> (garbage ideas, some posted recently about UK subsidizing biomass, which ships wood from Canada)

This is the greenwashing of the UK's largest thermal power station, Drax, which was built for coal.

> colonial wealth, from Roman Empire

I think one or two things may have happened to the distribution of wealth since this event.

The solar deployment is happening, but slowly. I got my panels a decade ago when the subsidy regime in the UK was better. Seasonality is an issue, I would never attempt to go off-grid, but I don't need to.

One of the traditional holdups is very European: the need for permitting, whether that's for the install itself or the grid connection. People still get funny around the appearance of panels. The NIMBY tendency to demand that the entire world looks like a particular bucolic vision of the countryside is really bad.