The Solar Panel Vision

I went to the Community Visioning presentation last night and was generally very pleased. As noted in an earlier blog, the Community Visioning Report of 2007 has actually driven policy decisions in a positive direction for three years. One thing mentioned was the small solar array at the Clock Farm. A citizen mentioned that the payback in electricity for the cost of the program was about 43 years which exceeds the life expectancy of the panels. He was told that it was OK since town money wasn't spent because we had gotten federal money to pay for it. Wrong answer!

Several people including the citizen that raised the question noted that federal money was our tax money just as much as town funds so we are paying for a project with no real payback.

A few years ago kids on OA's Envirothon Team studied the possibility of putting solar panels on the roof of the school and reached the same conclusion. Without a subsidy from our taxes, the cost of the project couldn't be justified from the payback in electricity within the life expectancy of the panels. That's not the point, however. Government subsidies for cutting edge (but not speculative) technology helps build the demand needed to bring the costs down for everyone and reduce the need to continue investing in older polluting technologies like coal fired electric generating plants, both public goods. Already subsidies for solar have made it attractive for homeowners to invest.  The NRT will again be hosting a solar workshop this year to show homeowners how easy it is to use solar to make their electrical meters run backwards. Taxpayer support for solar today will pay dividends tomorrow in jobs and energy independence. Hopefully we won't be buying all the solar panels from China where the government is funding extensive research and development!

Thus, it was good to subsidize railroads in the period from 1830 to 1870 since it was a better transportation option than canals and stagecoaches. The freight railroads created a national economy that benefited everyone. Unfortunately, passenger transportation on railroads never achieved economic viability without subsidies so now we are stuck with projects like the MBTA's South Coast Rail. With  an entrenched MBTA bureaucracy and politicians like Taunton Senator Mark Pacheco pushing it, I have no confidence in the Army Corps of Engineers to do the right thing and pull the plug on both rail alternatives. So expect to subsidize the old and inflexible technology of rail transportation over a cutting edge technology like computer scheduled hybrid  buses. Remember that every dollar down the rat hole of South Coast Rail is a dollar that can't be spent on projects with real upside like solar power or flex transportation.