Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.

Let rich people get the buggy version 1.0 stuff and help the technology mature for everyone! I'll wait a few years and get the debugged version 2.0 or 3.0 for 1/10th the price.

Look at 4K TV sets, for example.

Or cellular phones, computers, refrigeration, microwaves, electricity, AC and a thousand other things that only rich people used to be able to afford.

Just about any luxury of the rich that can be produced more efficiently over time makes its way to the average consumer.

Out of the loop here, what were the big issues with early 4K TVs?

4K resolution, but only support for HDMI input at 30hz, or having to use some incredibly fiddly solutions where two cables had to be used at once. Internal image processing was too slow, so you would see 100ms delay which made them too slow for playing games. And then the quality of 4K panels was frequently far below good 1080p, but for more money.

No no. That's not how it works. Rich people have money, so they are perfect early adopters since they subsidize new technology until the technology gains economies of scale. But that's the key thing, they are using their own money to do that. It's not the same when you have the government subsidize their purchase.

People who pay more than $8500 in taxes can benefit from the tax break. I'm not sure I'd consider that rich.

That represents an income of at least $70,000/year, assuming only the standard deduction and single. If you are married, it's closer to $100,000 income. That puts you at the 62th and 77th percentile, at a minimum to get the full tax deduction.

>I'm not sure I'd consider that rich.

People who are installing $40,000+ roofs on 2000+ sqft homes are not rich by your standards? Or do you truly believe these panels will "print money"?

every home has a roof, and none of them are cheap to replace. it's a small factor difference in amount you're financing.

>it's a small factor difference in amount you're financing.

This is a magnificently out of touch comment.

You think the difference between an asphalt shingle roof vs a 100-year slate tile roof is a "small factor"?

Even if your taxes aren't that high you can roll the remainder of the credit forward to next year.

that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies

Because that disconnects the company from actual demand.

Production of early versions is always more expensive because of the research & development, creation/configuration of the machines, etc, etc but the marginal cost goes down drastically. The numbers work out even better as you can amortize those early costs over a larger and larger production run. This means v2 and later editions are cheaper.

It's text book "economies of scale"

I would also say that Rich people pave the way for adaption.

For example, look at prices of flights. Before there was no "first class" everything was first class, now there are cabin options.

While that example is a service, more proliferation of service == wider adaption == increased scale of economies == eventually prices come down for everyone.

There is nothing left wing about this...

> This is exactly what is meant by trickle down economics.

This is not true. Trickle down economics is the theory that money given to rich people will enrich poor people because the rich people will use the money to buy goods and services the production of which will require the labor of poor people. That is, this extra money at the disposal of rich people will create an economic domino effect such that money will ultimately end up at the disposal of poor people. In a trivial sense this is true. The theory is only interesting if this is an efficient way to increase economic activity generally without deleterious side effects.

But it never was the theory that giving money to rich people would spur research and development such that services ultimately were cheaper.

As to whether it's a scam, that is another matter. The allegation then is that the boosters of trickle down economics do not believe their own claims as to the efficiency of this process. That is, they believe, because it is tautologically true, that this will enrich those who are already rich, and they desire this, and the story about the efficiency of this process is a tall tale to salve consciences or win over rubes.

Except that time and time again, it has been shown that it absolutely does not work.

"[I]f the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. [1]"

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/I...

Except you don’t need that much GDP growth if the price of everything is going down, so that argument is flawed.

This does nothing to bolster your claim. Your arguement is moronic.

Lol, the right went so extreme that the left is what would have been the right in Adam Smith's times?

That would be true if solar roofs were some novel technology that the rich would adopt first, and then the rest. This is a remix of existing technology, much like the iphone. The rich don't have roofs, they have domes or yachts. The poor don't own roofs. This is directed at the middle class squarely and only. To the extent that richer people adopt this, it's mostly for signaling reasons and not because it affords them some luxury they didn't have (like flights did).

Your analogy is more appropriate for space tourism.

> it's mostly for signaling reasons

This presumes rich people never have good motives and any appearance of morality or civic-mindedness they might show is a self-aggrandizing sham. This seems unlikely.

Why not just do unit tests instead of integration tests? Because you want to create a system that provides feedback on the entire end to end process. You subsidize purchases because The thing you want to incentivize is not making solar panels, but bringing solar panels all the way to market. You are trying to get the market off the ground, not just the technology.

That wouldn’t account for demand.

They have to make the sale this way

>Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.

Ah yes, trickle down never fails.

The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on. Because of concentration of wealth and return on capital exacerbating that concentration. Because of rent seeking pyramid schemes. Which I imagine artificially restricts demand for improvements like solar panel roofs: who has more inventive to invest in things like solar panel roofs? Owner occupants who are in it for the long term, or rent seeking landlords just trying to make their mortgage payments on time and turn a buck?

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on

Is this based off an SV mindset? There are plenty of homeowners that aren't rich around the country.

Plus less pollution in the air helps the masses too, with fewer health issues and less extreme weather on a long term basis.

Of course it is, and unfortunately you see it a lot on HN - apparently no one in any country can afford houses anymore. It's like this Futurama joke - "no one drives in Manhattan anymore - there's too much traffic". On this side of the pond it's the London residents saying that no one except for the ultra rich can own houses, forgetting that in other parts of the country you can buy a (new!) house for as little as £100-120k.

Yeah it's true inside London. I was there a few years ago looking at house prices. 500k pounds gets you a two bedroom studio flat in the London and a 4 or 5 bedroom fully furnished family home 1hr outside of London. That same 4 bedroom house inside London was between 3 and 5 million pounds.

But for the working class/lower middle saving up 10k pounds for a deposit is real work.

As little as? For many people living in those parts of the country that isn't as magically affordable as you might think!

No? Because I live in one of those shitty parts of the country and since minimum wage laws still apply here turns out that saving £5k for a mortgage deposit isn't as impossible as saving £50k down in London is.

I live in the Midwest.

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on.

64% of Americans own the home they live in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United...

I’m not sure that is a useful number. Don’t most of that 64% own only a fraction of their home? How many homeowners are not paying off a mortgage?

This is vastly moving the goalposts of the discussion. The point is 64% of Americans are dealing with issues like deciding when to replace their roof, and what material to replace it with.

Yes, for purposes of the discussion about installing roofs, you are correct. I am just bemused by this statistic. The vast majority of “homeowners” are paying a lot of interest to lenders.

Is it though? When the money that could be going to solar roofs is mostly just going to the rent seekers?

Outside some strips of land on the coasts much of the masses do own homes. Some people get them at 30, some people get them at 50 but for the most part everyone who isn't just bouncing around minimum wage jobs will be a homeowner. That's not to say that the home isn't just a trailer on land and that the location and/or upkeep of the home won't make most upper middle class HN-ers recoil in horror but the fact of the matter is that a heck of a lot of people are homeowners and most of them aren't rich by any stretch.

Home ownership in the US is north of 64% currently.

Even if everything you say is true, it still doesn't negate the fact that it's a new technology which is expensive and needs investment in order to bring down the cost.

When computers were new, only rich organizations like governments, banks, and large corporations could afford them. Now you can buy a raspberry pi for close to nothing.

Photovoltaics (PV) is not a new technology. It’s been in production-state since the 50’s and powering percentages of some countries for at least the past ~5 years.

Adopt the existing, proven and cost-effective implementation of PV (~3’ x ~5’ aluminum framed panels).

Waiting on Elon to figure out boutique solar so the affluent can all install it first and drive mass adoption (decade?) stalls PV development as much as the US tariff on Chinese-made solar!

>To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing.

Denser housing isn't built because our local land use policymaking paradigms give the power to block it to the people who don't want it, not because of a lack of federal subsidies.

If anything, the infrastructure built with that money would be road infrastructure to support further sprawl.

Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general public as the price goes down and production increases?

The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme.

It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting.

In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale.

Were there a carbon tax, there'd be the same encouragement of environmental solutions while leaving the market some flexibility in achieving that goal.

With that said - I'll take the politically feasible solution rather than nothing.

>Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale.

Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations.

Some examples from around here:

https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun...

http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-...

https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po...

https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c...

https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...

Summary of 5 links: 2 projects cancelled due to NIMBY, 1 project being appealed due to NIMBY, 1 project cancelled due to ecological concerns (unclear if just NIMBY), 1 irrelevant link.

fredericksburg.com - application cancelled - "He, like other neighbors of the project and another larger one south of Stevensburg, have consistently expressed concerns about impact to their property values ... Orye said he didn’t think solar fit anywhere in Culpeper County, emphasizing its rich historic resources related to the Civil War and early American history."

lakegastongazette-observer.com "Opponents of the project ... turned out in droves at last week’s community meeting", "Many residents expressed concerns about the project’s effects on the ecology and their view", "the commission’s reasons for the denial were fivefold. They said the proposed facility develops more than 500 acres, is removing more than 1,100 acres of agricultural property from production, is proposed to be located in a populated residential area, is located on real estate that is located on the Virginia Scenic Byway and that setbacks and buffers on the proposed project do not adequately address the need to visually block the project from the view of its neighbors"

richmond.com - "a solar project that had significant community opposition", "plans to build a solar energy farm on 1090 acres of a 2998 acre property", "400 acres of the project would [become] a conservation easement" , "The planning commission determined that the proposed use is not in accord with recommendations made in the 2010 Long-Range Comprehensive Plan, in particular since part of the project would fall into the area designated Priority Conservation Area and Protected Land.", "Among the citizen comments that were made, most were in stringent opposition because of the negative ecological impact the project would have on protected wetlands in the area, the only remaining wildlife corridor connecting the James and Appomattox rivers, and on rare and endangered species."

starexponent.com - "Culpeper County will consider placing a cap on 'utility scale solar sprawl' equal to the amount of the renewable energy its residents could actually consume.", "In October, the board approved the county’s first-ever solar farm on 1,000 acres near Stevensburg to the dismay of neighbors, who have since filed a civil suit in the matter asking the circuit court to reverse the approval."

www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.

>www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.

They oppose utility-scale solar anywhere except existing industrial land, in favor of the "low hanging fruit" of rooftop solar.

>PEC is an advocate for solar energy, especially distributed solar power generation - small scale solar (usually rooftop) primarily designed to meet the immediate demands of the property in which it is located. In comparison, the size and nature of USS Facilities create challenges for any locality to protect important resources and the public health, safety, and welfare of the community. Virginia has thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots, and landfills devoid of solar panels in areas of moderate to high energy demand, in addition to contaminated and/or underutilized industrial sites. It is PEC’s belief that we should be looking to these developed areas as the low hanging fruit of future solar sites.

>Utility-Scale Solar (USS) Facilities are industrial facilities and should not be allowed by-right on agriculturally zoned lands. Given their size and nature, they should be:

>● Subject to a Conditional or Special Use Permit in agriculturally zoned areas with maximum acreage allowed per project and possibly per the entire County; and/or

>● Limited to existing industrial zoned areas.

> ○ Agricultural land should not be spot zoned to create additional industrial zoned areas for USS Facilities.

That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes.

I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?

Go as much to the source of production as possible : forbidding unconventional fossil fuel extraction, heavily taxing fossil fuel imports long range plane landings, methane-producing livestock, &c.

Just like with other taxes: brackets, rebates, credits paired with subsidies and investment.

>That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes.

The subsidies are terrible. They are way too narrow and don’t address the root cause of the issue. Climate change is not happening because we don’t have enough renewables, climate change is happening because our GHG emissions are too high.

Tax the emissions and all activities which generate emissions become less appealing, while all opportunities to reduce the emissions become more lucrative. The example of riding a bike instead of buying an EV fits into this as well. With a carbon tax, using a bike would be equally accounted for.

By using subsidies, the government gets to pick the winner and doesn’t let people think. Renewables especially as they are now are a terrible way to tackle the problem. If we used taxes instead of subsidies, I’m afraid that not many renewable power plants would be built, because other alternatives are way more effective at curbing emissions.

Solutions like rooftop solar – and by extension, these Tesla tiles - wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense if people were billed for their electricity appropriately based on costs. The cost of electricity distribution is primarily a fixed cost in the infrastructure and its upkeep. The variable cost of generating the electricity is small in comparison. People, however, are generally billed more in variable cost based on use of electricity rather than with a larger, fixed fee. It’s set up in this way because it makes sense; the poor can afford connecting themselves to the grid and keep the necessities powered, while reckless use of energy i.e. having AC on 24/7 is disincentivized by the cost.

But once people start pushing rooftop solar on their grid and selling the energy back to the grid at the retail price, not the wholesale price, they are being massively subsidized in their electricity generation, as part of the fixed cost of operating the grid was baked into the variable cost of electricity prices. The pushback from utilities comes from exactly this perspective; if more and more people start net-metering their own bills lower with the rooftop solar, then it means that fewer and fewer people will be responsible for appropriately funding the grid.

In an extreme scenario where everyone net-metered their bills down to zero, it would mean that nobody would be paying for the grid. Obviously, such a situation is unsustainable. And even though there’d be plenty of solar to go by in such a situation, the grid would still be a necessity, as is all the generation which functions as a back-up. And somehow, it would all still need to be paid for.

But there’s more to it, too. Net-metering creates a reverse-incentive. Electricity prices in the wholesale market can even go negative if there is overgeneration, because overgeneration is harmful, and it needs to be dealt with. If net-metering practices are in place, and people start doing more and more rooftop solar to the point of more and more frequent overgeneration, the costs of operating the grid go up. Consequently, so would price of electricity. With a net-metering scheme still in place, everyone else is further incentivized to build solar panels on their roof and do the same to avoid paying the high prices.

If the compensation for the electricity fed back into the grid was based on wholesale price instead, then, once average price (and value) of solar-generated electricity goes down, so do the incentives to build more solar panels.

Adding insult to injury, the back-up issue is generally solved by using gas-fired power generation, as batteries cannot address the issue at this scale. Batteries are useful for bridging the gaps in between switching power generation sources, but the kind of quantity of capacity you’d need for a battery-only backup solution is not feasible.

For back-up, gas is the primary back-up solution in California as well as in Australia, and the Russians are building a pipe to supply Germany. Ironically this makes solar generation - when the whole power generation solution is inspected at the grid-level - not all that green. And while this aspect of solar is ignored by subsidies, a carbon tax would still take it into account.

The point being, subsidies can not only be ineffective, they can also be counterproductive in addition to ignoring all the alternatives.

> I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?

You can measure emissions at sources and impose heavy fines on anyone who tries to circumvent them. The common problem in globalization, though, is defining and applying these standards universally and fairly. If you can’t trust the Germans to not fumble their numbers, what you’d think would happen in some other countries? Still, with a coordinated effort and systems to ensure transparency, it would be possible.

Another method would be to subsidize more effective alternatives or for the government to build the more effective solutions by themselves. While this wouldn’t have the direction-changing impact of the carbon tax, it would be more straightforward to implement without the requirement of tracking pollution. Targets of subsidies could be selected by their impact on emissions per $ invested. Of course, the numbers could be fumbled here as well, but at least the calculations could be made public and be subject to scrutiny.

I pretty much agree on all points. This is a tragedy of the commons on a global scale. I’m not sure what the answer is.

Subsidies are woefully inaccurate, but can be applied locally on most political climates. Carbon emission taxes would be better, but global competition makes that difficult.

Man, if they gave me $7500 to ride a bike, I'd ride the fuck out of that bike. I'd buy like 5 and attach them to each other and take my friends with me everywhere.

Solar is a solved problem. Anything that wants to displace regular panels has to do so by improving on them.

This effectively multiplies the amount of money invested in climate-friendly technology and infrastructure by a factor of 5 with 80% coming from rich people, while generating jobs and more taxes. I find the classist outrage detrimental and disappointing.

Denser human scale development is the real answer. Electric cars and rooftop solar is not going to solve the massive suburban sprawl crisis. You can thank the federal interstate system for that (effectively subsidizing land).

I agree we should put the breaks on urban sprawl, but the US is already spread out. I mean what’s more feasible: Have all current suburbanites sell their house, move downtown, and have their old property leveled OR get them driving an EV?

The first one, at least for the next decades. (We don't have enough resources for the second option - due to the required number of batteries. )

We don't have enough housing or mass transit for the first option, and building more batteries has proven significantly easier than building either more housing or more transit.

This is where we'll have to disagree - the limitations to building housing and mass transit are mostly economical, while for batteries they are mostly physical.

Would definitely disagree on that. The limitations of building housing and mass transit are mostly political, while for batteries they're both economical and physical. I'd take physical problems over political ones any day.

We know we can't quickly replace all gas combustion engines on the road today with batteries because of material supply constraints alone. However if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions by vehicles by 90%, we can probably get there by replacing 95% of all gas-only vehicles with plug-in hybrids, which require a small fraction of the amount of battery material than fully electric cars require. I'm probably off with my estimates, but I believe they're in the ballpark.

Hmm, that's interesting - I thought that hybrids were less efficient, but maybe if they also require much less batteries they could be a great stepping stone ?

You don’t really have to be “rich” to afford this roof. It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years and you can use a loan to finance it. It’s also very sensible for new home construction which is also traditionally financed via a mortgage.

>It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years

You can't say that!!!

That may be sort of true for traditional solar panels. There is scant data on whether a solar roof will ever be cost-effective. They are an unproven technology at this point.

There are several differences between solar panels and solar roofs:

1) Solar roof is more expensive and less efficient. You're trading efficiency for something that looks nice. Is that something a government should subsidize? Rich people getting subsidies for aesthetic reasons?

2) Solar roof panels are not as durable as solar panels, are not as scalable, and the market for them is tiny - limited to people who want to get solar panels and a new roof. V1 and V2 versions of Tesla roof was a disaster.

3) Installation is much much harder and requires specialized professionals. Installing solar panels is already fraught with challenges (safety and otherwise), and all those need to do is collect sunshine. A solar roof also needs to take into account protection from the elements and therefore needs increased durability.

Good writeup: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/5-reasons-to-no...

Total subsidies for this stuff are in the low $billions. Really it's not that much money overall (the EV market is still small, and the other stuff is all still noise), and wouldn't go far if spent for infrastructure.

FWIW: newly built dense housing is actually cheaper than the more typical sprawl. In fact it's much cheaper if you factor in (heh) infrastructure savings due to the reduced road and utility lengths.

Building denser housing is problematic not due to lack of money.

Local non-monetary regulations mandate low-rises or single-family houses, huge parking lots, etc. If money could solve that, it may be by spending it on political campaigning, public education, or may be even bribing, to get the regulations out of the way.

Not just rich people. Anyone who pays taxes. Its just a tax write off. That's it.

There's lots of other tax write offs.

In California you can get solar installed for free if you are low income.

Americans on average do not want denser housing. It's not part of their culture, they don't see the point, they want a backyard, and they don't mind having to drive all the time.

I'm pretty sure that even the people benefitting for the wealth cities produce would prefer not to live there, and I think the development of rich people's houses along the CT coast attest to that, they try to balance the wealth of the city and low density housing.

I think you are right that a lot of Americans do not want dense housing. One thing we are missing, especially on the west coast, is good public transportation. Its not that I don't mind driving as much as that I don't have a choice. I'd love to take a train/subway to work or to the next town over or to the big city nearby - but those trains do not exist.

I just moved back to France after living 2 years in Phoenix. You can't rely on public transportation, I don't want to wait for a freaking bus to go get milk. I want density enough that there will be a shop I can walk to. public transportation, is good for important planed travel like going to work, but not for small stuff like going to the pharmacy or the gym or going from shop to shop to find the couch of your dreams.

Where I live I can walk or bike to shops easy enough but getting across town is something else entirely.

Without dense housing, trains are just unfeasible. It'd take an absolutely massive network to spiderweb out into the vast suburbs of most cities and the costs would be beyond belief.

Are there buses?

I used to live in Palo Alto. There’s VTA (bus) and Caltrain. Stops are few and far between so getting to and from the stops are in and of itself a problem. Buses tend to arrive every 15 minutes (or longer) I believe? Pretty infrequent. And outside peak hours there’s usually like one Caltrain an hour, so missing one really sucks.

I had a colleague who had to travel frequently between Stanford and Berkeley (slightly unusual); it’s a sub-hour drive, but easily takes ~3 hours or more via public transit.

P.S. At least the Valley is fairly bike-friendly by U.S. standard.

Yup - and everything is 2 stories or less. Nothing gets built, not because of demand, but because zoning laws. There’s no reason other than the city of Palo Alto won’t allow tall buildings to be built - the less that is built the more wealth homeowners and real estate investors get.

> the less that is built the more wealth homeowners and real estate investors get.

that's not the motivation of many people who don't want tall buildings. Many of them don't want them because they don't like living near them.

In town, yes. Between towns, maybe/sort of/infrequently.

I can drive to work in 15 minutes. The bus takes over an hour including 30 minutes of walking. There are no bike lanes between home and work, its possible to bike it but really not safe - I'd guess the bike would take about 40 minutes.

I'd imagine if a larger percentage of people took the bus, there could be much more frequent buses and dramatically less traffic on the roads making for faster busses.

The same thing happens in Europe, most of the eco-related additional costs are actually regressive taxes that will mostly fall on the less better off. There are not that many media outlets openly discussing this, and the few people who actually do talk about it are painted as “wanting to destroy the planet” or worse.

UK solar subsidies were particularly daft in this regard - because we're further north and have terrible weather, capacity factor is pretty awful compared to somewhere like California, plus solar is guaranteed to contribute a big fat zero to peak power demand (which is after sunset in winter). It basically just acted as a hand-out to wealthy home owners paid in part out of the power bills of the less well off. Somehow this didn't stop our nominally left-wing party attacking the government for ending it, though...

...and yet it is particularly common in the UK for the home solar to be installed by a commercial provider (who don't get that subsidy, just feed-in tariffs), that provide the panels in exchange for the feed-in tariff from your roof. You get mostly free electric and sometimes some portion of feed-in tariff, they own the panels.

If it was that pointless, this sort of deal could never add up, for either party.

Feed-in tariffs are a subsidy - they pay out more than the actual market value of the electricity, and that money comes from the bills paid by other consumers. This is especially true of the ones on older UK solar installations, which are higher than the retail cost of the electricity. There might be some justification for arguing that the ones in other places with much greater reliance on air conditioning and a summertime peak in usage aren't, because they could act as a form of peak shaving, but that doesn't apply to the UK.

This didn't happen because the numbers added up. The government mandated it for political reasons and all parties had to go along.

The sad thing is, the feed-in tariff subsidy would be less than UK's existing fossil fuel subsidies for homeowners. Yet solar is worth doing today in the UK, even with no subsidy if you project to stay in the house long enough to pay back capital cost.

With current solar pricing, it would be better for everyone if they simply moved a requirement for solar into the building regs. Like they've steadily done with insulation levels- though these are not yet adequate.

A large chunk of the UK's existing "fossil fuel subsidies" for homeowners consist of the government charging a lower 5% VAT rate on domestic electricity and heating, much of which of course comes from fossil fuels. Take that away and spend the money on feed-in-tariffs, and you're again transferrirng money from the less well off to the wealthy.

And all we get out of it is less carbon in the atmosphere!

Installing solar panels can pay off in the long run, but the big draw is to reduce your carbon footprint. Even if you are a rich asshole it's not a bad thing for you to be less polluting.

Those same incentives put a new Model 3 at $31,000 [0]. The entry level Toyota Camry is $24,000. You'll save $700-$1,200/year on 'energy' with the Tesla, save on oil changes and brakes and the Model 3 costs less to own than the Camry in maybe 7 years. Reduce pollution, avoid gas stations, have a lot more fun driving the safer Model 3. Electric cars are not just for the rich any more.

[0] https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#battery

Depends a lot of locale. Where I live, in local dollars, an entry level Camry is is $24,295 (or $28,250 for a hybrid) while a Model 3 is $50,990 after incentives.

Also not sure about a Model 3 being safer than a Camry, they weigh a similar amount and are both IIHS TSP+. (And a hybrid Camry weighs close to 1000 lb more than a Model 3.)

Hybrid Camry is 3572 pounds maximum [1]

Weight of Model 3 is 3627 minimum up to 4,072 (extended range, extra batteries, which are heavy.) [1]

Model 3 has the lowest probability of injury in a crash of any car tested by NHTSA since 2011.[0]

[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/14/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota...

[1] Google Camry weight; Model 3 weight

Oops, my mistake on the weight, was looking at gross vehicle weight line rather than curb weight. Thanks for the correction.

Though the NHTSA thing you're citing is specifically what the NHTSA told Tesla they weren't allowed to claim.

> with all that money we could build better infrastructure

The amount of incentives spent by the US government for electric cars in the last 8 years is maybe $6bn.

So that might buy a new span of the Bay Bridge.

> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing

How will an 8K subsidy per home help increase housing supply? Will that subsidy also automatically take care of global warming? 64% if Americans own a roof, FYI.

What is truly detrimental to society is not the promotion of carbon neutrality, but this kind of crab mentality where some people benefiting more hurts more than the fact that this is a positive step for the planet as a whole.

Indeed. The electric vehicle incentives are very much designed that way. The rich get more money than the poor. The higher your income, the more you get back. I'd have to earn an extra $30K to get the full $7,500 (and switch from high deductible to traditional healthcare/cancel my HSA), whereas someone wealthier buying the same car gets every cent.

Not quite. That $7500 is a full on tax credit. Not a deduction. So as long as you pay more than $7500 in taxes, you get it all back. And if for some reason you pay less, you’ll get a refund.

No, he’s right. The EV credit is not refundable* so your tax liability has to be at least $7500 to get the full benefit of it.

* https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/dis...

I didn't realize it wasn't refundable. However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes. I don't make enough to buy an electric car and I pay three times that.

> However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes.

You do if you're a family, with a 24K standard deduction, a family HSA ($7K), and any number of 401Ks for retirement. A group of people who would benefit significantly from an electric vehicle.

As I said, I don't qualify for the full amount and I earn well above the state's average.

It's not only rich people that get the incentive. $8550 is a lot for a middle class family that wants to upgrade their roof

You should have seen my last apartment. Single-pane windows that dripped, hot water heater from the early 80's, and pretty much zero insulation.

It does seem like money that could be spent making dwellings more energy efficient.

If you have a spare 40K does 8K really matter? They would probably buy it anyway.

> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing.

Ha! This one made me laugh. In America nobody will let you build either of those things anymore. At least not where they are needed.

Is $8000 huge? What kind of infrastructure do you expect to build with that?

You’re right. $8k is not a lot. But multiply that by the amount of people who received the incentive, and it adds up

Probably only to a couple dozen large freeway exchanges....

Maybe it seems like this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, but are you sure there isn’t some rationalization that will let me continue to believe that better things really aren’t possible?

Why people has to paid more just because they're rich?

Because if you want to live in a harmonious society that provides opportunity for everyone, it’s best to not create a huge wealth/income gap.

You cannot provide opportunities if you charge more to those who has more. You're just transfering money from one rich to another, unequally.

Reframe that question: Why should poor people pay more because they’re not rich enough for the incentives?

OP is not saying rich people should pay more; He’s saying get rid of the tax incentives. Yes, they end up paying more, but then poor people are paying the same as the rich.

One of the problems is ambivalence. For many, PV is "nifty" but unnecessary- if I go to a fast food joint and I have a choice between a pretty good hamburger for 1/3 the price of a pretty good hamburger made from beef substitute, which do you think I'm gonna buy? But if I'm told that I can get the beef substitute version for just a few dollars more than the regular version because of a tax break, you can bet I'm far more willing to try it out.

"Rich" (which is a relative term anyway) people are, by and large, the same. Get rid of the incentive and you'll get rid of the progress that comes with it. Saying "oh take away the incentive because not everyone pays the same amount" is a great way to get people to stop investing in it at all. It's not like poor people are going to say "oh wow, the rich people won't get a tax break for investing in this, now I'll definitely invest!" right? So poor people still won't be able to invest and now rich people will have less of a reason to overcome their ambivalence. Shockingly enough, taking away incentives will deincentivize people. Who knew?

Poor people benefit when less energy is generated from fossil fuels.

That doesn't answer my question. Why someone has to paid more just because it has more money in the bank, what makes you morally superior to get better tax cuts just because you have less dollars in it?

What are the alternatives to this for achieving the goal of CO2 output reduction, which will not be delivered by the market on its own?

Initiatives that make carbon emissions more expensive are really unpopular. Direct government investment is "picking winners" or "socialism" (?).