Government apathy sabotages Britain's shift to a low-carbon economy

From this article:

...The figures we uncovered last week were shocking.

BERR is set to under spend the paltry £18m in domestic grants of its low carbon buildings programme by £10m over the three years to March 2009. This in spite of strong demand for renewables among the general public.

How bad is the situation? Well, BERR handed out grants for part of the cost of fitting solar photovoltaic systems covering only 270 houses last year. The Germans fitted 130,000. We have a total installed capacity (including commercial) of 16 Megawatt peak (Mwp). They have 3,800 Mwp.

But even worse, during the year the pace of grant-giving slowed. Last May BERR simply slashed the grants and made them more difficult to get. The result, entirely predictably, was a collapse.

Throughout much of 2006, for example, it was making 30-40 grants a month for ground source heat pumps. In the last three months of 2007, no such grants were made. There is a similar decline for solar thermal (hot water) and micro wind turbines. Not a single grant was allocated for a domestic solar PV system last month while the Germans installed about 12,000 systems.