Need carbon tax and force utilities to purchase excess
Unfortunately a feed in tariff does not provide the proper economic price signals. It is essentially a subsidy and all subsidies depend on top down direction. The truly efficient economic price would be determined through a carbon tax that gradually increased over time. The market would then decide whether renewable energy, nuclear, energy efficiency(more efficient appliances), energy substitution (walking vs. driving) or energy conservation (lowering thermostats) would be the best way to go. Feed in tariffs don't properly reward nuclear, energy efficiency, substitution, or conservation. The regressivity/inflation impact of a carbon tax could be eliminated by using all revenue to offset payroll taxes. The payroll tax is currently our most regressive tax, so we could substitute one regressive tax for another and while we increased the cost of energy intensive uses we would decrease the cost of labor intensive uses.Inflation in gas for example might be offset by deflation in medical care or some other labor intensive use. However, in this regime, we would still want to ask FERC to force utilities to buy renewable power and to reduce impediments and licensing cost for the same. The utilities should be forced to buy power from rooftop solar for example at the utility rate and use net metering so that excess power was purchased at avoided cost. Feed in tariffs give the perverse result that you sell all power to the grid and then use the grid to heat water, whereas a more economic approach would be to use dc to heat water directly and not go through the grid.
