It seems rare to find a local authority coming up with a really sensible idea for encouraging people to adopt solar technology, but I think that this one is a cracking idea.
Now before you get all excited, its not here in the UK, but in the city of Berkeley, California.
The city is planning to finance the installation of photovoltaic arrays and solar water heating systems and will place an additional annual assessment surcharge onto the customer's property tax (the equivalent of our council tax) to finance the repayments.
"some preliminary calculations show that a $15,000 solar array might add $1,300 to a homeowners’ annual tax bill"
"When you sell your home the solar array and the tax surcharge stays with the property, passing on to the new owner. In other words, there’s little risk that you’ll lose money by going solar."
The great thing is that the homeowner retains ownership of the installed equipment - it is viewed as a lien on a property so that in the event of any foreclosure, this is paid off first.
"as a property tax the solar assessment is a deductible on your federal income tax return". Oh how I wish we had a system like that here in the UK!
The full story can be found on GreenWombat.
What chance any of the UK's local authorities daring to try anything similar? My guess is zero.
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Just for comparative fun, here's an example of the really radical thinking that our local authorities are coming up with - switching off street lamps - from Auntie Beeb.
1 comment:
Sad that my first reaction to the 'quote' in the Auntie PR-post was 'Yeah... right'. Nothing to do with trying to reduce costs at all. No bad thing of course, but the 'we only buy green energy' bit just came across as sooooo sanctimonious. I wonder what the take up is... will be.
As to the actual decent idea... suggest it! Click on 'Global Ideas Bank' and get on there! I've punted out a few.
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