India’s government announced at the beginning of this year that it would gradually increase the price of diesel by INR 1 each month for the following 10 months. The government is aiming to bring retail prices in India on a par with international crude prices, in order to reduce the subsidy burden on the public budget. The chart shows that the industrial sector accounts for 8% of the country’s entire diesel consumption. The rising prices will certainly hurt the industries which have already paid much for electricity. Solar thermal technologies, however, can replace these expensive diesel systems: with an average of 300 clear sunny days per year, solar has a nature-given advantage over other energy sources.
Source: Government of India

In 2009 The Scottish Government instigated the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES). This originally provided funding for renewable projects including solar thermal projects when they were associated with not-for-profit communities. In March 2011 this scheme underwent a change due to the conditions that applied to the national renewable energy tariffs especially the Renewable Heat Incentive and the Feed-In tariff. Essentially now the decision for the communities became either to accept only a grant from CARES without the tariffs or find the capital funding without a grant and enjoy a long-term return from the tariffs. So the result became that only very few projects wanted to miss out on the tariffs and solar thermal applications are no longer benefitting much under the main CARES scheme. Although solar thermal had been reasonably popular in the first phase of the CARES scheme with solar thermal systems completed up to 2011 such as in schools and community centres, 2012 saw no applications for solar thermal plants within the new scheme.