Miliband: Vast Majority of New Homes Must Have Solar Panels
Developers will be forced to install solar panels on the “vast majority” of new homes, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said, saying it is “just common sense”. The Telegraph has more.
The Energy Secretary said plans for a major increase in rooftop solar power were “just common sense” and should become “almost universal” across the country.
Four in five new builds will reportedly be required to have solar panels covering 40% of their ground area under new proposals, while 19% will be allowed to have slightly fewer because of exemptions such as those relating to roof pitch.
Mr Miliband claimed the move could save a typical homeowner £500 a year on their energy bills, despite industry fears that it would add thousands to developers’ costs.
It comes days after the Energy Secretary defeated an attempt by Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, to slash funding for the warm homes scheme, a £13.2 billion project to upgrade insulation and install other energy saving measures.
Warning that the current proportion of new build homes with solar panels was not high enough at 40%, he said: “It’s got to be much, much higher than that. It’s got to be almost universal. There will be rare exceptions where solar panels won’t be on, if they simply will make no difference.
“But for the vast, vast majority of homes… homes will be built, the solar panels will be there, saving something like £500 for the typical homeowner. It’s just common sense.”
Worth reading in full.
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Houses are ridiculously expensive now without this eejit hiking the price up for solar panels with an average life of 10 years, and very little savings to the homeowner, time to get this green eejit certified, clearly insane.
Straight jackets all round!
This Next Tuesday obviously having a few bob off China.
They will only starting “saving the homeowner” once the capital cost has been repaid, which takes a long time even using optimistic calculations. The homebuilders will just add the cost to the total cost of the home. And this assumes the feed in tariff remains as it is – I would want to be free of that which means having batteries and I would only have those in an outhouse many hundreds of yards away from my home.
Anyway I would not have them on principle.
I had panels many years ago. Even though I was on a good rate it still took 11 years for payback. I wouldn’t bother again.
If housebuilders are sadled with thousands of pounds extra cost then the customer will pay. Extra mortgage will probably be £500 a year. Miliband is such a tw@t.
Clearly Miliwatt’s definition of “common sense” is slightly off kilter.
How will the mortgage lenders feel about this. A solar panel is a time limited addition to a property and they will not be keen about lending over 25 or even 40 years for a consumable item that has a life span of that time at best. The rest of the gubbins to connect the panel is almost certainly a shorter life. As anyone who has tried to borrow on a leasehold property with less than 99 years, the lenders get nervous. Trigger even higher deposit requests to offset the cost of these optional extras for new builds and even more for anyone buying a house that is more than 10 years old.
I also wonder about buildings and contents insurers once we’ve had the first major battery fire.
Millitwat cares not a jot about all that practical reality stuff – that’s someone else’s problem down the road, when he’s long gone to his retirement island in the sun…
If only these people did retire but no they go on with all the other failures to join quangos, give lectures and get cushy jobs in the private sector, all so they can do more damage and be even less accountable.
Excellent point.
The electrical noise generated by poor quality power inverters is considerable, electrically quiet inverters are more expensive. There is only one electromagnetic spectrum, polluting it is a bad idea.
Yet more ugliness. Yet more waste of money. Yet more chilly homes.
Second hand homes will become relatively more valuable.
He’s a certifiable idiot.
….except it’s all deliberate…..
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/05/failure-was-an-option-sunnovas-taxpayer-funded-solar-flop/
I wonder if there is any restriction on removing them later. A problem for all new homes is the propsed ban on gas boilers. If I cannot develop a retirement cottage soon I shall not be building it. So far planning has taken £lots and years.
Do solar panels proect a roof from weather damage (eg, slates lost in gales)? Or do they add to the stresses a roof has to endure?
Don’t worry there won’t be any ‘new homes’ with solar panels. Miliband doesn’t even function well as a sideshow freak these days.
Wtf would milied know about common sense?
Idiot.
Isn’t this chap a member of a government who have commissioned research into reducing the amount of sunshine the country receives ?
I think this is mostly pointless and mostly harmless. Yes, it will make buying a new house more expensive. That cost will be handed on when it comes to selling and moving up-market. It will slow the market which will slow down the rate at which developers build new housing – not directly because of the added cost of the build, but because buyers will have to borrow more and possibly/probably delay trading up. There will be some jiggery-pokery when it comes to replacing the panels at the end of their useful lives with some fly-by-night traders making a quick buck or few for shoddy work. It surely should be cheaper to include solar panels during the build than retro-fitting them as an afterthought but that has nothing much to do with the cost-benefit calculation for installing them in the first place. It won’t save householders any money but may give some a warm fuzzy virtuous feeling. I don’t think that solar on domestic roofs will contribute significantly to the power on the grid or at all to its resilience. Milliband is a complete numpty and should not be allowed near positions of influence but this is not one of… Read more »
Domestic solar will cause more and more problems for the grid and result in a complete failure more likely.
Exactly this – the grid operators want less domestic solar, with out batteries or other controls it’s a pain in the arse for them, causing noise all over the supply network
that will please his puppet masters In China.
So Ed who contributes not a penny piece to the purchase of citizens homes, he gets to dictate how those homes should look, and what they can and cannot have. Meanwhile his wife gets to throw her size 10s around to stop someone building a house near her because she doesn’t like its appearance.
Arrogance and Lord of the manor complex very visible to all the serfs by the house of Milliband
This will significantly increase the cost of the houses. That will mean the buyer will need a large mortgage. The mortgage will be paid off over 25-30 years, with interest front-loaded.
The house buyer won’t save a penny; they’ll spend a small fortune servicing the additional mortgage debt.
Miliband-is-a-moron.
It might be “common sense” if you wanted or had to live off grid, but is completely pointless in a country with a properly functioning grid supplying cheap reliable power.
Solar panels are expensive, supply intermittent energy (particularly in the UK) and will just create a headache for the national grid, to deal with tiny parcels electricity it doesn’t need in the middle of the day. Without subsidies or compulsion no one would bother.
As usual, Miliband, with his teenager level outlook on the world thinks he’s saving the world with his genius plans. He’s such a cretin.
More slave labour to create these environmentally disastrous objects. Mad Miliband should be sent to where they mine the metals and rare earths and see how children live to make our lives so called “greener”.