Households and businesses that install solar panels will be paid for any excess electricity they produce under new government plans, reports the Independent. The “smart export guarantee” means energy companies will have to pay people for surplus power they produce, it adds: “However, with the government abruptly ending a previous scheme that pays for such surplus power, there is still likely to be a period when customers are providing electricity to the grid for free. The closure of the original programme had left many concerned about the future of small-scale renewable energy production in the UK.” The Guardiansays: “The prospect of households giving clean energy away in the long term has been put to rest. The government said it believes ‘small-scale low-carbon generation should not be provided to the grid for free’. Energy minister Claire Perry defended the switch from a subsidy to a market regime, telling MPs yesterday: “It is only right that as the price of this power provision has tumbled that we stop using other people’s money to subsidise something that we don’t need to do in order to bring forward solar.” The Daily Telegraph says that the Solar Trade Association has given a cautious welcome to the plans, but warns the scheme will need to determine a fair way to determine the market price. BusinessGreen also covers the story.

Separately, BBC News has a feature headlined: “Climate change: ‘Right to repair’ gathers force.” Roger Harrabin, BBC News’s environment analyst, writes: “It is frustrating: you buy a new appliance then just after the warranty runs out, it gives up the ghost. You can’t repair it and can’t find anyone else to at a decent price, so it joins the global mountain of junk…But help is at hand, because citizens in the EU and parts of the USA will soon get a ”right to repair” – of sorts. This consists of a series of proposals from European environment ministers to force manufacturers to make goods that last longer and are easier to mend.“ Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has a report on the “Green Deal fiasco”. It says: “Thousands of homeowners face rip-off energy bills for decades after being ‘scammed’ into joining a state-backed £400m eco-energy scheme that ‘utterly failed’.”