Solar debunked by Expert report to Government

[PhilipA]

Page 8 of the SMH today titled"Ineffective solar rebates should go,says report"

The opening paragraph reads
" Cash rebates for housholders to install solar panels and feed-in tariffs that reward people for generating solar power from rooftop panels should be scrapped, says a report commissioned by the Federal Government"

It is what I have been saying all along. It is lunacy.
Regards Philip A

[Captain_Rightfoot]

Why is that Phillip? Inefficient all round?

[vnx205]

I don't have access to the SMH article, so I don't know if this point is covered, but I was under the impression that it was widely understood that the subsidy was really a research grant.

It is there, not because it is worth anyone's while installing the panels, but because it provides the incentive for research and development since companies involved in that field have some assurance of a market for their product and their research.

[PhilipA]

Search Results (http://news.smh.com.au/execute_search.html'text=ineffective+solar+rebates&ss=smh.com.au)

Regards Philip A

[JDNSW]

As far as I can see from the report, it is against the scheme on purely economic grounds, and there is no doubt that there is no justification for the scheme on economic grounds. And the power industry and unions are strongly opposed to the model of distributed power generation that the scheme encourages.

But the alternative to this sort of ad hoc scheme is for the carbon price to be set high enough to reduce carbon emissions to the desired level using economic methods - and no government has seen the slightest interest in doing this, as it would inevitably mean a massive increase in the price of power in particular (a large proportion of Australian power is coal generated), and the export of a large number of jobs in the coal industry and energy intensive industries such as aluminium, cement, steel, just to mention a few.

I personally do not see any possibility of the world's carbon emissions being reduced by the amount claimed to be needed except in the very unlikely event of a high carbon price being set over most of the world (to prevent export of energy intensive industries) . And any action taken by Australia will make no significant difference to world emissions; but the Government wants to be seen to be doing something, and various ad hoc schemes such as this one are doing "something".

John