The government uses a fallacy. The net metering scheme for solar panels is said to be an unfair subsidy for people who have enough money to purchase them. That is why our government wants to phase out this successful scheme from 2025 onwards.
About this column:
In a weekly column, written alternately by Eveline van Zeeland, Derek Jan Fikkers, Eugène Franken, JP Kroeger, Katleen Gabriels, Bernd Maier-Leppla, Willemijn Brouwer, and Colinda de Beer, Innovation Origins tries to find out what the future will look like. These columnists, sometimes supplemented by guest bloggers such as Maarten van Andel, all work in their own way on solutions to the problems of our time. Here are all the previous installments.
That’s the world upside down. Private investors in solar panels contribute directly to CO2 reduction and do not receive any subsidy for this. It’s the other way around! By phasing out the net metering, the government will collect tax on the sustainable electricity from your and my solar panels, which we purchased with our own money.
Suppose you now use 2500 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year and produce 1500 kWh with solar panels. In the net metering scheme, you then pay a net amount of 2500 – 1500 = 1000 kWh. Without this scheme, you must pay the market price including taxes for the 2500 kWh used, and you will receive a lower price excluding taxes for the 1500 kWh that is supplied back. This means that the government collects taxes on that 1500 kWh of power from your solar panels.
Everyone for themselves?
I think that’s theft in broad daylight, especially when you consider that the electricity price we pay consists largely of taxes. I can get around this by disconnecting my solar panels from the grid, and storing and using all my solar power for myself. Is that what the government wants, everyone for themselves?
I don’t want that. Now I benefit from the net of the farmer’s windmill down the road when the sun isn’t shining, and he benefits from my solar panels when the wind isn’t blowing. I find taxation of privately generated sustainable electricity unfair, and fits in with the money grab of surcharge affair, gas extraction, and earthquake damage settlement. I think the worst thing is that transparent fallacies are being used for this, in the hope that you and I will fall for it.
This entry was posted in Duurzaamheid on February 27, 2023.
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