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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty obvious. My most outspoken Green New Deal supporting friends & family who were reposting social media of Greta & AOC are also 0-1 child households with SUVs.

It's hashtag activism. No one wants to make sacrifices.

The only solutions are going to be finding ways to grow our way out of it and incentivize good things (fuel economy, EVs, rail, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal heat pumps, etc).

Neither Degrowth nor expecting people to vote their conscience with their wallet are going to work.

Even today - look at how tax incentivized solar is, and how fast the break-even is.. and yet how few people take advantage of it?

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I put solar panels on my last house. You know what impact it had? Zero. Why? Because renewable energy sources are more costly, less efficient, and have a greater environmental impact over the full lifecycle than Natural Gas Plants [1]. If we replaced all power generators with Natural Gas plants (which Europe is doing because they already realized this fact), you could realize the carbon savings and generate the power that will be needed for future electrification demands.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...

Speaking of solar do you have it installed on your house? Even with tax credits do you know how much they cost, they are not cheap. And financing it isn't like a car. Sure it's 1% finance but add like 10K finance charge which kills the rebate. All on top of that you actually have to own a home, which is becoming impossible in america.

Not yet because you only want to install on a newer roof otherwise you pay a lot to uninstall/reinstall on roof replacement.

Relative to price of a home, they are cheap, under $10k without storage. People spend 2-5x more on a kitchen or bathroom cosmetic remodel.

If you need financing, you can use a HELOC. The break even is like 4 years.

Your statements are fairly hyperbolic considering something like 60% of Americans own their home, so it can't be impossible.

Try $20k plus a re-roof at $10k. And that is for a small 1200sqft 3 bed/1 bath house that has full south-southwest exposure.

> Even today - look at how tax incentivized solar is, and how fast the break-even is.. and yet how few people take advantage of it?

In most areas? Not fast at all, and very close to the expected life of the panels for consumer-grade house panels considering the up-front investment.

Have you used any calculators from an installer like Tesla or frequented solar owners forums to read about actual experiences?

It is extremely dependent on the state you reside, how much electric you use & the energy company you have as incentives vary.

Tesla, in NY on PSEG LI for example- $9K would get you 8kW solar w/o storage $20K would get you 12kW solar + some storage, installation and tax included

In New York State with Fed, state and utility incentives it's like 4 years.

Hmmm. No. The payback is 20 years, which is the length of the panel life, and the limit on time the utilities have to pay you for the energy. After that, they get the energy from you for free.

You are making sweeping negative statements without specifying where in your experience this is the case. 20 year pay back would have to be a state with super low electric prices and absolutely zero incentives.

Please specify where this is the case and why, per your math.

Fed is 22% tax rebate, NY state is $5k incentive.. and power in the state ranges in the 20-30c/kWh range.. so pretty expensive power with pretty good incentive.

Yes, continue the explanation with your math, including the part where you don't actually get that rebate; as part of the solar program financing, you have to hand that rebate over to the bank to pay the finance fees, which is factored into the financing. Otherwise the monthly payments go up, and you end up paying more per month than you generate energy. I was in RI and RI rates and program is similar to NY's.

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