Across the European Union, solar energy is facing tough love conditions as its feed-in-tariffs (FiT) face déjà vu in another round of reduction.
Like in the classic Tale of Two Cities, the world of solar energy today seems filled with the excitement of seeing its revolutionary potential realized by rapid growth, while fearful that falling prices, changing feed in tariff subsidies and looming government deficits will overwhelm it first.
There is no denying solar energy’s promise and potential. Its rapid growth is a worldwide phenomenon. Lately I have been catching up on the news reports and changing solar situation in Europe. A recent report prepared by Ernst & Young for UK’s Solar Trade Association confirmed what we already knew that solar PV prices are falling so fast that by 2013 they will be half of what they cost in 2009.…
Continue Reading“I wrote this book because the rising cost of energy is an increasingly important feature of the political landscape, as it massively affects the cost of living for families across Britain. Excessive green taxes make everything from driving to work to taking a well-earned holiday more expensive and make it a lot harder for manufacturers to compete and keep employing people here in Britain.
Motorists are particularly hard hit and unfairly penalized well beyond the cost of maintain the roads and the environmental harms their emissions create. The Government need to give families a better deal and cut unfair green taxes.”
– Matthew Sinclair, Press Release, Let Them Eat Carbon (London: TaxPayers Alliance: August 2011)
Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, has penned an educational tract to get his fellow countrymen to reconsider what in their good graces has been accepted as sort of a public duty–to buy into climate/energy alarmism and to do their fair share.…
Continue ReadingFour-dollar diesel (forgive an agricultural bias) is an ugly thing–but not the ugliest of things. To grossly paraphrase John Stuart Mill, the state of moral feeling that thinks that government should “keep prices reasonable” is far worse.
Prices at the pump are (for the most part) an elegant demonstration of market forces at work. It should come as no surprise then, that they tend to raise the ire of those who distrust markets and favor their manipulation. (And what goes up also comes down–the trend is positive right now.)
Whether it’s because the prices are so prominently displayed, or because so many of us so often pay them, fuel prices are a tempting target for the command-and-control set.
Economies (and Psychologies) of Taxation
The keen attention we Americans pay to fuel prices is both a blessing and a curse.…
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