comes from, they value it more and use it less. We’ve been leading the way for years with our award-winning HomeGen and SmartGen schemes showing the government how it could be done.

We campaigned long and hard for a similar nationwide initiative so were delighted when the Government launched the Feed-in Tariff in 2010. It proved to be a great success – so much so that on August 1^st 2011, the Government announced fast-track tariff cuts for larger solar installations, followed in October by a number of controversial proposals to change the current Feed-in Tariff for domestic-scale installations.

Good Energy responded to the campaign consultation and lobbied MPs and DECC officials to argue that the structure of the scheme should be reformed to avoid the early unplanned reviews which undermine confidence. We also wanted to make sure that a new energy efficiency standard would not act as barrier to new scheme entrants. We opposed bringing forward the cut-off date for the higher rate because of the damage this would do to the industry.

The Government announced its next set of FIT proposals in February 2012 – and we were pleased to see that some of the things we’d asked for were reflected in their new plans.