The Daily Green The Green Revolution: Who Rally Benefits?

August 28, 2026

Rooftop installations and electric vehicles in driveways are seen as the icons of climate change resistance. However, what is not in the glossy symbols is an unwelcome fact: this ‘green revolution’ is currently being achieved largely by the wealthier, and at the expense of the poor. It’s not a technology issue. Electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and solar power are not by themselves unethical. The actual hurdle is, how do these technologies get to people, and as yet it has been overwhelmingly biased towards the rich?

The numbers do not deceive

Who could have imagined that the United States, where government tax credits would help bring clean technology within reach for all? In fact it is the 60% of income earners who make the least who see only a miniscule slice of these benefits and the top fifth of earners claim the bulk of them. The split is even more pronounced with electric vehicles; about half of the value of the EV tax credit has been received by the bottom 20% of taxpayers, while fourfifths of taxpayers received no more than 40% of the total credit value.

Furthermore, the distribution of the value of electric vehicle tax credits is even starker: roughly half of EV tax credit value has been captured by the top 5 percent of earners, and the bottom 60 percent of households received little to nothing. Why does it continue to get the same mistakes over and over? Many people which want to install solar panels require them to own their homes, and credit is essential in order to finance an EV. So the money that is put in the ears of the rich, is really being given to the rich rather than to those who need it. Worse still, much of this expenditure could be doing nothing more than changing nobody’s behaviour. Of course many recipients would presumably have purchased an EV even if they had not been offered this credit. Public funds are being squandered, to little benefit beyond transferring additional wealth to the comfortable.

The secret is that the rich get there first

This typical scenario isn’t only occurring with green technology. It’s just the way any new technology gets disseminated. More highly educated and financially stable individuals, such as innovators and early adopters are always first in line. The more people have adopted something, the less it’s going to costs and slowly it becomes available for everybody else. Solar PV installation, for example, has reduced by about 20% with each successive doubling of output globally and this has contributed to making solar electricity some of the cheapest in the world. Reducing technology costs isn’t necessarily a fair solution. Despite these price drops, money savings and financing problems and inadequate infrastructure continue to be a major obstacle for the less affluent community.

There are better ways

The silver lining in this is there’s a role for optimism. The concept of ‘leapfrogging’ means that developing nations do not have to follow the same industrial process that has created the carbon footprint of richer countries. Just like in many countries, where they have been foregoing landlines in favor of mobile networks, there is now a possibility of poor countries in emerging markets skipping energy-intensive coal and petroleum and grow clean from the outset from the beginning in the area of energy. A third possible pathway is to combine carbon pricing with dividends. In this scheme the proceeds of the carbon tax are refunded to the populace as a lump sum. By contrast, lower income households started with smaller carbon footprints and, thus, would reap greater financial gains.

However, neither seems to be a panacea. No single or combination of these elements, financing, infrastructure, institutional capacity, can be provided by many developing countries, yet, at the present time. Dividends don’t cover the initial expense of installation of a solar panel or purchase of an EV in the first place.

A real lever is the policy design

There is undoubtedly one thing in which green technology has left us with clear evidence: it does not confer a definite solution to inequality. It’s a policy decision. Income-sensitive subsidies, public leasing, on-bill financing and low-interest loans are all ways that make the same technologies available to lowincome users. Technical transfer and financing by concession may in the future overcome the difference of wealth between rich and poor countries in the world as a whole. This is a reality of climate tech: the technology is becoming more and more equitable as its adoption spreads and prices drop. But this won’t take place without work. It will be based on policy decisions made today, who we’re really trying to help here with the subsidy, and who is being left out.