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Comment by anonuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

Is there a way to invest directly in solar to offset your personal use, without installing it directly on your house/land?

My existing house isn’t particularly suitable from a cost perspective to install solar on (clay tile roof, a good 20 years left at least). I also don’t really want to manage an installation project, nor own the maintenance and risk. But I would pay to directly offset my consumption.

Something like a solar mutual fund where you buy in, they expand capacity using your purchase price by funding commercial solar installations.

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My power provider has a scheme (I forget the name) where basically your entire electricity bill goes to "green" electricity producers. The logic is that you can't control where your electricity comes from, but you can easily control where your money goes.

That way, no matter where you get your power from, all your money goes to green sources.

I don’t know where you are living but this method had issues when different networks are involved.

One example of this is Norway vs Europe : Norway is interconnected with the rest of the Europe for « green electricity » market but doesn’t share the electric grid of the rest of Europe.

The consequences is that any European can buy « green contracts » that pays Norway renewable industry. Sounds ok as an European.

But now, by this market rules, a Norwegian citizen that doesn’t pay the « green premium » is considered consuming non renewable electricity even if he have no physical way to consume non renewable. And as a Norwegian citizen, it can be difficult to understand the incentive to pay more while knowing your electricity is physically constrained to be only from renewable sources.

As a French I have a similar problem : why should I pay a premium to get CO2-free energy while knowing my country spent billions of public money (which I’m really glad) to be self sufficient with nuclear power plants ? And since nuclear is not a renewable energy, I have no way if I wanted to pay a « premium » that would help fund nuclear energy even if I politically support it as en important ally against global warming.

I understood a problem that energy providers are investing some minimum (perhaps only the legal minimum) into green provision, an amount that they would have anyway.

And, selling this onwards as a premium to the end user without actually changing their behaviour.

Since you get the same service (your power ultimately comes from the same grid), it's a pure price discrimination strategy.

[This is maybe a general restatement of pjerem's sibling comment]

I do pay this premium, but I mostly feel cheated by it.

If the CO2 price was sufficiently high it would be cheaper to go with the green plan.

I am doubtful: my electricity as a residential consumer ultimately comes from the same grid, so my CO2 cost is the same, whether I choose the green plan or not.

This is how it works in Massachusetts, it's pretty cool to be able to select a renewable energy power producer hooked up to the state's grid to receive your electric bill money.

At this point probably just keep paying your electric bill, as most utilities are expanding their commercial solar as a portion of their generation capacity.

Look into community solar in your local area. It's utility scale solar and you usually get an offset or pays back to shares depending on how it is structured.

I subscribe to a community solar installation in lieu of installing panels on my shaded roof. The local (to Maryland) company I use is Neighborhood Sun - https://neighborhoodsun.solar/

I've been very pleased.

There are companies like https://www.peoplepowersolar.org/ were money can be invested. I'm not from the US, though. In germany, there are about 1000 companies like this.

I did this in the UK through https://schools-energy-coop.co.uk/.

The main thing I was looking for was something where I felt my money would genuinely provide additional capacity (i.e. they weren't just going to build it anyway). I also think it's a benefit they're built on schools, so hopefully get the kids thinking about renewables.

Their cost per kWh generated is comparable to a home installation with none of the hassle.

My power provider provides an option to pay a little extra to guarantee that all the energy provided is renewable. Maybe yours has something similar?

In some places you have the choice of electricity providers and can buy "green" power.

Something like this would be perfect for Australia. There is so much empty land getting baked by the sun all year round. People in apts may not be able to have their own installed but they could buy x kw worth in the middle of the country.

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