Yup, and make dirty power more expensive with a carbon tax.

This makes sense if people living in the house are the owners, but it's completely opposite for rentals. The owner may be keen to invest in lower future bills. But if they're just renting, why would they care? The bills don't come to them and they still get the same in rent.

It could work for rentals if there was enough empty places that people could be picky about the energy efficiency of the houses they rent, but that's likely not the current situation.

make it easier for renters to know how much they will pay in utilities.

That's basically what we do now, but the trouble is cheap power sources with undesirable externalities win the energy market because consumers want more energy for less money.

Another trouble is the builder doesn't have to pay for the energy usage of the property, and there's no well-established way for the buyer to estimate consumption like there is with mpg.

Is there nothing similar to an EPC[1] in America?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/buy-sell-your-home/energy-performance-cer...

Not really, but a letter grade is lacking a critical feature of mpg- anybody with a third-grade education can quickly estimate the exact gasoline costs of operating a prospective vehicle purchase. How do you translate a "B-" to dollars?

Maybe not on the home as a whole but every consumer major appliance comes with a standardized energy comparison chart.

Who wants less energy for more money?

> Who wants less energy for more money?

There are a lot of nutjobs running around saying they want Coal back, the President of the United States, for example, despite Coal being more expensive than Solar now.

So, to answer your question in earnest, Fossil Fuel Energy Companies and their bought-and-paid elected officials.

Those aren't people thst want less energy for more money, those are people that want to sell less energy for more money.

The people that want less energy for more (immediate) money are the people that want external costs priced into retail energy prices, but that's just because they don't want environmental damage to be treated as a non-cost.

Perhaps people who like good air quality

Probably everyone born in the next 100 years who will be subject to the externalities we currently allow.

Earth

OK, so then tax the power sources that have bad externalities, in proportion to how much they are a tally costing the world.

That's not really how it is now as some localities are massively subsidized by others.

Yeah a tax on electricity would make the most sense.

A tax on carbon fuel would make more sense still. Polluters should pay for their pollution rather than foisting their externalities on others.

Except, how do you get to choose what type of power you buy? What if I live back east and would happily pay for wind or solar but my only option is coal or natural gas?

In many states back east (at leas Massachusetts and New Hampshire), you can choose who is your energy supplier, as the distributor and provider are separate items on the bill. There are several "green energy" suppliers vying for your business.

This is great but has the unfortunate side-effect of some energy suppliers telemarketing to try to get you to switch to their "lower rates", which inevitably increase again after a few months.

So check the system in your state, you may be pleasantly surprised.

The same way you've chosen to live in a (cheaper) house without all the earthquake resistance requirements.

Part of the decision-making basket you evaluate in deciding to live somewhere includes the cost of energy with the cost of its externalities.

As toss1 mentioned, some states let you choose your supplier.

Another way to do it is to tax it when the utility buys it. This moves the math around for where they source power from.

Solar is not pollution free.

And with emission tax this would be correctly reflected in price of solar as well.

Exactly. The energy required to manufacture, transport, install and maintain it would all be taxed.

Compared to other options (coal/natgas) it effectively is.

Yeah because who cares about those poor people who need electric to live, right?

Most people don't realize that if you tax the externalities, that is basically a regressive tax on the poor.

That's why basically every carbon tax scheme ever proposed involves remitting the revenue back to people on a per capita basis.

Remitting on a per capita basis doesn't change the regressive nature. You can only fix the regressive nature if you return it based on income. And even then, the poorest people don't have the float necessary to pay for the bill now and get a tax refund later.

There seems to be some confusion.

Wealthy people typically have a larger carbon footprint than those who aren't well off. Think flights, buying a car more frequently, etc.

If everyone has the same carbon footprint, the tax is strictly neutral. If people have different footprints, money flows from polluters to non-polluters.

The tax not being regressive was already addressed, so I'll note that there's no need for float. The remit can be built into the energy bill.