It is interesting to hear that San Francisco in the USA has recently made it a legal requirement that all new buildings from January 2017 that are less than 10 floors in height are to be fitted with solar panels on their roofs. This new legislation was put in place by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a few days ago and it is the largest city/town in the USA to do so although there are smaller cities in California that have a similar law in place.
From January 2017, all new buildings less than 10 floors high in San Francisco must have solar panels fitted.
Until this ruling, the position had been that all new properties in California must set aside at least 15% of their roof area to have solar panels fitted at some point in the future.
Obviously San Francisco is keen to achieve its renewable energy and carbon emission targets. In fact, in this respect, by 2020 the city hopes that all its electricity is produced via renewable energy.
Is this sort of legislation something that could be introduced here in the UK? Surely, you would have thought that, if it can be implemented in San Francisco, USA, it could be put in place across the Atlantic Ocean here in the UK.
Here in the UK, should as much as possible be done to encourage home and business owners to have solar photovoltaic panels fitted either to the roofs of their properties or to have ground mounted solar panels placed on land close to those buildings? Yes there have been many solar power schemes introduced over the years and we continue to see solar farms being built in various parts of the UK and solar panels fitted to the roofs of various properties but anything else that can be done to help us achieve our renewable energy targets by 2020 has got to be welcomed. It will be interesting to see if the Government in this country makes any comment about the above decision taken in San Francisco.
