Tom Collins

One of my previous employers used to run a competition for schoolchildren. They asked them to draw a picture of a better future where we tackled our climate and ecological crises. The entries were displayed on a wall close to my office, and many times a day I passed them and looked at them. Many young people had chosen to show a contrast. On one side of the page was often a burning world—now painfully familiar from our news feeds, as our dear friends in California find their world set alight, and I am also reminded to remember our neighbours here in the UK still reeling from our recent floods. The children’s pictures were sadly a good predictor of the threat, but on the other side of the page, where they showed their hope for tomorrow, children often drew homes surrounded by trees with happy people playing outside in the sunshine. Without fail, on the rooftops of the houses in those pictures were solar panels. Our children understood that a bright and sustainable future depends on clean and sustainable energy. Our Government’s mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower is a direct response to the climate crisis and a clear mission to make energy secure and affordable. Photovoltaics fit the bill perfectly—simple, reliable and effective, they are the purest form of renewable energy, converting photons directly into electrical power, and we can place that power directly in the hands of homeowners. The need for us to embrace solar power as part of a suite of energy technologies for a sustainable future is clear. Alongside offshore wind and underpinned by storage using green hydrogen, solar photovoltaic is a key technology for the UK to decarbonise its electricity and all the sectors and use cases that we electrify. While the use of land for solar generation is rightly contended, we have a vast and perfectly designed, yet barely tapped, resource on our rooftops.