Reply #6: Here's the way it's done.

[Ian David]

Transcript: Bernie Sanders (sustainable energy and the economy), Jun 02 2006

<snip>

{Thom Hartmann} Did I tell you, pardon my interrupting, Bernie. Did I tell you the story of my trip to Germany and the solar thing?

{Bernie Sanders} Tell me it again.

{Thom Hartmann} It's quick, and it's worth, I used to live in Germany. I go back there at least once a year, and have for 25 years and I was there in November. And taking the train, it's a 5 hour train ride east to west to this little town Stadtsteinach where I used to live, and looking north at the south side of houses, I saw, for the fist time, I hadn't seen a year before, about every third house had their roof covered with solar panels. I get to Stadtsteinach and my friend Samuel Müller, whom I'm staying with, he's got this huge solar array on his house. And I'm like, 'Samuel, what's the deal here?' Well, what they did was, the government passed a law that says that the bank has to, they're guaranteed by the government, of course, but they have to offer a mortgage, a ten year mortgage, on installation of solar power. And if you put solar panels on your house, the power company has to buy the electricity back at 8 times market rate. Now, 8 times market rate is about what it would cost if the power company was going to build a new nuclear reactor or a new coal-fired reactor. In other words, this is the investment part of building a new plant. So they're investing in power infrastructure and at the end of 10 years the power company then has to buy it back at one time, in other words, at parity. But for the 10, and so Samuel is making about $100 a month in profit on the electricity that he's selling to the power company after he's paid the mortgage. So at the end of 10 years he's going to completely own this, the solar system, it's enough to power his house and provide power to the community, and it was all done by this kind of public private partnership. In other words, no government dollars are being involved in this thing and there's just this explosion of solar power all across Germany and they don't have to build more power plants because every home has become a power plant.

More:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2006/06/transcript-bernie-sanders-sustainable-energy-and-economy-jun-02-2006

See also:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=&q=thom+hartmann+germany+solar&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS334US334&ie=UTF-8