It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
“Here we go!” my mom said excitedly as we all sat down for dinner this past weekend.
“Whaddya mean ‘here we go’?” I asked.
“It’s our first electric bill since we installed solar panels,” mom replied, as she tore open the envelope. “YES!!” she shouted, pumping her fist in the air. “THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS!”
“What does the bill usually look like during summer?” Christina asked.
“More like three HUNDRED dollars,” my mom said. “And what’s even better is that now that we’ve installed solar, the utility has to buy power from us.”
“Yup,” my dad added. “Not only are we expecting to save a couple thousand dollars over the course of the year, I’m also going to get tax credits and rebates up the wazoo, as well as about $5000 in SRECS.”
These, I learned are “solar renewable energy credits”:
Electricity suppliers, the primary purchasers of SRECs, are required to pay a Solar Alternative Compliance Payment (SACP) if they do not meet the requirements of New Jersey’s Solar RPS. One way they can meet their RPS is by purchasing SRECs. As SRECs are traded in a competitive market, the price may vary significantly. The actual price of an SREC during a trading period can and will fluctuate depending on supply and demand. See recent SREC trading prices.
“You mean the utility has to..”
“Yup! THEY have to buy power from US!” my mom cheered. “Plus, we’ve already got half our investment back in rebates.”
And that go me thinking. Despite the Obama administration’s [willfully?] mistaken belief that “government can’t create jobs” (uh, riiiiight: so the entire US bureacracy doesn’t count as employment?), my friend atrios regularly points out ways that jobs can be created, especially when it comes to energy and energy conservation:
I’m again flummoxed by the idea that there’s just nothing to be done jobs wise.
There are a lot of flat black roofs in Philadelphia. For a not very high per-unit cost, they could all be painted white/silver. This isn’t public infrastructure per se, but it would have public benefits in terms of reducing energy use/carbon emissions, and there are also externalities impacting the heat level of the city as a whole.
The DC version of this cunning plan would be to have a program, so that organizations could apply for grants, which could then… Or maybe they’d have some tax credit which would partially offset costs.
My version is…just go to door and offer to paint peoples’ roofs. I get that it’s a bit more complicated than this, but not too much.
I’d take that a few steps further. Right here in Philadelphia, there are solar panel manufacturers. As a matter of fact, several. And as atrios points out, there are TONS of flat roofs in a city that gets an awful lot of sunny days. Furthermore, I hear reminders every day on the radio that Pennsylvania’s electricity rate caps expire in 2011, with an increase of 10% (at least) expected.
You’d figure with pressures that include the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, two ongoing wars, one of which is was explicitlyabout oil, and oh yeah TEN FUCKING PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOOMING ELECTORAL DISASTERS the administration would be all over efforts like this. Imagine the jobs created by installing solar panels on every roof in Philadelphia that wanted one: jobs making the things, jobs shipping them from the plant to the consumer, jobs installing them, jobs maintaining them. Think of the savings for ordinary families, who could then put that extra income into paying off their debts and buying new stuff. Think of the impact on the environment!
We put together a package that by then the target had been trimmed to $1.2 trillion. And then [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel said to me, “Geez, do you really think we can afford to come in with a package that big, isn’t it going to scare people?” I said, “Rahm, you will need that shock value so that people understand just how serious this problem is.” They wanted to hold it to less than $1 trillion. Then [Pennsylvania Senator Arlen] Specter and the two crown princesses from Maine [Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins] took it down to less than $800 billion.
But hey, what do I know. It’s probably just my “permanent outrage and relentless negativity fostered and fueled by the blogosphere” talking.
July 17th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Of course, dude…”unemployment” is a joke. There’s more than enough work to do in the world for EVERYONE to be working fucking overtime. Unemployment is like money. It’s a concept. If you don’t have enough “money”, you can’t finish a job or fund an initiative. But we’re brainwashed. It’s like a carpenter going to a job, opening up his toolbox, and slapping his forehead saying, “Oh, I don’t have enough inches to do this job, I’m all out of inches.” It’s all bullshit, man.