Plug-in solar panels.
Since the re-election of Donald Trump as the American president in November 2024, it has become easy to grow very despondent about the future of humanity and its struggle with the growing climate crisis. The Trump administration has done much to block new renewable energy projectsin the United States and along with the other two large petro-states, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in what has been described as the axis of obstruction, they did much to stop meaningful progress on combating climate change at COP 30 in November of last year.
However, that is thankfully not the full story. Climate activist Bill McKibben, founder of the climate organisation 350.org and author of the book Here Comes the Sun, about how solar energy can still do too much to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, has stated that solar energy is still very much on the rise throughout the world.
Speaking on Democracy Now in 2025, McKibben noted: “This is as dark a moment as there’s ever been in our democracy and our planet is overheating fast. In the midst of that, there is this one big, good thing simultaneously happening and is so big and so good that it might help with both the climate and the authoritarianism crisis and that’s this rise in the last 36 months, a pretty untold story of just extraordinary amounts of clean energy surging into the world’s energy system.
“It is centred in China and the numbers are staggering … the last month we have data for is May (2025), the Chinese were putting up 3 gigawatts of solar panels a day, a gigawatt being the rough equivalent of a coal-fired power plant. They’re putting up one of those made out of solar panels every eight hours.
“California, which has done more than any place in this country, reached some kind of tipping point in the last 18 months. Most days now California supplies more than 100% of its electricity from renewable energy. For long stretches at night, the biggest source of supply on its grid is batteries that have been soaking up excess sunshine all afternoon. The bottom-line California. The fourth largest economy in the world is using 40% less natural gas to produce electricity than they were two years ago. That’s the kind of number that may be the most optimistic things that that I’ve heard in the 40 years I’ve been working on the climate crisis. It’s the kind of number that begins to shave tenths of a degree off how hot the world eventually gets and remember every 10th of a degree means 100 million people moving from a safe climate zone to a dangerous one. It’s not that we’re going to stop global warming; it’s too late for that. It’s that we have really a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now”.
Reflecting on the huge potential of solar power, McKibben commented: “It’s really important to understand that as of about four years ago we live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce energy is to deploy a sheet of glass at the sun and China has been leading that effort we know about”.
It is within this context of the rising use of solar energy, despite the obstructionist efforts of the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia, that the government has just made an important and hopeful announcement.
In late March, the government announced that ‘plug-in’ solar panels will be in shops within months, giving households the opportunity to significantly cut energy bills
The move is said to come as government responds to the war in Iran by stepping up the drive for clean homegrown power to get the UK off dependency on fossil fuel markets.
Consequently, new rules introduced on 24 March are set to ensure that most new homes in England will come with solar panels fitted as standard.
This is coupled with an inventive new approach, seeing discounted power on windy days in areas where wind farms are paid to switch off to avoid ‘wasted wind’, predominantly benefiting the East of England and Scotland.
More households will be helped to save money on bills through plug-in solar panels as the government vows to go further and faster on clean energy in response to conflict in the Middle East.
The government also noted that, “retailers like Lidl and Iceland, alongside manufacturers such as EcoFlow, are working with government to enable them to be brought to the UK market.
“Plug-in solar is already widely used by households across Europe, with Germany seeing around half a million new devices plugged in per year.
“The free solar power can be used directly through a mains socket like any other device, without an installation cost, thereby reducing the amount of electricity taken from the grid and cutting energy bills”.
It is hoped that many households across the country will save a lot of money on their energy bills, through using this easy-to-install technology while it will also help make our country less reliant on global fossil fuel markets.
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Georgina Hall, Corporate Affairs Director at Lidl GB said:
“At Lidl GB, we are committed to making sustainable living affordable for everyone and we welcome the government’s move to modernise regulations in the UK”.
Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, said:
“People want to be free of these fossil fuel crises – since the conflict in the Middle East began, interest in solar has shot up 50%, heat pump and electric cars are also seeing surges.
“Every solar panel, heat pump and battery cut bills boosts Britain’s energy independence. And the government’s latest steps can help cut the costs of electrification”.
Chris Norbury, Chief Executive of E.ON UK said:
“Cutting red tape on plug-in solar is an encouraging move and we will help ensure it works alongside, or as part of, whole-home solutions that genuinely empower people to take control of their energy use and cut bills.
“At E.ON Next, we’re already seeing how powerful that shift can be. Whether it’s giving customers more control through innovative time of use tariffs or helping people get income from generating and storing energy at home via steerable assets, the direction is clear: simplicity, transparency and providing real financial rewards for doing the right thing”.
This is both a positive and very interesting initiative from the government. It is one of the most positive things that they have done since coming to power in July 2024 and seems to back up speculation that energy minister Ed Miliband has grown in influence and power within the cabinet.
It also shows a change of tactic from the Labour government in terms of dealing with its alarming decline in the polls. Instead of aping Reform UK, here we see the Labour government addressing the issues that are of concern to their many voters who have drifted away to the Greens.
The initiative also shows that getting to Net Zero is not an expensive venture for our country but rather can save ordinary customers a lot of money on their energy bills. Given the events of the last six weeks in Iran and particularly the Straits of Hormuz, it seems sensible for the UK to rely as little as possible on the international fossil fuel markets and to develop our own renewable energy sources.
As Bill McKibben says, solar and other renewable energy is the future, and it is important that the UK get involved as much as they can.
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Peter is a teacher, writer and historian who has also been active in human rights work for 35 years. He is particularly interested in how our great human rights history in the North East can help us to be both inspired and enlightened and enable us to face up to the challenges we face today. These challenges include defending the human rights of all people in the region and the country and dealing with the existential crisis that is climate change
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