The UK government is set to slash solar power subsidies in a move that may hit renewable energy companies, it was claimed on Tuesday.
Ministers are planning to announce cuts to solar power funding on Wednesday morning, environmental campaign group Greenpeace said.
Companies involved in solar power in the UK include Good Energy (LON:GOOD), which has about 15 solar farms and parks in the UK.
Another is Chinese group Auhua Clean Energy (LON:ACE), which makes and sells solar-powered water heating systems.
Greenpeace said cutting solar energy funding would destabilise the industry at a time when it is almost subsidy-free and standing on its own two feet.
Greenpeace head of energy campaign Daisy Sands said: "Cutting subsidies now will see businesses go bust and investment dry up.
"Jobs will go and emissions will stay higher at a time when policies and funding should be in place to ensure quite the opposite.
“Combined with the cuts to wind subsidies, it looks like the government is gearing up for a full-frontal attack on the renewable energy sector in the autumn while still handing out billion-pound tax breaks for oil and gas industry."
A spokesman for the Department of Energy & Climate Change declined to comment on the Greenpeace claims. But he added: "We've been very clear we're looking at the subsidy landscape and we'll set out our plans shortly."
The move is thought likely to affect so-called feed-in tariffs, which are believed to account for about 1% of the average UK household energy bill.
People can get the payments from energy suppliers if they generate their own electricity with solar panels or a wind turbine.
The government is said to pay 13.8p for every kilowatt hour of energy that panels generate.
As well as the generation tariff, householders can also sell any extra units they don’t use back to electricity suppliers, known as export tariffs.
The government has already decided to bring forward by a year to April 2016 the end of subsidies for onshore wind farms.