Lee Rose – Norfolk Solar
Conclusions of the week:
I've met so many very professional and passionate people; proud of their work, highly competent and so freely giving of their knowledge, and with such modesty.
I found it humbling that town mayors, company CEO's and organisation Directors were all equally keen to make time in their busy schedules to meet with us and discuss openly topics which clearly had a commercial and political sensitivity, and they were equally open about discussing costs and failures as they were successes.
Jake Rendle-Worthington – Solar Aid
Conclusions for the week: So our week here has come to an end and what a whirl wind tour of projects and facilities of all kinds of scale and application. As a renewable specialist the solar PV, solar thermal, storage and hydro projects have been of the most interest to me. However, I can see how all of these technologies benefit massively from the wider infrastructure of support for skilled tradesmen, training facilities, local government enthusiasm and local manufacturing base. Gemany, so far, has really figured out how to move toward a low carbon economy much better that what I see in the UK and from what I have seen on this trip there are several reasons for this.
Firstly they have the skills and the support for people wishing to upskill and gain relevant knowledge easily accessible, where there are 23 certify bodies in the UK there are 5 in Germany, seemingly all controlled by government. Secondly finance is simple, available and affordable for renewable projects of any size, a state bank gives up to 100% loans at a rate of around 2.9% for all scales of projects as it has the confidence of return in these projects. Thirdly, despite there being objections to certain projects it seem that engineers, project developers and local government can easily come together to find solutions, modify elements of these projects and make them move forward and not just as a profitable business as the Zella-Mehlis EV projects proves. They know they have the skills and knowledge to have the confidence to take risks with the long term in mind.
