Rooftop solar rockets as gas prices itself out

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Well done gas cartel:

Fears about rising energy prices have driven consumers and businesses to install solar panels at the fastest rate in at least a decade, lifting total national capacity to the equivalent of powering a city the size of Melbourne.

New figures from the Australian Photovoltaic Institute show the country has passed 6 gigawatts of solar capacity as of the end of March, or enough to supply about 1.3 million households.

“There’s been just a huge surge recently on the back of the energy concerns earlier in the year,” Renate Egan, chair of the institute, told Fairfax Media.

Total capacity could top 7 gigawatts within a year with a host of solar farms and a rise in companies turning to solar driving the extra demand.

As said many times, the gas cartel is basically applying it’s own carbon tax to boost short term profits while in the long run everybody (including itself) loses.

It’s fantastically stupid but such is short term remuneration.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.