Something I didn't notice in the Budget yesterday: the government has stolen National's solar policy. This isn't surprising - the current policy offered too little money and was too much hassle, so it was in for a major shakeup; National's proposal to double the size of the grant and simplify applications was a good idea, and an obvious one at that (the government's contribution has been to shift the paperwork onto the home owner and give them cash in hand, thus solving the split incentive problem of installers having no reason to fill out forms so their customer gets a discount).
Combined with their efforts to change local government's minds on the need for resource consents (the actual hard work), hopefully this means we'll see a lot more solar water heaters installed over the next few years.
