How do Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) work?

One Comment

1. bestonnet_00 says:

   July 23, 2009 at 7:26 pm

   The basic idea that people who feel bad about something can buy them to get rid of the guilt.

   The way that they work is that a very small amount (much less than the subsidies and tax breaks given to politically correct energy) of money goes to those who operate a wind turbine or solar panel (or even methane gas recovery systems at landfills, sometimes things that would have to be built regardless of whether any carbon credits were sold), the amount of money that the carbon offset actually provides is really too small to actually encourage use of politically correct energy, especially when you consider how much bigger the subsidies are (and they really are over-subsidised compared to how much energy they produce).

   Of course there are renewable energy credit systems that do actually help, just that they cost so much more that the frauds out compete them (and governments don’t seem too interested in keeping that sector honest, some such schemes are actually run by the government, including some that sell more renewable energy than they actually generate (in other areas of the economy the word used for that is fraud)).

   The main purposes that renewable energy credits serve are to act as indulgences and to help fool people into believing that fossil fuels can be replaced without using nuclear power (which thereby prevents fossil fuels from actually being replaced and keeps the coal and oil companies in business).