Good intentions can make for awful policies.
by Steve Chapman
In the world of government policy, two chief dangers always loom. The first is people with bad intentions using every available means to achieve their malignant goals. The second, more common but no less destructive, is people with the purest of hearts and the most boneheaded of methods.
For an example of the latter, look west, where the California Energy Commission just decreed that starting in 2020, new homes must be equipped with solar panels. Commissioner Andrew McAllister boasted that the rule “will propel the state even further down the road to a low emissions future.”
He has the right idea. With environmental vandals in charge of the federal government, the state’s leaders are justifiably motivated to do what they can to combat climate change.
“We don’t want to do nothing and just sit there and let the climate get worse,” Gov. Jerry Brown said last year. California is at particular risk from global warming, which will inundate low-lying areas of its 840-mile coastline with rising salt water while fostering more droughts and wildfires inland.
Its utilities are already on track to get half their energy from solar and other renewable sources as soon as 2020. The state is also fighting the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to gut controls on vehicle tailpipe emissions. The energy commission says the solar panels and other requirements will cut a typical new home’s energy consumption by 53 percent—”equivalent to taking 115,000 fossil fuel cars off the road.”
But there are three major flaws in this approach. The first is that it’s a highly inefficient way to expand solar energy. University of California, Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein told the commission that he and the vast majority of energy economists “believe that residential rooftop solar is a much more expensive way to move towards renewable energy than larger solar and wind installations.”
No kidding. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory figures that on a kilowatt-hour basis, electricity from home solar panels costs 2 1/2 times more than electricity from large solar facilities operated by utilities.
The California approach brings to mind Mao Zedong’s call in the 1950s for Chinese peasants to build steel furnaces in their backyards. Many vital tasks are done best on a huge scale, and generating electricity is one of them.
Another drawback is that it will aggravate the state’s most notorious problem—astronomical housing costs. The median home price is now $524,000, in large part because of regulations that make every attempt to put up new housing only slightly less challenging than the Normandy invasion. California has fewer residential units per person than 48 other states. It’s a major reason more people are leaving the state than coming.
The new mandate will be another burden on new home construction and purchase because it is expected to add $10,000 or more to the cost.
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Another great idea by the Sacto Boneheads! Add another $10K to the costs of homes which are in severe shortage in California coupled with rent control and the new and higher taxes on housing. A perfect solution to bring more affordable houses to all! What a great solution!
California ruling class use illegal immigrants as cheap labor, and the poorer these stay, the more they be benefit. So any scheme that prevent these poor to save money, on housing for instance, is deemed good. Especially when it pumps money toward “high tech” and government, that is, ruling class pockets.
It’s just another pure play for high-cost, labor intensive rooftop solar at the expense of low bid utility scale solar. This is where bias in the media and legions of nonprofits come into play.
test
This writer lives and works in Chicago.
So why does he care about California’s home-solar mandate?
He knows the California Crazies in charge of governance there are giving the entire environmental movement a bad name. He is right. Cal’s climate change fever is so off the rails that the entire movement deserves all the scorn and derision that can be heaped on it.
He advocates for large scale solar farms rather than individual units on homes that make solar power even more expensive. Okay. He sees the problem as one of scale.
The reasoned, rational thinker though would realize it is a problem of not letting the electricity market sort it out without government picking winners and losers in the first place.
The stupidity of his argument comes in the fact that solar power is already too expensive relative to conventional means of reliable grid power production.
If it came right down to it, Mr Chapman couldn’t “reason” his way out of a paperbag. He mentions the California gas excise tax isn’t high enough and it should be even higher, while completely ignoring Cal’s carbon tax that is already on the gas. Both are already making too expensive for the poor and lower middle class. Today they make choices between feeding their family quality food or buying gas to get to work, and he wants to charge them even more for gas, while an EV is an expensive novelty item for the affluent..
Further his ridiculous bias is on full-display with his, “With environmental vandals in charge of the federal government, the state’s leaders are justifiably motivated to do what they can to combat climate change.”
He fails to see is was the US constitutional vandals were at work in Washington DC for 8 years and wrecked enormous damage on freedom, liberties, and the workings of our free market economy.
“No kidding. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory figures that on a kilowatt-hour basis, electricity from home solar panels costs 2 1/2 times more than electricity from large solar facilities operated by utilities.”
I don’t know why this argument is not used more often, because it kills rooftops neatly efficiently.
I live in Ventura, a few blocks from the beach. My typical electric bill runs around $50 per month. A new home will NEVER pay back for the solar plant installed, since we don’t really get hot enough to use AC.
But here’s a thought – the new Desert Sunlight solar farm in SE California generates ~160,000 homes worth of power. It cost ~$1.5 billion. Rather than dump the $100 billion into the high-speed-rail to nowhere (they still do not know how to get the train to Los Angeles), build 66 more of these Desert Sunlight farms and provide free power to just about everyone in California (around 13 million households in CA, 67 Desert Sunlight farms would power ~11 million households).
Til dusk.
Stupid dusk! never mind, we can just imagine grid scale storage exists and everything is happy clappy again.
An additional $10,000 on a home that costs $524,000 is so insignificant as to be inconsequential. It’s less than 2% of the purchase price. A much more significant expense is the APR for that jumbo mortgage—the total difference between a 30-year jumbo at 4.15% versus 5.5% is an additional $154.092—or more than 15x more than the cost of mandatory home solar.
Try a 40 year mortgage. These are the most common mortgages in CA due to the extremely high cost of real estate. At a cost of $10K (it is at least double that number), that increases the mortgage payment by $40 per month on a 40 year note at 4%. That yields a total cost of $20K for the solar panels over 40 years. BUT, the panels are only good for 20 years. The last 20 years will result in zero value for the homeowner, but the $40 per month continues.
A real cost to install will be $20K or $80 per month. That puts the cost of 20 years of solar energy at $40K, but paid over 40 years with only 20 years benefit. I highly doubt that the solar panels will produce anywhere near $40K in electricity over their useful life.
Methinks someone in the California State Assembly owns stock in a solar cell company and wants to increase demand.
Whether someone owns stock in a solar cell company or not, they ALL for sure have some use of the money donated by solar industry to campaign to be elected
Your description of the University of East Anglia’ s department of climatic research as “thwarted schemes” is far too kind a term for the rubbish they have churned out over the years. It will be an interesting thing to see whether posterity will place UEA lower than the BBC in their race to plumb the deepest sewer of misbehaviour and deceit. Truth will out even if it won’t be for some time: the reputation of the people involve in the climate fraud at UEA is going to make alligator urine smell sweet by comparison.
No doubt it will be well after the pension benefit stream is in motion.
It must be repeated often: irrespective of the other damage to utility equipment and infrastructure that an EMP attack might cause, PV solar cells will be instantly destroyed by the “E” of the pulise. This is due to the inherent physics of the way PV solar cells operate.
..In the world of government policy, two chief dangers always loom. The first is people with bad intentions using every available means to achieve their malignant goals. The second, more common but no less destructive, is people with the purest of hearts and the most boneheaded of methods…..
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C S Lewis – God in the Dock
In the VOX article on the good and bad of the CA solar mandates, under the Good section is the following: “As the Washington Examiner writes, “the change had broad support from home builders, state political leaders, and solar advocates” Also, the CEC was able to make the change without legislative approval. And the costs are concentrated on builders and homeowners rather than the broad public” This sounds like ‘the people’ had no say in the matter and since when are the costs paid by builders (their costs are soon covered by the homeowners). A certain number of people will surely be forced out of the market by this additional cost. Also, the value of exempt homes will go up nicely.
”equivalent to taking 115,000 fossil fuel cars off the road.”
Gee, Governor Brown never cared how many vehicles he added to the road by giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens in California. How many solar roofs would be required to offset that?
Boneheaded and brain damaged beyond belief .
There are far more rooftop solar lobbyists than there are efficient low-bid utility scale PV lobbyists.
Just need a little advice, my mountain house is situated on the north slope of a steep mountain up in the Sierras. I get very little winter sunshine on the roof and the pitch of the roof is very steep due to winter snow load concerns. Now, if I sell this house I will have o install solar. So, where do I put it? Oh, also thought I should mention that there are some huge Doug Fir trees surrounding the house which block out the light.
Does it matter? its all about appearances after all.
You could install them on a frame structure with the best sun aspect you have.
So this rule is not just for new stock? solar has to be installed when properties are sold? wow
I live near San Diego. Our County Board of Supervisors is alarmed this week about the increase in the number of homeless camping on the streets throughout the county. The State government’s new law requiring solar power for every new house or new apartment simply drives up the cost of all new housing, including low-income apartments for the poor. The State’s solar policy works directly opposite to efforts to increase the supply of housing in California, which could moderate the existing very high cost for all housing in the area. An oversupply of new apartments could lead to declines in market rental rates in tight housing markets around the state.
Since Scot – decided not to respond – the following comments should help him grasp the errors in the vox and the CBO’s analysis along with the deception by Vox and other advocates
Item #1 – repealing the IDC deduction – repealing the IDC deduction does not increase the overall all tax paid, it only changes the timing. Vox’s presentation only presents 2 years. Every analysis covering 10+ years shows this differential to be zero or near zero.
Item #2 – Lifo – several errors in the analysis – A) lifo only works if the price of inventory is on a long term upward increase. Oil and gas prices fluctuate wildly, so it is less widely used in the oil and gas industry. The price of oil and gas dropped precipitacly in 2014. as a result, using lifo had negative income tax consequences. See Chevron’s report for 2017.
Item #3 – MLPs – this one is humorous – virtually every MLP lost money in the 2015-2016 time frame, yet somehow the CBO computed an 1.5billion tax benefit from the MLP structure.
Item #4 – percentage depletion – Vox is partly correct on this item, However, The CBO in computing the tax savings showed an increase in tax savings from 2013/2014 (when comparing the prior year estimates) even though % depletion is computed on gross revenue and the price of oil dropped from $90bbl down to the $40bbl range.
I am a climate skeptic and energy realist. But I actually don’t have a problem with requiring solar in new homes, so long as it is required only for more expensive homes. Adding $10,000 to a new $1,000,000 home is probably not going to kill the deal. Installing solar panels or anything else in a new home is cheaper than retrofitting it. In principle there is not much difference between this and requiring fiberglass insulation and double-paned windows in new home construction. One could even add a requirement for geothermal heat pumps (which would probably do more good since A/C is the big electricity user). However requiring Habitat for Humanity to install solar panels is thoughtless. Having said all that, solar will not come into its own until a home can go entirely off-grid and store daytime electricity in batteries for use at night. If and when that happens, I’ll buy. In the meantime Government’s efforts would be better directed toward fundamental research into efficient and cost-effective energy storage rather than telling citizens what to do. In order to solve a problem, first you must identify it correctly.