Overpaying for Green Power

“How can California encourage investors to generate renewable electricity? How about a guarantee that if they generate the power, they'll be paid at a good price?” suggests Ray Pingle of the Sierra Club. Fair enough. But the price proposed by the Sierra Club and some members of Congress is three to five times more than the current average price of electricity. Green power advocates in the United States have started pushing for a European-style subsidy scheme in which homeowners or businesses that install solar panels or windmills can sell their excess power back to the grid at inflated prices. Utilities are required by the state to pay above-market rates for this environmentally-friendly power. These so-called feed-in tariffs were first devised in Germany in the early 1990s and have been adopted by nearly 20 other countries since then as a way to boost the installation of renewable energy production...read more