It's very hard to make policy for green energy. Take the Brits and solar: the Brits approved a feed-in tariff designed to support solar installations by guaranteeing them a certain level of payment for power generated by solar. The feed-in tariff, which was was calculated based on certain assumptions about the return that would be generated given the tariff level set. That return wasn't expected to be interesting to large-scale commercial investors - the target for the subsidy was really supposed to be smaller installations like households and small businesses - so the returns generated by user installations would be small enough in aggregate for the government to handle paying for.
But technology changed in the meantime, making returns more attractive; the feed-in tariff now represented a commercially interesting opportunity for business; and a bunch of larger projects threatened to soak up all the funds designated for the feed-in tariffs. Problem.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make policy. After all, with no feed-in tariff, you don't get either big or little installations; you just get nothing. Rather, it means two things. First, somehow you have to find the political will to get over inevitable bumps. And second, you have to try to think out policy that can adapt to a range of possible outcomes, which involves a level of sophistication that is... difficult... in an ordinary political environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment