Excessive suburban fees unwisely discourage solar investors

By Michael Morton

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Denver suburbs penalize solar investors.

Residents investing in a typical 4-kilowatt solar system in cities around Denver must pay $600 to $1,500 for permit-related fees. Those costs are equal to from one to 2 1/2 years of the investor's energy savings. Denver residents, installing the same size system, pay a total of about $100, or less than 3 months worth of energy savings.

Permit-related fees include zoning and building department fees and a use tax. City department staffs are highly qualified and provide valuable services for which they must be paid. Use taxes are equally important in that these taxes are used to pay municipality infrastructure expenses. If a proposed project will increase the demand on a city's infrastructure, use taxes should apply.

Environmental, security and health-related costs are part of the infrastructure costs of city, state and federal governments and are paid for by taxes. Solar energy investments, by reducing the pollution and greenhouse gases that are associated with non-renewable fossil fuel-generated electricity, will lower city, state and federal infrastructure expenses.

In addition to lowering governmental operating costs, solar investments relieve the demand for cities and utilities to build expensive, taxpayer-subsidized fossil fuel power plants. Governmental operating expenses and subsidies are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Therefore, by lowering government operating expenses and reducing the need to build more power plants, solar investments will lead to fewer taxes that need to be collected. This should be a nonpartisan issue because everyone wants lower taxes.

Thousands of Coloradans are willing to take responsibility for providing their children and future generations with a cleaner, safer, more sustainable energy future by investing in solar. If a project has positive effects on the environment and our community by reducing pollution and taxes, that project's investors should not be penalized.

Existing, tax-paid subsidies that are currently being given to fossil fuel companies with $8 billion to $10 billion in quarterly profits should be used to subsidize building permit fees for such projects and investments. Clean, renewable energy is the path away from our "addiction to oil" and other nonrenewable energy resources. Apparently, they get that in Denver. My hope is that, if enough people will point these issues out to their elected city officials, they'll get it in the suburbs of Denver and beyond.

• January 6, 2008

  7:39 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

  Fat chance. The more the revenue generated from a tax exceeds the actual cost of service or regulation by a municipality, the more that tax is regarded as a cash cow. The likelihood of the tax being reduced is in direct proportion to the extra cash generated. Politicians on all sides hate to see revenue reduced for any reason.

  We’re still paying a telephone tax imposed during the Spanish-American War (1898).

• January 6, 2008

  10:34 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Theoldguy writes:

  The purpose of government is to grow. What these governmental entities have created is a source of funding for more governmental workers. Has anyone figured out that government hires more employees that the private sector. It keeps growing and you very well know that a government worker will not vote for a political candidate that wants to downsize government. Heavens, they probably have been through that routine in the private sector. Get used to some city or county flunky showing up to look at something and go away. Chicago has it down to a fine art. Sometimes you can meet the inspector at the curb and slip him the envelope without him getting out of his car. New York is also into this form of helping the poor governmental employee.

• January 9, 2008

  10:27 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SASQUATCH writes:

  Solar, windmills, corn ethanol, biofuels...this is a list of yesterday's recycled alternatives from Jurassic Park that nobody wants or uses. And now you can add mercury light bulbs. Most were alternatives 35 years ago under Jimmie Carter and they remain alternatives today; contributing next to nothing (single-digit) to our energy needs after nearly 4 decades of hoopla. If $100 crude oil hasn't yet transformed these "alternatives" into "main-stream" and dominant energy sources by now, it ain't ever going to happen. Forgetaboutit!

  In the meantime, and getting back to today's reality, may SASQUATCH suggest opening-up ANWR, the other 85% of the outer-continental shelf, building new refineries and nuke power plants and supporting new coal gasification, shale and natural gas initiatives. But if the hysterical green environut alarmists can put $5 at the pump out of bounds too, then that alternative would be just fine with me.

  I'm ready to fire up my charcoal B-B-Q and grill some antelope that I clobbered last weekend. Mrs. SASQUATCH and the kids love grilled antelope.