[austhrow743]

>If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale?

This actually mirrors my thoughts on house ownership as an investment as well.

Every house I've ever rented has been privately owned by an individual and either managed by them or a company that manages tenants for them but has no equity stake. It's always struck me that if residential properties were such a great investment, these companies would move in to it rather than give up supposedly great returns for no reason. Or large financial institutions would buy the properties and then have the rental management companies as clients rather than a host of small time investors.

[hnick]

It's just a different risk profile. They see themselves as good at managing multiple properties for a steady income, rather than leveraging highly and managing just a few for an uncertain outcome (markets change for better or worse and they don't want to be left in the lurch).

Likewise, airlines use a lot of fuel. They could save money by buying fuel producing companies... but they're not in that business and don't want to worry about it. You can vertically integrate but you also have to recognise what you are good at and what you want to focus on.

There are REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) by the way, but they did quite poorly during the GFC in Australia at least.

[sfifs]

This has mostly to do with martching age horizon of source of funds and utilisation of funds. Banks borrow short (from deposits of individuals and companies) and lend long which exposes them to a certain amount of financial risk. The big banks usually don't hold the paper and mitigate by securitizing the loans. Some smaller banks and merchant banks who know their customers better tend to hold the paper. Actually owning the property is a much longer time horizon activity than simply lending long - so the entities who do that are the ones who actually want to hold - ie. Individuals and families