[vanderZwan]

A guy from the village I grew up in became a millionaire with a business processing old EUR-pallets into wood chips.

Now he's getting into "sustainable" energy based on burning those woodchips. Note that this isn't about electricity, it's about delivering heat or steam from a "sustainable" source. From what I gather (through village gossip, admittedly) is that the whole process is, and I know this will piss off some people here when I say this but hear me out, heavily underregulated: nobody checks for whether the wood being burned might have been chemically treated, no need for air filters on the small furnaces being built shockingly close to villages, no problem if the hot steam from the furnace crosses half a km of open field without insulating the pipes, and so on.

And he gets millions in government subsidies of course, because "green" energy.

[js8]

The truth is, when it comes to negative externalities (like CO2, for instance), government just loves to give out subsidies rather than to create taxes. In economic theory, taxes (which can be then refunded to citizens as dividends), not subsidies (which require to leave the decision on the government instead of free market), are the correct solution to the externality problem. But in practice, regulatory capture and the general hate of taxes cause this not to be implemented. (Although sometimes industrial subsidies can be useful, since markets can also fail and be too slow. Many industries were built faster on subsidies.)

[vanderZwan]

> government just loves to give out subsidies rather than to create taxes.

Doesn't take a expert to see why "we give you freebies if you do this" is an easier political sell than "we punish you if you keep doing that". So much of modern politics is based on risk management to the point of cowardice, including upsetting potential voters.

[ljm]

The problem with a negative incentive is that saying "don't do X" doesn't mean "actually do intended alternative Y instead."

Example: Volkswagen faking emissions tests.

And at least if someone cheats their way to a subsidy a government will probably have an easier time pursuing a case for fraud than they would for tax evasion or whatever.

[vanderZwan]

The example I gave is entirely legal as far as I understand, that was my point: there are gaint gaping holes in the regulations to exploit for people who don't actually care about the environment and only wish to maximize their profits.

[jsiepkes]

I never understood the woodchips thing. Even the political green parties bought in to it; Nuclear, hell no! Burning woodchips, great idea!

How on earth can you ever sell burning wood as a environmental sensible thing to do? It's even dirtier then burning brown coal. It seems there is no limit to what people can justify with "spreadsheet-logic".

[jmkni]

We had a similar thing happen recently in Northern Ireland, people were getting paid to literally burn wood pellets to help the environment, the more pellets burned, the more money they made - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scand...

It was such a scandal it brought down our Government (although some days it feels like a light breeze would bring down our Government...)