Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced to much fanfare on November 24 that the city’s municipal utility would launch one of the continent’s largest solar power programs. The mayor’s plan would direct the city’s municipal utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), to build or purchase 1,300 MW of solar energy by 2020.

Among provisions of the plan is a feed-in tariff for 150 MW of solar photovoltaics by 2016. This is the first official announcement of a feed-in tariff proposal by a California city, but it is not the first in the United States. Gainesville, Florida previously announced that it was formally considering a feed-in tariff to replace its solar rebate program.

Recently, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported that Palm Desert, California was also considering solar feed-in tariffs after city officials toured Spain, one of the world’s leading developers of solar energy. Spain uses feed-in tariffs.

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The latest Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting has provided scant details on climate change policy, while hinting some agreements had been made on a national feed-in tariff scheme.

At the meeting, government leaders pledged significant capital injections into education, health and housing sectors, and signed an new Intergovernmental Agreement to better align federal-state financial relations.

Visit the Government News website to read the full article

Click here to download the National Principles for Feed-in Tariff Schemes

The UK looks set to adopt feed-in tariffs for renewables at last as new legislation in the Energy Bill was agreed by parliament.

The new measures agreed yesterday also include a Renewable Heat Incentive, which also covers the injection of renewable biogas into the gas network.

The amendments tabled to the bill also increase the size of renewable installation that can sell energy back to the national grid from 3 MW to 5 MW.

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Click here to download the Bill.

Two recent online articles explore the state of feed-in tariffs in Australia, outlining what has been implemented to date by the states, comparing these with international exapmples and looking ahead to the direction a national feed-in tariff might take.

In Solar policy trapped in the state shadowlands PETER MARES explains that, while all sides of politics agree that a German-style national feed-in tariff to encourage rooftop solar power makes sense, Christine Milne’s bill to create the tariff is going nowhere.

Additionally, in Solar Stuff-up, appearing in Australian Policy Online, BOB JOHNSTONE explains why Australia should now follow the German example.

Whilst details remain scant, the New South Wales Government have announced plans to introduce a feed-in tariff for households who install solar panels on their roofs.

The move to introduce the feed-in tariff was announced on Monday 24th November by the NSW Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Carmel Tebbutt.

Visit the Sydney Morning Herald website, ABC online, and/or the Architecture and Design website for more information on the announcement.

The French Minister for Energy and the Environment announced Monday that the government was launching an aggressive new program to propel the country to the forefront of solar energy development.

The announcement by Minister Jean-Louis Borloo was made at the annual Grenelle meeting of French environmental stakeholders. Minister Borloo outlined 50 actions the Sarkozy government would take to substantially increase the role of renewable energy in France.

Most dramatically, Borloo said that France intends to become one of the world’s leaders in the development of solar photovoltaic technology and will increase the supply of solar-generated electricity 400 times by 2020.

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The UK’s pending feed-in tariff for renewable energy has been expanded from a cap of 3 megawatts to 5 megawatts. By comparrison, the existing Australian state-based schemes are capped at 30 kilowatts, with the pending Victorian scheme proposed to be capped at 2 kilowatts – more than 1000 times smaller than the UK proposal.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change told New Energy Focus this morning that the move had been taken to give the government more flexibility in its use of the feed-in tariff to support community renewable electricity projects.

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The Swiss, famed for their democratic traditions, chocolate, and knives with corkscrews, have adopted an aggressive feed-in tariff to promote the rapid development of renewable energy.

The Swiss federal government has launched an aggressive system of feed-in tariffs that pays any renewable energy generator for every kWh of electricity generated. The Swiss system, which is just four months old, has a schedule of tariffs differentiated by technology, size and application, which sets payments per kilowatt-hour (kWh), for solar photovoltaics, wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass.

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For the first time in North America, in cooperation with a local municipal electric association, the Gainesville City Commission in Florida took a substantial first step to enact a policy that will create jobs, increase our energy independence and security, provide substantial investment in clean, sustainable energy and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

While new to the U.S., Renewable Energy Payments (REPs), also referred to as feed-in tariffs, have been responsible for 50 percent of the growth of global renewable energy production (70 percent in solar). Now they are on their way to the USA.

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The federal Sennate Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee has released the report arising from the recemntly completed inquiry into Senator Christine Milne’s proposed national feed-in tariff, recommending a nationally consistant feed-in tariff be delivered through CoAG.

The Inquiry into the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment (Feed-in-Tariff) Bill 2008 undertook extensive consultation on both the proposed Bill and all aspects of feed-in tariffs, and concluded that, although the Bill had merit, and a nationally consistant FiT was desireable, the Council of Australian Governments was the appropriate forum to deliver this.

Click here to visit the Inquiry homepage or download the report.

Visit Christine Milne’s website for her response to the Committee’s findings, or go the the Sydney Morning Herald’s website for additional comment and opinion.