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Some 400 senior figures in the solar energy industry said demand for panels has collapsed since the Government started slashing financial incentives for families that want to go green.

In a joint letter to the Prime Minister, seen by The Independent, they protested that the sector faced a bleak future without dramatic action to demonstrate his support for solar energy. They said that more than 6,000 people working in solar energy had lost their jobs since last summer – and 43 per cent of companies in the sector are planning redundancies.

Ministers provoked fury last year when they more than halved the subsidy for the feed-in tariff for households which feed excess electricity from their solar panels into the national grid.

Critics said the move would deter people from buying panels, which cost an average of £12,000, because it would double the time it took them to recoup their initial investment.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is now consulting on a further cut in feed-in tariffs to come into effect in July. It argues that the scheme still amounts to a generous subsidy for prosperous people who can afford panels, funded by less well-off consumers. But the solar energy firms told Mr Cameron, who promised to lead the “greenest government ever”, that demand for solar panels has halved in the past year because of the uncertainty over subsidies….

The letter comes two weeks after Mr Cameron told a conference in London of energy ministers from 23 countries that Britain would deliver on its renewable energy commitments. He said: “We urgently need a more diverse, cleaner mix of energy sources that give us energy security without causing irreparable damage to the planet.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/thousands-of-jobs-at-risk-after-pm-abandons-solar-subsidies-7718665.html