Wayne Swan's Anti-Solar Budget
I was completely bewildered by the Government’s decision last week to means test the solar rebate scheme. We recently built a house and invested a significant amount of time, effort and money in designing it to be suitable for our environment and as sustainable as sensible (on our budget). As we are already 100% water self sufficient, the next step for us was to install solar panels to offset our energy use. I would not consider myself an unintelligent man, yet none of the arguments presented by Wayne Swan or Peter Garrett in the press make any sense to me at all.
Mr Garrett was quoted in The Age as saying "You do see over a long period of time some significant cost advantages". The fact of it is, even with the rebate, the return on investment nears or, in my calculations, was significantly beyond the warranty period (and I assume expected usable life) of the equipment. I would suspect very few people interested and in a position to participate in this program are in it for the economic advantages, because realistically, they simply aren’t there. So the argument of making a program that has no real economic advantage more accessible to a lower socio-economic group seems at best odd if the Government genuinely wants this program to succeed and make a difference.
With the Queensland Government’s, Solar Homes Program, they seemed to have a great model whereby they proposed to underwrite the bulk purchase and installation of 1000, 1kW systems at a time. The expected (pre rebate) cost of these systems was around $9500, opposed to the market value of $13000 to $15000. (I am sure there is a question to be answered there too about the solar industry...) I believe that in a matter of days they received 3000 applications for the initially available 1000 places. It would be very interesting to see where the demographic balance of these applications now sits with respect to the rebate means test.
Perhaps it’s time to dust off the Cool the Globe petition?!?!
Mr Garrett was quoted in The Age as saying "You do see over a long period of time some significant cost advantages". The fact of it is, even with the rebate, the return on investment nears or, in my calculations, was significantly beyond the warranty period (and I assume expected usable life) of the equipment. I would suspect very few people interested and in a position to participate in this program are in it for the economic advantages, because realistically, they simply aren’t there. So the argument of making a program that has no real economic advantage more accessible to a lower socio-economic group seems at best odd if the Government genuinely wants this program to succeed and make a difference.
With the Queensland Government’s, Solar Homes Program, they seemed to have a great model whereby they proposed to underwrite the bulk purchase and installation of 1000, 1kW systems at a time. The expected (pre rebate) cost of these systems was around $9500, opposed to the market value of $13000 to $15000. (I am sure there is a question to be answered there too about the solar industry...) I believe that in a matter of days they received 3000 applications for the initially available 1000 places. It would be very interesting to see where the demographic balance of these applications now sits with respect to the rebate means test.
Perhaps it’s time to dust off the Cool the Globe petition?!?!
posted by Simon at
9:59 AM
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