Scrolling checkpoint! Solar power edition

Last year, on average, the UK saw a new solar installation once every 2 minutes. So, I thought we could spend 2 minutes together and just hang back out of the algorithm. Now, normally, I would, you know, write a script for this and I'd have an editor come in and chop it all up, but in this case, let's do things a bit differently, which is why I'm going to be referring to some notes off camera because there's quite a lot of stats to give you, such as the fact that last year the UK saw 269,000 new installations, 255,000 of which were on rooftops. And that's a new record. It's up 37% from the previous year, which is a huge increase. — [snorts] — Uh my producer has asked me to read this next note out verbatim. Uh my short-form producer Tristan has noted that he wishes the numbers were twice as high, partly so that we have more renewables, but also so he can more easily squeeze in a musical theater reference to 525,600 minutes from Seasons of Love from Rent. Oh, look, I've read that out now, so he managed to reference it anyway. Cheers, Tristan. The next point is slightly more relevant. Uh it says that in March this year the UK passed the threshold of 2 million total installations, and in April we saw 23,000 new installations alone, over half of which were on buildings. And part of this is people responding to the Iran war. You know, gas prices are going up, makes it more expensive to buy electricity from the grid, whereas the cost of installing new solar on your property has decreased year-on-year by 9%. That's huge, but it's not just, you know, people and families who are installing this. Uh businesses are, too. The makers of Henry Hoover, who are in Somerset, just down the road from me, are building a new solar park that's going to meet 20% of their electricity demand. And GB Energy, which is the part of the government that was spun out to develop new clean technologies, is also bringing rooftop solar to another 100 schools and colleges this year. This has been lovely, but our time is actually nearing its end. A new solar installation will have been built while we've been here in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.