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>> Greenhouse gas emissions are a classic instance: polluters don’t pay for the carbon they emit. This is the ultimate distorted price: emissions have a high co

>> Greenhouse gas emissions are a classic instance: polluters don’t pay for the carbon they emit. This is the ultimate distorted price: emissions have a high cost, but the price we charge polluters is $0. That price is a colossal lie. I always say if you want to make someone pay for carbon emissions, the easiest way is to tax its extraction from the ground. Tax coal, oil, and gas extraction (or import) and call it a day. No sense creating artificial markets for carbon credits or other such nonsense that just encourages gaming a system and feeding middlemen. The author IMHO totally blew it by digressing from the net-metering thing. Its a really good example of how pricing doesn't match costs, but he offers absolutely nothing as a fix for that situation. Charging people a base rate for the infrastructure plus usage sounds nice, but that causes problems for poor people and kind of subsidizes large users. The current pricing scheme which increases costs with usage (progressive pricing?) seems more fair. Or what about splitting the bill into infra and usage portions, then solar installations would pay infra for power flowing in either direction. I'm sure there are plenty more ideas out there, but the author offers none.

LadyCailin 5y ago
That split bill thing is how it works here in Norway. The nettleie (infra part) is regulated like a utility, because it’s a monopoly in the area serviced, but the actual electricity is fully free market, because you can choose whoever you like to actually provide the electricity. Actually though, now that I’ve typed this out, the nettleie is charged per kWh drawn (as well as peak demand), and I’m not sure how that changes if you have solar panels. Maybe another Norwegian can comment. In any case, splitting the infra and production makes sense to me, and definitely can be done.

LadyCailin 5y ago

That split bill thing is how it works here in Norway. The nettleie (infra part) is regulated like a utility, because it’s a monopoly in the area serviced, but the actual electricity is fully free market, because you can choose whoever you like to actually provide the electricity. Actually though, now that I’ve typed this out, the nettleie is charged per kWh drawn (as well as peak demand), and I’m not sure how that changes if you have solar panels. Maybe another Norwegian can comment. In any case, splitting the infra and production makes sense to me, and definitely can be done.