Solar panel pay-off claim rejected

THE time it takes to pay off an average solar system will blow out after the Victorian government slashed an incentive scheme for rooftop panels, according to expert analyses.
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The association found a 1.5 kilowatt system would take 14 years to pay off under the new rate. For a 2 kilowatt system it found it would take more than 20 years.

Claims of cheating and mistakes in energy use

''I see a lot of clients [who] need to get compliance, so they'll tick the fluorescent lighting box because that's a cheap and easy one but they have no intention of keeping the fluoros in there,'' said Tracey Cools, the managing director of Efficient Living, an energy certifier. ''But they'll put them in at the time the certifier comes in there and does the check, and then they'll go back and put their halogens in because that's what they want … There's a lot of cheating that goes on around the DIY system.''

Peter Foster: Scorched by ­solar | FP Comment | Financial Post

While the green-jobs dream is collapsing, Mr. Obama has the opportunity, with Keystone XL, to prove commitment to genuine jobs, which must always ultimately be based on profitable private enterprise. In fact, it appears increasingly likely that the line will get the go-ahead. Not only did Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent look forward this week to “eventual approval,” but even U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu — who recently suggested that energy choices had to be removed from people for their own good — pointed to the line’s advantages in terms of security of supply.

UK renewables costs exceed gas by over 100 bln pounds | Agricultural Commodities | Reuters

LONDON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The cost of investing in renewable energy in Britain is 105 billion pounds ($170 billion) higher than building the same capacity using gas-fired power plants, an economics professor said in a report published on Friday.

The extra investment cost of building power plants such as offshore wind farms is equivalent to nearly 10 percent of overall British business investment in the next 10 years, Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh said in his study "The Myth of Green Jobs."