I'm not accusing you directly (that would be rude), but the idea in general when someone says "this makes housing more expensive!". It doesn't make the total cost of ownership more expensive, but it does front load some of the energy costs while still being cheaper in the long run for the homeowner. In some jurisdictions (California, the sixth largest world economy), it's been deemed a reasonable policy strategy.

Utility scale makes sense, but so does rooftop solar at scale (if you can streamline soft costs; permitting is unnecessarily expensive AF in the US versus someplace like Australia). A pollution tax will take time to implement, if at all tenable in American politics. Unfortunately, indirect methods are needed at times due to the political landscape. I will take a decent solution today over the perfect solution when it's too late.

California’s mandate has already been postponed over the objections of several municipal utility districts and probably will never take force in the way people who drafted it expected.

I really think mandates like this are totally wrong approach. Consider that in virtually every jurisdiction in California a new home requires both solar power and a 2-car garage. If that isn’t perverse I don’t know what would be.

Unlike you I consider a carbon tax almost trivially easy to implement. Way easier and more effective than construction mandates.

Agree to disagree. If a carbon tax was trivial to implement, why is it not implemented yet? If not now, when will it be?

Utilities can kick and scream (and attempt to subvert the mandate to maintain their relevance), but the mandate will go into force.

> Commission officials acknowledged homeowners will see smaller bill savings under SMUD’s Neighborhood SolarShares program than they would with solar panels on their roofs.

> The average single-family home in the utility’s service territory, which covers most of Sacramento County and parts of Placer and Yolo counties, can currently save around $75 a year with rooftop solar, the Energy Commission estimated. Under SMUD’s program, the average single-family home will be guaranteed electricity bill reductions of just $28 a year.

> The changes from SMUD’s initial proposal didn’t convince critics from several prominent environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity. They argued the solar projects SMUD plans to use for its program are too large and generally too far from residential neighborhoods to be considered true “community” solar facilities.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-02-20/califor...

“ California Energy Commissioners gave the Sacramento Municipal Utility District unanimous clearance to offer builders the option of buying solar energy from SMUD, via local solar farms SMUD would build, rather than install solar panels on new-home roofs.”

I think we're destined to remain on different sides of the argument. I'm confident rooftop solar still wins; utilities aren't known for not raising rates, and the political winds shift. It might take longer, but rooftop solar keeps getting cheaper every year. SMUD provided power from natural gas [1] doesn't, regardless of how much local utility solar they build. They even call their natural gas a renewable resource!

[1] https://www.smud.org/en/Corporate/Environmental-Leadership/P...

We need both. Utility scale solar has it's own set of problems related to land use. There is nothing about rooftop solar that makes it make less sense than utility scale if it's done well. There is a promising future ahead of us where building regulations will take into account cosine losses and start mandating equatorial facing rooftops, solar trackers, etc. It just seems weird now because we haven't seen it done yet with any kind of aesthetic vigor.

By the way, it's not commonly acknowledged but in my experience solar panels are very underrated as effective insulators, reducing A/C costs.