Are Tory cuts to smash the viability of Council's renewable energy schemes?.

In early implementer Council's for energy from renewable sources we have noticed reports and cash sums announced in their draft final accounts illustrating the profits they made from solar panels fitted to Council housing, Council Run

schools and council owned commercial properties, ground source heat pumps and equipment in sports and leisure centres etc., and Council sponsored community backed hydro electric power plants.

Northumberland County Council's leader with a small l, Glen Sanderson, boasted about a profit of £30,000 from the sale of energy from primarily solar panels and ground source  schemes when announcing his huge capital borrowing needs of £307,000,000 and his scheme to grow the Council's energy infrastructure.

The myopia in his announcement and that of other boastful Council Leaders this year was very short lived indeed as the licenses for growth are issued by the Government department with the responsibility for all things tree-hugging, renewable and green, the massively budget slashed Environment Agency, a department starved of cash at a similar level to Council's over the last 11 years of Tory austerity and mismanagement.

They Environment Agency have just announced their marker plan for things to come by attacking with great gusto the minor player in this industry, an industry that's about to be nipped in the bud as it strives to challenge the energy billionaires who fund the Conservative Party nationally and whose major shareholders are invited on a regular and ongoing basis to legal garden parties attended by the Tory Leader and PM of this badly drifting nation as a precursor to receiving their peerages.

The Environment Agency has announced a 10 fold increase in the licences to operate and sell energy from Community Hydropower Schemes.The cost of licences will grow from £1500 to a whopping £13,393 this year, killing off the viability and community gain running CHS's gives Council's and/or communities.

Simon Hamlyn the chief executive of the British Hydropower Association has said:"The Environment Agency is slamming the final nail in the coffin of a renewable energy source which should be a key focus for the Government as energy prices soar".

It looks like he's just learning what we here at Murky have been preaching, that Conservative interests lie in the City and not the nations Communities, its
'profits before people every time'.