Excessive suburban fees unwisely discourage solar investors

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.

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