Solar Feed In Tariff Website

Plans to connect future offshore wind energy to the UK national grid are being firmed up with proposals to create new offshore transmission licences which will be competitively tendered from June 2009.

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Jim Mellon, the financier who predicted the current world financial crisis two years before it happened has given his weighty support to solar energy as both a means of replacing fossil fuels and of creating healthy yields for investors. In a recent rich list compiled by The Times newspaper, they made special mention of entrepreneurs who have branched out in to renewable investment. Among these, Jim Mellon features highly because of his reputation as a man with a track record of forecasting market trends twinned with a portfolio of shrewd investments.

Mellon, based in the Isle of Man and with a net worth of around £500m is established as one of the largest employers on the island and although some of his assets have come under pressure from the international financial crisis, he continues to look towards renewables as the future.

Jim Mellon was quoted in The Times as saying,

“Solar is genuinely clean, it ticks all sorts of zeitgeist boxes. Within five years, solar power will be as cheap as oil and gas without the subsidy,” adding that, “It will be bigger than the internet in five years”

Mellon backed up his words last summer by investing in a mining company called Emerging Metals which focuses on metals used in the manufacture of the latest photovoltaic technology. It is believed that in 2010, with the introduction of the feed-in tariff in the UK, there will be a boom in solar investment as the government will guarantee premium rates for megawatts generated by small solar and other renewable producers. Leading entrepreneurs on the rich list have already made this connection and are starting to back renewables before they boom.