What the Ontario feed-in-tariff program really means is that the province will finance the solar revolution through preferential pricing.
"In other words, generating solar power would not be economical but for the market subsidies provided by the government," notes Dennis Mahony. "But the thinking is that once the private sector engages, solar power will be more economical due to economies of scale, like what happened with flat-screen televisions."
A developing carbon market, of course, would also go a long way to making solar energy economical. "The difficulty is that we don't know whether that's going to happen any time soon," says Dennis. "Passing appropriate legislation is proving to be a difficult endeavour."
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