Bigger Subsidies Paid By Someone Else
<http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/03/bigger-subsidies-paid-by-someone-else.html>
The NY Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/business/energy-environment/13solar.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>
lauds the German approach to promoting green power:
Solar cells adorn the roofs of many homes and warehouses across Germany,
while the bright white blades of wind turbines
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/wind_power/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
are a frequent sight against the sky in Spain.
If one day these machines become as common on the plains and rooftops of
the United States as they are abroad, it may be because the financing
technique that gave Europe an early lead in renewable energy is starting
to cross the Atlantic.
Put simply, the idea is to pay homeowners and businesses top dollar for
producing green energy. In Germany, for example, a homeowner with a
rooftop solar system may be paid four times more to produce electricity
than the rate paid to a coal
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/coal/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-fired
power plant.
This month Gainesville, Fla., became the first city in the United States
to introduce higher payments for solar power
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/solar_energy/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
which is otherwise too expensive for many families or businesses to
install. City leaders, who control their electric utility, unanimously
approved the policy after studying Germany's solar-power expansion.
Groan. Paragraph eight confirms the suspicions of everyone who does not
believe that both money and solar panels fall freely from the sky:
It shifts the burden of subsidizing green energy from taxpayers, as is
common in the United States, to electricity ratepayers. And the
technique includes assurances that a utility will pay the high rates for
a long period, often 15 to 25 years.
The sixteenth and seventeenth paragraphs disparage the cost-conscious:
But requiring utilities to pay extra for green power has a direct impact
on ratepayers. Homeowners' electricity bills will rise 74 cents a month
in Gainesville, or about half a percentage point of the average
homeowner's monthly bill.
"Seventy cents --- what's that? A Coke?" said Mr. Regan, of the
Gainesville utility.
Great point! Of course, the subsidy is only small if not many people
participate in the program; we will come back to that, but as we
approach the twentieth paragraph the Times finally adopts a more
conventional liberal tack:
Opponents of feed-in tariffs like Marcel Hawiger, a staff attorney for
the Utility Reform Network in California, say that the policy would hit
poor people the hardest by raising their electricity rates because a
relatively high percentage of their income goes to pay utility bills.
"Why should we use regressive taxation to support the most expensive
form of renewable energy?" Mr. Hawiger asked.
Why, indeed? Probably because people think the subsidy is paid by the
utility shareholders, or anyway, by someone else. Let's come back to
the Coke and a smile size of the subsidy:
Even in Gainesville, homeowners wanting to put solar panels on their
roof are now out of luck: a few days after introducing the policy, the
city reached its cap on solar payments for this year and next.
If the program were large it would be expensive, regressive, and
unpopular. Instead, its a small, feel-good band-aid which the Times loves.
[end of thread
<http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/03/bigger-subsidies-paid-by-someone-else/comments/page/666/>]
Posted by Tom Maguire on March 13, 2009
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