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Solar generally pays off if your state/municipality offers SRECs and you get the Federal tax credit. In some places, like Washington DC, it goes as far being lu

Solar generally pays off if your state/municipality offers SRECs and you get the Federal tax credit. In some places, like Washington DC, it goes as far being lucrative fast. My entire system will be paid off in under 5 years. After that, no electricity bills plus SREC income for another 10+ years.

newsclues 5y ago
If economic feasibility is based on government incentives (unsustainable) for solar, and perhaps electric cars, is the big green transition that is currently being pushed ever going to be sustainable?
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I mean, it's not like there's no government incentives on the other side. I'm pretty sure government spending on ghg-emitting energy sources (especially when you take all the externalities into account) are quite a lot more than the rather piddling amount being spent on renewals by comparison.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Large scale solar has substantially better economics that distributed solar. The economies of scale should be pretty obvious. But even distributed solar has a positive ROI, it’s just a long pay off period (20 years etc) without government incentives. But there are plenty of investments out there with lower ROI and longer payoffs that people still invest in. So it’s all economically feasible and has been for almost a decade (which is why we’re seeing so much solar and wind deployment at the moment). Government incentives just accelerate a trend that was going to happen regardless.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    The downside of Utility Scale solar installations is that my utility provider has zero interest in creating them. Rooftop solar is something I can do that's more effective than creating an online petition to convince my local utility to pursue solar.
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Why would you want your utility provider to provide solar? Electricity is bought and sold in markets. Anyone with the capital can build a solar farm, sell the energy into grid, and allow local utility providers to buy it. If that energy happens to be the cheapest, then your utility provider will buy it. Thankfully wind and solar tend to be the cheapest forms of wholesale energy production. If you personally want to invest in solar, then you should look for cooperatives that are raising funds to build solar farms and put some capital in. But your utility provider should have nothing to do with this, they just provide the cables and buy energy to resell to you (exactly what they're responsible changes region to region, in some parts of the world they just buy and resell energy, and others maintain the cables). Expecting them to build solar would be like expecting your supermarket to manufacture every item on their shelves. They may manufacture some products because it makes sense for them to do so, but the majority are made by others.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I believe the goal of the government incentives is to stand up the industry to the point where economics of scale will help with affordability. Nascent green tech is, after all, competing against heavily developed fossil fuel technology (which has also been subsidized pretty heavily at various times).
  - newsclues 5y ago
    I guess what I’m getting at, is total energy needs/usage rather than an issue of fossil fuel or renewable energy. If our society requires more energy than is sustainable regardless of source, we need to construct societies that use less energy. So let’s think about transportation. It’s not about switching from ICE to electric cars, but from private cars and suburbs to mass transit and dense cities. Government is subsidizing unsustainable energy consumption rather than transforming society to lower consumption.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      I mean, money isn't a Real Thing. It's a social construct and in so far as government 'subsidizes' anything, it's really just changing the rules of the game we're all forced to play to favour a different outcome. They could certainly also subsidize shifts away from energy use in general, but these things aren't mutually exclusive and we probably can't actually get to carbon negative so long as we're burning fossil fuels, which is what we actually need to do.
- varelse 5y ago
  Well, I don't see any reason to discontinue them as long as there are even bigger incentives for coal, oil, and gas. $5.9T in 2020 alone. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trillion-in-subsidies-in-2020-report-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill... But what's the long game here? EVs have dropped in price by a factor of ~3 and solar power dropped in cost by a factor of 10 over the past decade. The incentives seem to be achieving exactly what they sought to achieve. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-pv-has-become-cheaper-and-better-in-the-2010s-now-what https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-pv-has-be... So even in a world where all incentives were removed, it seems oil, coal, and gas are organically on the way out. What's holding that back, as usual, is $$$ people. And it's fascinating that California not only wants to all but discontinue paying for electricity from rooftop solar panels, but plans to go even further and impose a $96/year de facto tax per kW of solar panel installed. https://nrgcleanpower.com/learning-center/nem-what-changes-are-coming/ https://nrgcleanpower.com/learning-center/nem-what-changes-a... I think our leaders have no idea what they're doing across the board personally.
- iso1210 5y ago
  Government incentives for oil has worked out rather sustainable over the last century, why not for solar?
- BeefySwain 5y ago
  Wait until you hear about the state of oil and gas subsidies.

newsclues 5y ago

If economic feasibility is based on government incentives (unsustainable) for solar, and perhaps electric cars, is the big green transition that is currently being pushed ever going to be sustainable?

stormbrew 5y ago
I mean, it's not like there's no government incentives on the other side. I'm pretty sure government spending on ghg-emitting energy sources (especially when you take all the externalities into account) are quite a lot more than the rather piddling amount being spent on renewals by comparison.
avianlyric 5y ago
Large scale solar has substantially better economics that distributed solar. The economies of scale should be pretty obvious. But even distributed solar has a positive ROI, it’s just a long pay off period (20 years etc) without government incentives. But there are plenty of investments out there with lower ROI and longer payoffs that people still invest in. So it’s all economically feasible and has been for almost a decade (which is why we’re seeing so much solar and wind deployment at the moment). Government incentives just accelerate a trend that was going to happen regardless.
- jandrese 5y ago
  The downside of Utility Scale solar installations is that my utility provider has zero interest in creating them. Rooftop solar is something I can do that's more effective than creating an online petition to convince my local utility to pursue solar.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Why would you want your utility provider to provide solar? Electricity is bought and sold in markets. Anyone with the capital can build a solar farm, sell the energy into grid, and allow local utility providers to buy it. If that energy happens to be the cheapest, then your utility provider will buy it. Thankfully wind and solar tend to be the cheapest forms of wholesale energy production. If you personally want to invest in solar, then you should look for cooperatives that are raising funds to build solar farms and put some capital in. But your utility provider should have nothing to do with this, they just provide the cables and buy energy to resell to you (exactly what they're responsible changes region to region, in some parts of the world they just buy and resell energy, and others maintain the cables). Expecting them to build solar would be like expecting your supermarket to manufacture every item on their shelves. They may manufacture some products because it makes sense for them to do so, but the majority are made by others.
bee_rider 5y ago
I believe the goal of the government incentives is to stand up the industry to the point where economics of scale will help with affordability. Nascent green tech is, after all, competing against heavily developed fossil fuel technology (which has also been subsidized pretty heavily at various times).
- newsclues 5y ago
  I guess what I’m getting at, is total energy needs/usage rather than an issue of fossil fuel or renewable energy. If our society requires more energy than is sustainable regardless of source, we need to construct societies that use less energy. So let’s think about transportation. It’s not about switching from ICE to electric cars, but from private cars and suburbs to mass transit and dense cities. Government is subsidizing unsustainable energy consumption rather than transforming society to lower consumption.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    I mean, money isn't a Real Thing. It's a social construct and in so far as government 'subsidizes' anything, it's really just changing the rules of the game we're all forced to play to favour a different outcome. They could certainly also subsidize shifts away from energy use in general, but these things aren't mutually exclusive and we probably can't actually get to carbon negative so long as we're burning fossil fuels, which is what we actually need to do.
varelse 5y ago
Well, I don't see any reason to discontinue them as long as there are even bigger incentives for coal, oil, and gas. $5.9T in 2020 alone. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trillion-in-subsidies-in-2020-report-finds https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill... But what's the long game here? EVs have dropped in price by a factor of ~3 and solar power dropped in cost by a factor of 10 over the past decade. The incentives seem to be achieving exactly what they sought to achieve. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-pv-has-become-cheaper-and-better-in-the-2010s-now-what https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-pv-has-be... So even in a world where all incentives were removed, it seems oil, coal, and gas are organically on the way out. What's holding that back, as usual, is $$$ people. And it's fascinating that California not only wants to all but discontinue paying for electricity from rooftop solar panels, but plans to go even further and impose a $96/year de facto tax per kW of solar panel installed. https://nrgcleanpower.com/learning-center/nem-what-changes-are-coming/ https://nrgcleanpower.com/learning-center/nem-what-changes-a... I think our leaders have no idea what they're doing across the board personally.
iso1210 5y ago
Government incentives for oil has worked out rather sustainable over the last century, why not for solar?
BeefySwain 5y ago
Wait until you hear about the state of oil and gas subsidies.