The Rudd government in Australia ordered a new way of providing solar pv rebates to families. As reported before on Worldisgreen.com, “The Clean Energy Council told The Sunday Age that one company had 98% of orders abandoned. The biggest impact has been in cities, where 50-70% of orders were being ditched, leaving companies with millions of dollars of lost business.”

The government has clearly not understood the scenario here. The concept of means tesing makes sense if the subsidy is for the welfare of the people directly. However, in this scenario that is simply not the case. The subsidy for the solar pv is to be seen as a subsidy for the solar industry and provided through the consumers rather than directly to the industry.

The Messenger local news in Adelaide asked their readers about the means testing, and the answer was: