Originally Posted by
Mesabah
A REC is a Renewable Energy Certificate. It's basically an instrument to account for your production of renewable energy, added back to the grid. It depends on your electric company, but the gist of it is, when install solar on your house, your bill is reduced by the amount of excess energy you produce. In other words, your bill is cost shifted onto other customers, or the tax payers. However, this does not actually reduce carbon emissions, it just reduces the cost of your bill. Someday, if storage technology is invented(highly unlikely), then those panels will actually save GHGs. Until then, the increase in GHGs is due to the manufacturing of the panels.
If you want to reduce your carbon foot print, installing high efficiency appliances is a much better way.
It's no secret that just about every utility company has done everything they can to slow the progress of solar, especially in sun belt states like FL, NV, and AZ. Just read up on Florida's anti-solar laws passed by a governor who was a utility lobbyist or Nevada's utility-company-lawyer-turned-governor running Sunrun, the largest residential solar installer, out of NV.
My point was that if climate change really needs to be addressed, to the point Congress tells lobbyists to eff off, then an actual way forward that's not as ridiculous as AOC's Green New Deal and uses tech we currently have, would be to ensure that rooftop solar is as standard a piece of equipment for every building as HVAC, meet the rest of the power need with nuclear, and replace local commuter traffic with electric cars.