The UK’s fastest growing rooftop solar developer predicts that Angela Merkel has made a smart move saying ‘Atomkraft; nein danke‘.

‘Nuclear power; no thanks’ was the hippy catchphrase of the seventies but EOS Energy, UK’s fastest growing solar developer, say that Angela Merkel’s decision to scrap all Germany’s nuclear power generation is based on sound financial thinking.

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“Solar electricity generation will be cheaper than fossil fuel generation within the decade and will not pose any of the safety issues involved with nuclear reactors,” said Lee Summers, director of EOS Energy.

“By ditching nuclear Chancellor Merkel is in fact giving German industry a huge opportunity to dominate renewable technologies for the next twenty years,” he said.

Germany is already a world leader in developing renewable energy technologies in general and Siemens are something of a market leader in developing solar technology.

Over the last ten years the Germans have increased the proportion of solar and wind generated power from 6.6 per cent to 16.5 per cent.

European nuclear generation is dominated by French developers and the Germans are confident that they can replace the 23% slice of their electricity that comes from nuclear.

“Renewable technologies are clean, safe and do not leave Britain vulnerable to political shifts around the world,” said Mr Summers.

Research from University of Melbourne’s Energy Research Institute predicts that the price of wind and solar energy will continue to fall making the adoption of renewables sound financial thinking in Australia.

“It’s expected that, especially in the case of solar technologies, that they’ll become very close to competitive with fossil fuels over the next five to 10 years.

“What this means is that we should be planning for a future with much larger penetrations of renewable energy and focusing on how we get that built and how we can integrate into the system as fast as possible,” said Patrick Hearps, one of the lead researchers.

“Climatic conditions for solar in the UK are very similar to those in Germany,” said Mr Summers.

“With huge costs being added to nuclear due to stringent future safety methods the Department of Energy should be planning for Britain’s low carbon future in a similar way to Germany.”

EOS Energy has made a contribution to increasing general awareness of renewable energy by announced this month a £20-million scheme to put small solar arrays on private homes and community buildings that could otherwise not afford them.

The schemes funder will take the Government Feed-in-Tariff to finance the loan and the householder will harvest free electricity from the photovoltaic panels.

“We are merely trying to help people that can’t afford a PV system to protect themselves from the anticipated increases in electricity prices, and, of course, to encourage the use of renewable energy,” said Mr Summers.