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from the renewable-energy-will-ruin-the-economy dept.
The NYT writes in an editorial that for the last few months, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy by pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.
The coal producers' motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nation's electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar arrays. But given new regulations on power-plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce global warming emissions, the future clearly lies with renewable energy.
For example, the Arizona Public Service Company, the state's largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. The ad tried to link the requirement to President Obama. Another Koch ad likens the renewable-energy requirement to health care reform, the ultimate insult in that world. "Like Obamacare, it's another government mandate we can't afford," the narrator says. "That line might appeal to Tea Partiers, but it's deliberately misleading," concludes the editorial. "This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities, which to its organizers is much more important than clean air and the consequences of climate change."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bziman on Tuesday April 29 2014, @12:35PM
About five years ago, I bought a 4.5kW array and a large battery bank for my house in Virginia. It cost about $40k, but after tax credits and energy rebates and RECs, I paid only $13k out of pocket. And my net grid usage dropped to zero. I was perfectly happy to pay my local power coop $15 a month for off peak power storage (the batteries only being there for backup).
Fast forward five years, and I have another house in Colorado, where it is a lot sunnier than Virginia. My house is twice as big, but the 3.5kW system I had installed last fall might actually be overkill for my needs.
This one cost me nothing out of pocket. It's a "power purchase agreement". Basically this company put solar panels on my roof and they are selling me the electricity the panels generate. It's just like having another utility, except that I'm paying less than eight cents a kilowatt hour, instead of the twelve cents I'd be paying the coal burning plant down the road. And again, I'm perfectly happy to pay the power company $10 a month to be connected to the grid for off peak power.
My only regret is that I probably should have just bought the system outright, since it turned out that it would have cost less than $20k installed - before tax incentives.
At these prices, I feel like every new house ought to have solar panels. It's just so easy.