SIR — Dulverton Catholic Church is one of a number of local organisations that have invested in renewable energy – in our case, by installing photovoltaic panels on our church roof.

We expect to be able to generate around 7,000 units of electricity a year in this way.

We were encouraged to make this investment because of the availability of a government grant of almost 50 per cent of the capital cost and the promise of 'feed-in tariffs' – a payment made to small-scale electricity generators like ourselves through electricity companies, who buy the surplus electricity produced.

We installed our panels in March, only to be told in April that the government had changed the scheme and would no longer allow feed-in tariffs to be paid to organisations that had received grants.

This in effect made our scheme uneconomic – but there was nothing that we could do about it, as the investment had already been made.

Although our photovoltaic panels are doing a good job, we can't help feeling short-changed.

A huge amount of time and energy went into this scheme. If we had been told at the outset what the return was going to be, our priorities might have been different.

We might, with regret, have become less enthusiastic about renewable energy and keener to see the money entrusted to us for the work of the church invested more safely.

We have written to the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to ask him to look again at the incentives that are offered to community groups to encourage investment in renewable energy sources.

We do not believe that those who have received grants should necessarily receive the full feed-in tariff.

But community groups will only invest in schemes of this kind if they can look forward to a reasonable economic as well as social return, taking into account the effort that is required to develop a project of this sort and the inevitable risks.

They also need to have confidence that the rules will stay broadly the same.

We think that the current situation is unreasonable and untenable. We feel that we, and others like us, have been misled.

But above all we are concerned that opportunities to reduce dependence on fossil fuels will be lost if people can't trust the government to deliver what it has promised.

Martin McNeill,

Secretary,

St Stanislaus' Church Council,

Dulverton.