NDP government, when elected in Alberta, was never going to be popular so they went ahead and legislated changes including putting a price on energy wasting behaviour. Because they are NDP the money collected wasn't revenue neutral but also didn't go into general revenue. After rebates to families making under $47K, funds were used to provide cash incentives for environmentally friendly investment at the business and personal levels. As workers with a living wage, we didn't qualify for any tax rebates so it was up to us to change things to claw it back.
We always varied heating through the day but now we dropped is 1C while were were home and turned down the temperature on the hot water heater. Electricity wasn't directly taxed but the utility paid based on use so we looked at where we were using power unnecessarily and turned stuff OFF. Our home is older and in need of updates so we set a budget and decided on what made sense to us. We decided on a kitchen reno which meant replacing the floor though the entire upstairs because we have an open plan home.
Countertops - more than any renovation - can be a money pit. There are durable, attractive laminate countertops available but people seem to go for stones or other high cost surfaces. We could spend money on high end counters or update with laminate AND install a net zero solar array with 1/3 the cost of the system rebated using our carbon levy. We chose the latter. Counters still look great. We get lower utility bills for 25 years (estimated life of our solar array), our neighbours get lower utility bills because power bill infrastructure cost is based on the amount of energy used by the community. We also supported two local businesses in the community instead of one.
Talk is cheap, change is hard. The carbon levy was just what we needed to take the first effective step to change.
Countertops - more than any renovation - can be a money pit. There are durable, attractive laminate countertops available but people seem to go for stones or other high cost surfaces. We could spend money on high end counters or update with laminate AND install a net zero solar array with 1/3 the cost of the system rebated using our carbon levy. We chose the latter. Counters still look great. We get lower utility bills for 25 years (estimated life of our solar array), our neighbours get lower utility bills because power bill infrastructure cost is based on the amount of energy used by the community. We also supported two local businesses in the community instead of one.
Talk is cheap, change is hard. The carbon levy was just what we needed to take the first effective step to change.
No comments:
Post a Comment