Most of us would probably install solar panels on our roofs if it wasn’t so expensive and if we could sell the surplus electricity we produce to the electricity companies through the National Grid at a high enough price to pay off our investment in a few years.

Rather than having a huge central power station using fossil fuels, it is quite possible to have thousands of small domestic power stations on our roofs, using renewable energy sources that don’t produce CO2, and all it needs is Government commitment.

It would need a legal guarantee of access to the National Grid, a long-term contract, at least 20 years, and a price-per-unit of electricity that is realistic to ensure that the investment could be paid off in the shorter term.

Germany has had such a scheme since 1990, with the unit price four-times the basic unit cost and guaranteed for 20 years, resulting in over 300,000 houses producing electricity compared with around 300 in this country. Overall, there are more than 60 countries worldwide using this feed-in tariff system, including Belgium, Brazil, Spain and Lithuania.

The UK, in its commitment to privatised power production, took another route involving ROCs (Renewable Obligation Certificates) with electricity companies having to provide a certain level of renewable energy and buying certificates if they fall short. The cost is tacked on to our electricity bills, and the scheme certainly has not supported domestic solar panels.

The UK is ranked 25th out of 27 for renewable energy production in Europe with just five per cent, compared to an average of 14 per cent, and this hasn’t been helped by the fact that the grants for solar panels have been limited, oversubscribed and without an encouraging feed-in tariff.

Belatedly, such a feed-in tariff is to be introduced from April this year, and it’s known as ‘clean energy cash back’.

It is restricted to small-scale ‘domestic’ projects, producing less than five megawatts a year, and there is a guarantee of the tariff rate for 20 years for wind and 25 years for solar panels.

The key feature of the scheme will be the tariff rate, and it is likely to be less than it might have been, as the Government is only aiming to produce two per cent of the national electricity using such microgeneration methods by 2020, yet with a higher tariff it could raise it to six per cent – on a par with many European countries.

The good news, though, is that the handful of solar panel schemes already powering away in Bradford will qualify for the new tariff and should now pay for themselves in less time.