When the 30% tax credits as cash grants were instituted with the American Recovery Act, I was doing solar estimates for a small solar start-up in California. I was surprised to find that the 30% solar tax credit (available as a  cash grant for businesses) was available for solar thermal - only when it was not used for heating swimming pools. Heating water for showers, dishes, radiant heating system in buildings with solar thermal was eligible, but swimming pools were excluded.

Yet I found that heating the swimming pool was the greatest need that the apartment owners I was contacting had, and it was such a staggering source of greenhouse gas emissions, that I wrote up my suggestion that “like heating apartment pools” should be instated as the measure we use when we say doing something is like taking some number of “cars-off-the-road” to  “measure” carbon reduction.

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