State rooftop solar decision helps utilities, hurts working families

When legislators passed California’s landmark climate law in 2006, we understood the urgency of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels and ramping up renewable energy to reduce air pollution, protect the planet, and spur economic activity.

The law set a 2020 target for reducing climate pollution, which the state has achieved. That couldn’t have happened without putting solar panels on 1 million roofs across the state between 2006 and 2019. The state’s net-metering program — which pays solar customers for sending excess electricity back to the grid — was the lynchpin to solarizing our buildings.

But now California is on the precipice of stunting rooftop solar’s vital growth, risking the progress we made and our place as a national and global leader in the climate fight. The California Public Utilities Commission should revisit their decision at their upcoming meetings. Providing resiliency for homes, multi-dwelling units, warehouses, parking lots and other buildings is in the best interest of California. We are all now even more aware of the accelerating impacts of climate change, air pollution, wildfires, extreme heat, floods, droughts and power outages.

The commission’s decision to cut incentives in rooftop solar for homes, schools and multi-dwelling units may end the employment of thousands of workers and the expansion of solar energy and storage. The new plan risks making solar energy largely unaffordable for millions of working-class people, schools, farms and businesses. It also makes it a harder sell for multi-unit buildings, putting clean energy out of reach for lower-income families who rent. Californians are racing to install rooftop solar and storage to beat any arbitrary deadlines and be grandfathered in to the current system.

In the 17 years since I co-authored the Global Warming Solutions Act and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it, the climate emergency has worsened. We should be accelerating our transition to 100% clean energy not creating roadblocks for it.

So it’s puzzling, and frightening, that California is bucking climate science and slowing the adoption of rooftop solar and storage, especially for working families who stand to benefit the most.

Competing energy interests have been working overtime across the country to kill rooftop solar because it hurts their bottom lines. Bowing to pressure from special interest groups, California regulators have dramatically rolled back net metering’s economic incentives and sidelined a major source of competition these utilities face.

But the fight is far from over. Several California based environmental organizations appealed the commission’s December decision.

Regulators are required under the law to consider all of the benefits of local electricity generation and ensure that rooftop solar continues to grow sustainably.

Isn’t rooftop solar and storage more resilient than fossil fueled-dependent electric grids, keeping life-saving electricity on during rolling utility blackouts and climate disasters like extreme heat waves and atmospheric rivers?Reducing greenhouse gases and other dangerous air pollution by transitioning to renewable energy is in everyone’s best interests.

Furthermore, there is still a $600 million untapped equity fund aimed at getting more resilient renewables to low-income communities. Abandoning these resources, further widens the divide between wealthier families who can still benefit from the new plan’s watered-down benefits and working-class families who can’t.

If we want to make a dent in the fight against climate change, we need an all of the above strategy. We must continue to support the responsible development of offshore wind, production of lithium batteries in Imperial Valley and extend, not cut, incentives for rooftop solar. We also need utility scale solar and community based solar for multi-dwelling units.

It’s not too late for the commission to hit pause, revisit its decision and devise a net-metering plan that keeps rooftop and community solar thriving in our communities and allows us to meet our climate goals.

Ten years after we passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, we updated the law by setting a climate target for 2030, but the state’s recent climate plan shows we may miss it. We must continue to invest in solar if we want to make a dent in our fight against air pollution and climate change.

California should be encouraging rooftop solar — the fastest way to produce renewable energy, reduce dirty emissions and avoid fights over permitting and land use. Undermining the key policy for working-class Californians to put solar panels on their roofs is a giant step backward that our state and the planet can’t afford.

Fran Pavley is the environmental policy director for the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. She served 29 years in elected office in California, including 14 years in the California Assembly and the state Senate.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: State rooftop solar decision helps utilities, hurts working families