High hopes for clean-energy plan

The environmental campaign group used figures obtained from the government to show that introducing a more ambitious scheme than that currently proposed would only add an average £2.37 per year on to household electricity bills over the next four years - just £1.20 a year more than the government is already proposing to add to fund the scheme.

The figures have been published as 30 organisations and businesses - including Friends of the Earth, the Renewable Energy Association, The TUC, British Retail Consortium, the Co-operative Group, Country Land and Business Association (CLA), the Federation of Small Businesses, Unison and WWF - have written to MPs urging them to support an Early Day Motion tabled by Alan Simpson MP calling for a much greater level of ambition for small-scale renewable-electricity generation than the government scheme currently proposes.

Friends of the Earth, which led the campaign to introduce a feed-in tariff alongside the Renewable Energy Association, has criticised the proposed scheme as lacking ambition because it only aims to generate two per cent of UK electricity from small-scale renewable technologies by 2020.