California’s rooftop solar program collides with equity concerns

SACRAMENTO — A pandemic-era backlash from California’s yawning wealth gap is taking aim at the state’s pioneering climate policies. The latest target: incentives such as rooftop solar panels.

The generous rewards paid to those who is able to install them onto their roofs amount to subsidies for the wealthy, utilities and other critics of this program contend.

It is the latest fault line in a clash over whether too many Californians have been left behind by the state’s green drive. For years, the state has wrestled with comparable issues about electric vehicle refunds flowing to wealthy Tesla drivers.

That anti-elitism opinion has removed during a recession which has disproportionately burdened low-income communities. It has also plagued Gov. Gavin Newsom, a multimillionaire whose children attended private school as most public colleges stayed closed. The Senate currently faces a probable recall election. However, some solar supporters fear the subsequent policy adjustments to the incentive system known as”net metering” could swing too much, or that they will inspire comparable rollbacks in different nations creating the thorny transition to zero-carbon electricity.

If state authorities slash the rewards,”that will be very damaging to solar in California,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), one of the industry’s most important winners at the Legislature. “It will send a loud message to the rest of the country that California is not fully committed to a clean energy future.”

Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric have used similar equity arguments for years as they pushed to reduce incentives which challenge their enterprise model. Now they are getting newfound support from an unlikely source: environmental groups worried the coverage is unjust.

As solar becomes more ubiquitous, they assert, low- and – middle-income residents need to pay a higher share of costs to keep utilities’ poles and wires for everyone’s benefit, including solar owners. The rewards fueled rooftop solar’s explosive growth, but that success has been clouded by concerns that maintaining incentives at current levels is unsustainable.

“Solar is still’mom and apple pie’ here,” said Mike Florio, a former California utility regulator who warned half a decade ago about the solar program’s increasing cost. “It was never a politically popular place to say [the advantages are] too abundant,” he added, but pandemic-inflamed disparities have changed the calculus.

Paying owners of rooftop solar panels for the excess energy they feed back into the grid has propelled Californians to outfit a million-plus homes with solar panels, a target set 15 years ago when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor. Roughly one in 10 buildings with an electric meter have solar panels, according to California’s three largest utilities.

Customer-owned solar is still a key piece of the state’s ambitious climate agenda: Energy agencies projected in March that California needs to more than triple rooftop solar capacity by its 2045 deadline to help eliminate carbon emissions from the electricity supply.

But the state’s net metering policy has long been dogged by claims that the payments are too generous, forcing utilities to raise rates to compensate for lost revenue. And as solar owners install batteries to store their extra electricity, further reducing their monthly bills, the remaining customers are left to absorb those service costs.

Also contributing to the rate hikes: expenses associated with upgrading the century-old grid so it doesn’t spark climate-exacerbated wildfires, which last year burned a record 4.2 million acres across California and killed 33 people.

Net metering”ought to be completely removed,” said state Sen. Steve Bradford (D-Gardena), who used to work for utility Southern California Edison and chairs the California Legislative Black Caucus. “It was a bonus for early adopters of petrol energy, and now we have a program that is approaching 20 decades. I think it’s shown its self-worth, and it’s time to eliminate it.”

Many consumer advocates, environmentalists and even solar groups now agree that the benefits should be stepped down over time. California’s electricity rates are among the highest in the country, and the state, for all its wealth, has millions living in poverty. Nearly a third of its households pay a discounted rate for low-income residents.

“California has climate targets, but the question is how we reach those cost-effectively and equitably,” said Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist Mohit Chhabra. “The question is how we can do this and keep rooftop solar climbing, because it’s a location.”

State regulators studying the program have signaled they’re open to changes. An initial decision could come as soon as October.

“We have to be genuine about the disparity between who participates and who does not,” California Public Utilities Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, who’s leading the agency’s incentives review, told POLITICO last fall.

Meanwhile battle lines are being drawn over how much the payments should be cut — and whether regulators should go further by allowing utilities to charge solar owners monthly fees. Utilities and solar groups have already hired top PR firms to mobilize public support through opposing campaigns.

The utilities’ joint suggestion — to not just slash incentives, however charge fees as high as $55 per monthly energy bill to an average-size rooftop solar program — reverberated in the stock exchange in mid-March. Shares of San Francisco-headquartered Sunrun, also a manufacturer of residential solar panels and battery packs, plummeted almost 9 percent the day following the utilities’ announcement, and the San Jose-based SunPower, a competitor, was down 8 percent.

Utilities want solar owners to be compensated based on when their excess energy is sent to the grid, and to encourage solar owners who install battery packs to export power during high-demand times. But Californians might be hard pressed to do so given the state’s heat- and wildfire-driven power outages that can leave residents in the dark for days at a time.

Solar advocates say the utilities’ proposals would damage the industry and threaten the state’s climate goals just as California appears to wean its transport and construction industries fossil fuels off.

“It’s unfortunate that the idea of equity is being spun by the utilities to mean that everybody should pay a fair share of stuffing their pockets with money, as opposed to what’s best for the state and consumers, which is prioritizing distributed, local energy,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association.

“If I grew carrots in my backyard and ate them, then I had a few extras and tossed them over the fence to share with my neighbor — and as a result, both my neighbor and I purchased fewer carrots from Safeway, is that a cost shift?” She inquired. “No. Safeway has fewer carrots they need to sell, and that doesn’t mean everybody else is bearing that burden.”

Groups advocating for low-income communities of colour situated near factories, petroleum wells as well as other industrial sites are now torn between wanting to increase access to renewable energy — and the subsequent jobs for solar installers — and also reining in benefits for the rich. The non profit People Power Solar Cooperative has worked with the Sierra Club, Vote Solar and GRID Alternatives on a suggestion to preserve current incentives for low-income taxpayers while reducing benefits for additional solar clients.

“We have to figure out how to insert ourselves” to the discussion, stated Crystal Huang, the combined co-founder and CEO. “Solar should be more than just bill savings or decarbonization. It should be looking at the tools of wealth building, for communities to come together. … That’s what we call energy democracy.”

Debra Kahn contributed to this report.

Article Source and Credit politico.com https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/03/31/californias-rooftop-solar-program-collides-with-equity-concerns-1369173 Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buytickets.com