A brief word on the Greens tilt towards the middle classes with solar scheme

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It’s a clever bit of politics by the Green Party. The solar scheme is very clearly aimed at the middle classes, those who are comfortable enough to care about the environment while making investment choices that will pay off for them over time.

Like Generation Zero’s integrated traffic network, it’s a play at subsidising the middle classes with massive taxpayer investment, that’s not bad within itself, but let’s not pretend it does anything for those too poor to participate.

With Generation Zero, the fare will stay as expensive as ever for this vast infrastructure upgrade and with the solar scheme, the poor won’t be aided and those renting certainly won’t see their landlord making the investment.

Put simply, the poorest in NZ won’t benefit from lower electricity prices from this scheme.

That said, it’s a start, but as we look to adapt to climate change, we can’t leave those too poor to pay for that adaptation behind.

22 COMMENTS

  1. The creation of one thousand new jobs should not be forgotten, but the scheme should be done in combination with a decent state house building program.

  2. “…the poor won’t be aided and those renting certainly won’t see their landlord making the investment.”

    What are you basing that on Martyn? Plenty of middle class landlords took advantage of subsidies to insulate their rental properties. Solar will be of benefit to both landlords and tenants so I beg to disagree.

  3. Actually, Chances are that some landlords would feel strongly enough about environmental issues, that they would instal solar panels on their rental properties – particularly if they could claim a tax deduction against the rental income, or if they anticipated possibly living in said rental property in the future, or if they wanted a point of difference to improve the value of their asset. The tenants would benefit through lower electricity bills.

    Of course not every landlord would take up the offer, but some is better than none.

  4. Oh for Gods sake ! Fuck solar pansy fairy power . What’s really needed is a spine to demand our power back . Fuck the offshore shitbags raping our resources . Our electricity IS OURS . Not theirs . There’s plenty of ‘ electricity ‘ to go round . Jesus ! This is so exasperating .
    Water per se is just mass and that which draws that mass to it is called gravity . Can we sell gravity ?
    Well , I suppose if you didn’t have any and you needed some , that’d create a demand which when supplied might have a profit margin built into it .
    My point is , is that it’s bollocks .
    They throw up obstacles by depriving us of our resources ( thus profiting ) and we acquiesce then try to build ways to fit in . Fuck that ! Fuck solar ! Give us our resources back ?
    Greens ?
    Grow a big hairy set of Shrek Balls for fucks sake .
    Water runs down ( Drawn down by gravity ) and through a whizzy thing that makes electricity then that same water , albeit stirred up a bit , runs out to sea , is then evaporated up into the air then carried to the mountains where it’s encouraged by the Fern Effect to condense into water which rains down and thus runs along to a lake where it is drawn by gravity down through a whizzy thing which make our electricity . What’s more fucking Green than that man ? Kermit the fucking frog isn’t that green . Irish grasses are not that Green . leprechaun shit isn’t that Green . The very last thing we should be talking about is how to cringe and compromise . We just need to take our shit back . ( Oh dear , I think I’m having a fucking heart attack ! ) The softly , softly hand wringing approach is not working . I’m going to bed . I’m all worked up .

    • Hyrdo power was very progressive in the 1970s. Sadly, it turns out hydro dams cause massive environmental effects, particularly on Aotearoa’s endangered river wildlife (eg long fin eels which live up in mountain streams but must migrate to the ocean to breed). Replacing the proportion of our electricity currently provided by coal without building more dams requires solar. The most resilient way to do solar is for everyone to have their own solar on their own roof, with a smart grid to share around the surplus on sunny days, and connect it to large scale storage (eg pumping water back up into hydro lakes?)

      In other words the solar policy isn’t in any way an excuse for Key’s energy generation sales (which the Greens led the referendum against, let’s remember). It’s just a proposed solution to a different problem. Also, for those who have actually read the policy, the loan is attached to the house not the person, which makes it much more attractive to landlords who own rental houses as investments.

  5. Simon Bridges was positively ranting against the Greens!

    LENDING money for solar power!

    Outrageous!

    Not when the Nats GAVE AWAY $30 million to Rio Tinto; $90 million to Warners Bros; and millions more to other companies.

    Now that’s how the Nats do “fiscal responsibility”!

    Bloody hell, my fellow Kiwis, you really know how to pick’em!

    • “Simon Bridges was positively ranting against the Greens!”… and then refused to appear on Campbell Live to debate the issue with the Greens who had accepted Campbell’s invitation.

  6. I guess if the middle class gets behind that scheme, and the solar production increases sufficiently, there will be a drop in demand for electricity, therefore the suppliers will have to discount their prices. It’s not like they could easily sell off all that unwanted electricity overseas.

    I know it’s a bit of a stretch but it could be a trickle down theory that actually works. And if it was enough to get the shares of the electricity companies to drop even further that would make them cheaper to buy them back into the government.

    Ok that’s enough crazy optimism, lets go back to the depressing reality and stare at the National’s surge into the polls due to a global (but temporary) improvement of the world’s market and growth, of which our government has nothing to do with, but from which it will benefit hugely…

    • What is happening in Germany is that the government has to subsidise coal fired power stations to stay in business, because their margins have been cut by renewables.
      We still need the conventional power stations because wind and solar are intermittent

      As a result, countries that have the highest penetration of wind and solar in their grid (Germany and Denmark) also have the highest electricity prices in Europe,and their emissions are increasing

      Luckily we have these living case studies of Green energy policy failure that we can learn from.

      • Wrong on all counts. E.g. in Germany, massive investment in solar as depressed electricity prices because is smoothes out and reduces peak demand and hence high spot prices can no longer be charged to the cost of all electricity has gone down.
        Intermittent is an old argument levelled at renewables, and while superficially true, in reality a country the size of Germany or even NZ has areas of intermittence and areas of high peak power production at the same time. The solution is distributed generation, backed by either hydro or peaking gas plants which can be fired up in minutes and have the lowest CO2 emissions of all fossil fuels.
        Recent research in the US has shown that with a few grid upgrades, installing wind and solar in different regions/coasts will overcome all intermittency effects, such that the ENTIRE US economy could be powered only by renewables.
        Also, world wide the coal, nuclear and gas industries receive, by far, the largest subsidies of any power source already. In fact Nuclear is so uneconomic that the capital investment has to be underwritten by governments because the private sector sees it as too risky to invest.
        Get your facts right before ignorantly mouthing off.

        • Thanks for taking the time to insult me.
          Germany has had massive problems with the variability of its grid, thanks to the large penetration of renewables. Variations in voltage means that factories have to install expensive gear to isolate them from the grid otherwise equipment gets damaged.

          Poland has installed circuit breakers on the border with Germany to stop the Germans frying the Polish grid as they dump their excess renewable generation.

          Denmark dumps its excess wind generated electricity to Norway at times of high production, selling at peppercorn rates. Norway then sells back hydro at much higher rates.

          All these factors result in countries with high penetrations of renewables having the highest electricity costs in Europe.

          NZ doesn’t even have anywhere to dump the excess power so we’ll probably just end up wasting hydro that we could have used in the first place

  7. Though the scheme is aimed at the middle classes, it weakens the price setting power of supply companies. Thus the poor benefit somewhat too. If it were only middle class welfare Simon Bridges would be right behind it.

  8. I’m with country boy on this one. In a couple of years there will be plenty of cheap power available (something like a third of current demand) when Rio Tinto shuts down the plant. Unfortunately unless we take public ownership of our power we will never see any benefit.

    • Even having all Rio Tinto’s power available won’t be enough if people start buying electric cars, and shifting other functions currently powered by fossil fuels to electric.

  9. I’m on just above the minimum wage and will be for the rest of my working life. Finances are always a struggle, to the point where I sometimes don’t have money for food, but I am white and male so I guess that makes me officially a member of the “middle classes”. However, I will definitely be taking advantage of the scheme if it eventuates, just like I managed to insulate my genuine “shack” thanks to the Green’s insulation scheme.

  10. You say ” … the poorest in NZ won’t benefit from lower electricity prices from this scheme” I don’t benefit from an increase in unemployment benefit, I still vote for it. I don’t benefit from the raise of the minimum wage, I still vote for it. I don’t benefit from equal pay, I still vote for it. I don’t benefit from a lot of stuff I vote for.

    I probably won’t benefit from the solar policy either, I still vote for it because it is the right step in the right direction.

  11. I would have thought that this scheme will increase the cost of power in NZ. This is what has happened in every country with a high penetration of solar in their grid.

  12. Has anyone given consideration to the externalities of mining the rare earths and other products that go into a solar panel?

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