I think that this about the smartest thing that the government has done in energy policy in some time. It really does set Britain on the right trajectory for getting a low-carbon, affordable, secure electricity supply, that’s right for the twenty first century. It’s very good for consumers, it opens up the prospect that you won’t only get a bill through the door but you will also get a cheque. It’s very good for the climate because it makes it quicker and cheaper to meet our climate targets, and it’s also good for the economy as it means that we will be making much more efficient use of our generating capacity.
Two things are going to happen. Firstly, the cost of batteries are going down extraordinarily rapidly, they have gone down far faster than anybody thought they would go down and secondly you are going to find a lot of innovative financial measures to make that these options are available to ordinary consumers, provided that you’ve got the right regulatory structure, and that’s exactly what the government has set out today that it is going to do, so that the pricing will be fair when you sell your energy back to the grid not just when you pay for it. We are going to create a much more dynamic, flexible and efficient energy system, that will both drive down bills, but also off consumers the opportunity to make some money for themselves.
There will be some areas where you can’t have solar panels on your roof, it maybe in conservation areas or high-rise flats where the is multiple occupancy, but the vast majority of people in this country will see opportunities opening up for them, and in those other areas what you will see is a tremendous development of community schemes, that don’t necessarily involve you putting things on your roof, or in the case of high rise buildings on roofs you don’t have.