Alberta (Canada) slaps punitive tax on solar panels

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• Hacker News
• Regressives that will be left behind by most of the world within 10 years.
  by dyauspitr
• Entrenched interests want to take us all down with them, unfortunately. They will burn the field and salt the earth rather than yield control and lose their parasitical source of wealth.
  by cmrdporcupine
• This is an insane take. A $14 recycling tax per $1000+ panel comes to <1.4%, which is around a quarter of federal sales tax for example, or 1/10 of combined GST and PST somewhere like BC.

  Alberta has no provincial sales tax for the record and is the ONLY province without provincial sales tax. Solar panels are still more expensive in every other province in Canada based on sales tax rates alone.

  <1.4% to fund the proper recycling of a solar panel seems more than reasonable.

  Edit - also Alberta already has the lowest cost per installed watt of any province due to generally lower taxes and more vibrant construction ecosystem. Plus no PST. Complaining about a recycling fee is completely brain-dead and/or propaganda.

  Edit 2 - https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/06/05/solar-panel-recycling...

  $14 per panel seems pretty good. This link estimates the cost at $15-45 USD, I've heard of costs as high as a couple hundred euros in France (except it's billed directly to the manufacturer so it's hidden). Complaining about $14 in the only Canadian province without PST is ridiculous.

  by dismalaf
• Spare me. Even if the tax itself is whatever, saying that UCP didn't mean this at the very least as empty propaganda is purposefully glib.
  by gosteinao
• Provide sources for your $1000+ panel.

  https://solarpowerdepot.ca/canadian-solar-450w-mono-bifacial...

  https://solarshoppingmall.com/products/renesola-450w-mono-so...

  Those numbers point more towards 5-10% cost per panel.

  I think your “$1,000+ panel” is conflating the hardware with its share of the entire installation. I don't know how else to explain it.

  Also the "$14" number was put out by AMRA (the government's body) without any explanation of how they arrived at that number.

  TFA is biased, yes, but its bias is frankly justifiable in the current context. While your "take" seems profoundly dishonest.

  by cmrdporcupine
• I'm cool with cleanup costs up front...

  Can Alberta apply it to oil and gas companies too?

  by scj
• $1000 panel? I’m pretty sure 600 watt panels are coming in at <$100 on the global market. Prices have come down a lot in the past decade.
  by ericd
• Clicks on Authors name

  ctrl- Danielle Smith

  Ah.

  One thing I find endlessly funny is when people of a particular leaning adopt “the other side”’s arguments when it suits them. People who are left leaning generally have a positive view of taxation, and reject arguments that it stifles growth and development, or that it creates a complex bureaucratic environment. Yet the author seems to have no problem applying that argument when it suits their case. You see this on the right as well when so-called personal freedom enjoyers argue for the dismantling of certain individual freedoms if they disagree with them.

  In this case it sounds like a nothing burger which is being used to fuel the authors personal vendetta against Alberta’s premiers.

  by slopinthebag
• Seems cheap to me. No way 14 bucks covers collection, transport to a specialized recycling plant and recycling of a panel. We also have a long hiatory of slapping recycling fees on electronics and other thibgs across canada so this doeant seem out of line at all.
  by snapplebobapple
• I unfortunately live in Alberta and I have to say Smith seems decently smart. Which is not to say I agree with or would vote for her but that shes very capable of getting things she wants. Seeing Alberta pop up on HN so often is disheartening. I hope she gets voted out soon or I just might have to move
  by jerlendds
• Lol Alberta absolutely mogs Canada in nearly every objective measurement.

  Highest per capita GDP, most affordable housing for places you'd actually want to live (Calgary twice as affordable as Toronto or Vancouver), most private sector jobs, lowest taxes, etc...

  It's why Alberta absolutely dominates inter-provincial migration. Thinking Alberta isn't the best province or that there's something wrong with the government has no basis in objective reality.

  You should move to another Canadian province for a year, just to see.

  I mistakingly moved to BC because my wife was sick of the cold and it's basically 3rd world compared to Alberta (apart from a small slice of Vancouver which is nice I guess).

  by dismalaf
• Right, I submitted because in addition to being from Alberta (originally, not there now) and having my whole family out there I think there's actually a useful analysis where Alberta's right wing forces have been for sometime a "vanguard" the further side of conservative ideology in North America ... and have had enormous "success" in not just fighting climate change initiatives but breaking apart a lot of the Canadian social contract. They're successful in enacting policy that even their own domestic population is wildly opposed to. Over and over again. E.g. they have extremely little support within their own urban centres, but still run the province however they want.

  So actually, it's a place that needs to be watched as a barometer of the future, really. And an example of why "technology will save us from climate change" is a bad take: these people (petroleum sector) will fight tooth and nail to hold onto what they have and they will take us all down with them.

  by cmrdporcupine
• Alberta is the most US-like province. As it's not been hit by Trump tariffs, it opposes any change to the current situation. As it's based on oil revenue (with some food production), of course it opposes renewable energy sources. Bit selfish, it is.

  I wonder how loud they'd yowl if "no trade with Canada" gores their ox?

  by jleyank
• Implicit in all the "we'll bring Canada to heel" and "we don't need anything from Canada" talk is an Alberta/Sask exception. They don't mean AB/SK. They mean the rest of Canada, which leans further to the left politically and has more of a manufacturing sector or agricultural / forestry focus.

  Also notably there are US states like Texas which are also extremely focused on fossil fuel production which aren't taking this aggressive anti-renewables stance. Alberta is actually further on this axis than any other regime in North America -- taking on a very explicit anti-renewables stance. Even effectively (through regulation) banning their use in large scale datacentre rollouts.

  The local elites there are extremely threatened by any renewable talk; they run an active disinformation campaign, and formerly the province had one of the fastest growing renewable sectors in the world. (Alberta gets a lot of solar hours and has high winds, too)

  Aside, I was coming back from Edmonton a couple days ago and in the airport there's a wine/liquor store with a sandwich board out front proudly proclaiming that they "have US wine & liquor for sale!" -- completely thumbing nose at the rest of the country as a business opportunity.

  by cmrdporcupine
• Peak oil, peak profits, peak stupidity.

  These are the last gasps of the petro dollar.

    Solar pv and batteries have already won the future as humanities main energy source.
  
   Tar sand is going to be totaly abandoned as a fossil fuel even before coal.
  

  Demand collapse for hydrocarbons has begun.

  China has reduced oil consumption by 9% so far this year, CO² reductions are more, while there overall energy consumption has gone up.Many other countrys are following suit, and thats, that.

  by metalman
• Disposal/recycling fees should be applied to all products.
  by em3rgent0rdr
• I will believe that's the goal when I see the tax going directly to aid in disposal.
  by kennywinker
• Has always seemed like a policy failure to not just charge those fees at the point of sale and then fund a robust waste disposal program for the community.
  by mulderc
• 100% we should charge for long term environmental impacts.

  Start with gasoline and diesel first.

  by testing22321
• Cleanup costs should be applied to all coal mines, but we didn’t bother with that either.
  by nativeit
• Why don't they slap some punitive taxes on O&G executives whose companies that leave abandoned wells all over the province? No? Government too captured by corporate interests?
  by morkalork
• AER charges all active O&G companies operating in Alberta a levy that's meant to fund closing orphaned wells should a company go bankrupt and fail to close their wells. However, you can argue that the levy isn't high enough or that there are too many loopholes that let companies sell off, merge, etc. without closing down wells first.
  by beloch
• This is a good lesson in how headlines can be used to manipulate you - "slaps", "punitive tax"
  by jdlyga
• I’m not at all defending this, but before you freak out, it’s a $14 fee per solar panel. Not like 25% tax on utilities that produce solar or somesuch.

  In case you want to appropriately calibrate your anger.

  by softwaredoug
• It will only make sense if the per cost panel is less than certain number (if my math is correct it should be $175), but if the panel cost is over $175 then even with more sales taxes in other provinces the total will be cheaper. That is of course on capital cost not operational, also, not counting the “forced recycling” mentioned.
  by tamimio
• First you introduce the tax, then you increase it. Minimum public anger. They messed up because it's a recycling tax that I presume does not apply to... everything? So it feels punitive. Also it's big. I pay way less recycling tax on bigger and harder to recycle items.
  by GoToRO
• The $14 is what ARMA claims in their press relesaes but they haven't broken down where they came at that number. Many analysts seem to think it could be much higher.

  The net effect along with other regulatory moves the AB gov't has taken (they banned all renewables projects outright for some months a couple years ag) is to discourage investment in what was formerly a growing sector.

  by cmrdporcupine
• > it’s a $14 fee per solar panel

  Note that usually you mount many solar panels, not just one, so this will stack relatively quickly.

  by SkiFire13