As I’m sure you heard, the Western Australian Government reversed its decision to make retrospective changes to their FIT yesterday.
This is a fantastic result for Western Australian solar owners and perhaps, even more importantly the confidence of investors looking to fund larger projects in that state. I checked in with one today to seek their view. Heres what one said: “What the #@$^&* was the Government doing making legislative changes that affect consumer confidence anyway? What are they going to do next, we wonder? Investors don’t want legislative risk, point-blank. So from that perspective, the backflip is great and although it has damaged our confidence a little, common sense prevailed.”
Nonetheless, I’m going to start today by saying “Thank you” to Premier Barnett. “We appreciate that reversing a decision would have been difficult and commend your willingness to make a change when it was required. Good on you mate.”
Although the Western Australian Government and particularly their Minister for Energy could be accused of being pretty right biased, nothing beats the infamous US-based Tea Party for extreme right-wing views. But low and behold, Grist reports today that the Tea Party have named a new sub branch the Green Tea Party; due to their increasingly outward and vocal support for solar!
In a fascinating change point, the Atlanta Tea Party in particular, has come out in favour of solar, citing its “energy democratising benefits” and suggesting that more consumer choice is just what the doctor ordered. Surprisingly, I couldn’t agree more with their comments on this issue, which scares the hell out of me.
Debbie Dooley from the Atlanta Tea Party said “If an individual wants to harvest the sunlight that’s falling on their property and sell it for a profit, that’s their (American) right. There are now programs in other states that allow people to lease solar panels for their roofs with no up-front cost, enabling them to become local energy entrepreneurs who can sell their solar energy back into the grid and power their homes for less. Georgians are currently and unjustly denied this opportunity, and will continue to be unless a law is passed to change the system. That is why the Atlanta Tea Party supported Senate Bill 401 in the past legislative session. Georgia Power (ed, a local DNSP) opposed it and it never made it out of committee. We will try again when the Georgia legislature reconvenes in January 2014. All states should allow their citizens the opportunity to generate and sell their own solar power”.
She also went onto say that: “In Georgia, we are showing the country that groups from the left, right, and any other direction can put differences aside and come together in pursuit of a common goal. Many people are surprised to hear that the Tea Party is working with environmental groups, but we both believe in diversification of our energy portfolio, protecting our children, and creating a smart, vibrant, 21st-century American economy where every company competes on a level playing field”
Could it be that solar power (via Deb’s Tea Party), is now capable of closing the gap on divergent views and reconciling differences between politically opposed groups? We’ll it sure seems so. We’ll have to watch this one closely, and motivation is key issue but ultimately, if we can now also claim solar brings politically opposed people closer together, we’ll that’s just cool.
Who’da’thunkit.
Clearly however, there is still work to do back home.
I was appalled to read a classic example of uninformed rubbish from one of Australia’s solar capital’s today, good old Dubbo. Now I like Dubbo; great Zoo, on the edge of the great plains and a classic Australian bush town. But I was disappointed to see one Steve Pearson trotting out the same old trip with an article titled “People Power driving costs up as we follow the sun”. In this classic bit of biased and incorrect writing, Pearson bangs on about how he sees solar everywhere, thought about it and didn’t do it after speaking to a mate who was “pretty high up in the electricity industry”.
He says: “But with the drop in production costs and the fact that so many people are going solar, a problem has reared its ugly head. For every household adorned with solar panels on its roof, that’s one less customer for the electricity company. Its market is reducing. And because fewer people are buying electricity from the company it is forced to put up the price of electricity to compensate. I believe that is why our power bills have sky rocketed. Those of us who are not part of this solar revolution are paying the penalty. Our electricity bills are going up and up, and how.”
I posted a response by 8am and it’ll be interesting to see if gets posted (there weren’t enough characters to post my full response!!) but suffice to say Steve you get my uninformed dolt of the week award. For goodness sake, even the Tea Party can see it mate!
Post expires at 10:42am on Wednesday August 13th, 2014
The post How to pick a change point? When right wing conservatives back solar appeared first on Solar Business Services.
