Solar panels are a 'waste of money'

[LMagic007]

Of course, I agree and hopefully public can be availed of sufficient information that can effectively help them make the decisions about the choices available to them. I think public education is probably one area that can provide its share of returns sooner rather than later. Resource management awareness can play its role in helping reduce the overall demands placed on existing resources and help limit environmental impacts going forward and I think public education could play a significant role toward this.

I do think that perhaps more incentives for people to save energy could be helpful. For example; rebates on money spent on saving energy, like better insulation measures etc... Another idea is perhaps a lower tariff if you use less energy ( of course that flies in the face of commercialism and profit interests of power companies who want you to consume more - though that could perhaps be countered with incentives for business to pass on "use less" rewards to the consumer pro rata ) etc... Difficult to fathom that such a notion could be adopted though.

Our whole society is geared toward consumption and consuming resources not saving them. "standard of living" as traditionally seen, is geared on growth, but the old growth model seems to be eating at itself, because I suspect its ultimately not sustainable. i.e. global industrial activity is showing signs of negative environmental impact to such an extent, that these effects are feeding back negatively into industrial productivity, when all flow on effects are taken into account. I think this points to a flaw in global economic models that has not been revealed in the past, because the world has never been faced with the challenges it now faces in terms of negative environmental impact and how that influences global economic models.

Getting back to the original statement though of Solar panels are a 'waste of money' I don't agree with that at all, for the reasons already discussed. Solar panels both PV and thermal are part of the present and will be part of our future and through their acceptance today, we lay a more solid foundation for their future, when they should cost less and deliver more.