Pay more, get less.
“Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the state’s largest electric utilities are proposing to repeal financial incentives for using renewable energy after a report last year found that the millions of dollars in bonuses haven’t yielded the intended environmental gains and have contributed to increases in customer bills.” [Associated Press]
This should be no surprise. We are inundated with NGOs and government agencies claiming benefits from green programs, but never are these claims backed up with actual results. An audit of Washington state “green” schools in 2011 found that energy efficient claims were extremely overstated. In fact, greater than 50 percent of the schools examined used more energy than their non-green counterparts, despite the fact that being “green” added three percent to the building’s cost. In no case did the green school recover enough energy costs to pay for the increase construction costs (www.washingtonpolicy.org).
If it needs subsidies or mandates, it’s almost certainly harder on the environment than the “conventional” alternative.