Unreasonable expectations for energy savings.
Political science assumes that all states are “rational actors.” My degree wasn’t in economics, but I hope that science doesn’t make the same assumption. Further to my thoughts on recouping investments in solar panels, Matthew Wald writes in today’s New York Times:
At a recent conference on energy efficiency and investment strategy, Pedro Haas, an energy expert at McKinsey & Company, said his consulting firm recently asked people worldwide what payback time they would find acceptable before investing money to save energy.
One fourth of them said they would never spend any money to improve energy efficiency; 50 percent said they wanted to earn back the investment in two years or less.
“That means about 75 percent of the public will require economics that are just not there,” Mr. Haas said.
Make back your investment in two years? It’s stunning that half of people would actually expect that. If you can get a 50% return on an investment every year, that’s basically a license to mint money. I’m not sure if this survey says more about people’s efficiency expectations or their financial inexperience.
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