Since I'm supposed to be getting work done right now, I'll take some time to give my two cents on the CA rooftop solar policy, which seems almost perfectly designed to split the "smart people I listen to on energy twitter" crowd.
I am a bit divided on the policy, so I want to roughly outline a few points of agreement and my way of viewing it (even though I have no firm answer in the end).
First thing, which everyone seems to agree on, is that this is not even close to the most efficient climate policy. It is a pretty expensive way to reduce emissions and I can think of a dozen different things CA could do that would be better:
(where better means more cost effective)
1. Mandate higher-density housing (brought up by lots of folks on here)
2. Simply increase the RPS (or even just the solar portion)
3. Support public transit systems
4. Ban ICEs from city centers or mandate more EVs
etc etc
1. Mandate higher-density housing (brought up by lots of folks on here)
2. Simply increase the RPS (or even just the solar portion)
3. Support public transit systems
4. Ban ICEs from city centers or mandate more EVs
etc etc
A second issue is that a policy can eventually become so inefficient that it is no longer worth doing - at some point, inefficient climate policy becomes green-washing. I *don't* think this policy is at that point, but the point exists.
Third, I think everyone paying attention to reality acknowledges that second- or third- or maybe even 34th-best policies may still be worth pursuing. I think a lot of the disagreement is over how far down the list this actually is.
One thing that hasn't come up a lot but seems to me to be the crux of the question is what the political cost was of doing this & whether (better) alternatives are politically feasible at this time. I don't really follow CA politics, so I don't have a good sense of the answer.
Politics is "the art of the possible". Maybe this was the best policy that was politically practical at this time, or maybe this policy had very little political cost (and doesn't impede other "better" efforts).
I don't know if that is the case (or even close to the case). I'll let the CA politics folks let me know. But if better options couldn't have been achieved, then this can be considered a good outcome.
Which gets to my final general point: so often, arguments about "good" of "bad" policy are really a disagreement of perspective. One group, maybe called "optimizers", wants cost-effective solutions because anything else results in more costs and less results.
Another group, maybe called "pragmatic gradualists", are more focused on making progress, and are happy to push on anything that seems to move. This group is less focused on cost-effectiveness and more on political feasibility.
Both of these groups are right, but love to clash. We've seen this over and over in different situations: Paris Accord, Clean Power Plan, etc. Frankly, I think language fails us a bit and we often just argue past one another.
What we need to do is acknowledge that both of these are important and probably specify which thing we are talking about in a debate:
1. We should track and promote the actual best (cost-effective) solutions.
2. The best (politically possible) solution might look quite different.
1. We should track and promote the actual best (cost-effective) solutions.
2. The best (politically possible) solution might look quite different.
Our *goal* should be to achieve the most cost-effective and efficient solutions that we know about, but we should also be *satisfied* if we achieved the best solution that was politically feasible today. Then tomorrow we can start working on a better policy.
