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The heart of the article...
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The upfront cost of a typical residential PV system was around $25,000. The question was thus, How much would a utility have to pay system owners per kilowatt hour over twenty years to compensate them for their investment?
Von Fabeck worked out that the answer was about $1.20 per kilowatt hour, around twenty times the cost of conventionally generated electricity. To pay for this, as at Burgdorf, a one percent surcharge on electricity rates would suffice. The annual increase in cost to an average family would be just $18.
“The initial thinking was that would be too heavy a burden,” Hans-Josef Fell told me. “But Wolf von Fabeck was the first who calculated this, and he opened our eyes -- it is nearly nothing for consumers.”
Von Fabeck’s feed-in tariff methodology was published in 1994. Over the next six years, thanks to efforts by grassroots groups, it was adopted across Germany in small towns and big cities like Hamburg and Munich. In 2000, the methodology would serve as the basis for Germany’s “ecological masterpiece,” the Renewable Energies Act.
So, ultimately, what are the lessons from Germany? Some of them are:
--Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. The Germans have a wealth of experience with feed-in tariffs. Yet instead of benefiting from their experience, other countries (Spain for example) ignore it and became stuck.
--Keep it simple. Feed-in tariffs are easy to understand. Buyers of solar systems in Germany merely inform their local utility that, as of a certain date, they will be supplying electricity to the grid. The paperwork is minimal, unlike the bureaucratic nightmare that confronts would-be PV purchasers in the U.S.
- Never give up. To get feed-in tariffs adopted, Wolf von Fabeck fought a recalcitrant local utility for years. Now 75, he is still campaigning for one hundred percent renewable energy. --from the OP
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Now who does this "bureaucratic nightmare" in the U.S. benefit? I was just reading about Duke Energy (monster energy giant) and its monopolistic practices in North Carolina, which aim at suppressing small solar providers. A monster like Duke can have entire office buildings devoted to bureaucracy. So the monsters prevail and the small providers are driven out, forced to be bought out, etc.
Gigantic monopolies have the resources to control government agencies--to satisfy all requirements, to bullshit the requirements, to lavishly lobby and write the laws for requirements (whole other office buildings full of lawyers), to make the requirements as complex as possible so that only gigantic firms can satisfy them. I've had experience of this phenomenon on a different environmental front, so this mention of U.S. bureaucracy in the article struck a cord. ALSO--very importantly-- complex bureaucratic bullshit is entirely put-off-ish to the public, as to oversight. Only lawyers, and experts, and professional politicians with staffs, etc. can even know what's going on. (In fact, that's how the horrible Enron scandal happened--Enron ripping off California's entire $10 billion budget surplus.)
In other words, Americans' efforts to regulate for a clean, healthy environment, have been nightmarishly turned around, into a boondoggle for gigantic corporations. Small businesses--which should be favored (because it is healthier, politically and socially, and because they are the biggest job providers in the country)--get aced out. This is happening on the solar energy provider scene in NC, and it is happening on many fronts. Then the sheer power and wealth that these giants accumulate is used against us--to bust unions and destroy labor rights, to de-regulate the environment, etc.
If we didn't have corporate-run "trade secret" vote counting, we might be able to do something about this (go back to a small and midsize business economy--in a democratic country).
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