New Ally Joins Fight to Defend Rooftop Solar Panels in California

A leading U.S. environmental group on Tuesday joined a legal challenge to a California law that bans solar companies from installing and maintaining solar batteries.

The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has joined an amended lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court challenging a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulation passed last year at the behest of Pacific Gas & Electric and two other investor-owned utilities.

The amended lawsuit supplements a complaint filed by CalPIRG, the Solar Rights Alliance, the California Solar & Storage Association and a solar contractor adversely affected by the CPUC’s new rule. Climate activists and Democratic state lawmakers previously filed challenges to the rule.

The CBD said the new rules would “increase the costs and administrative burdens associated with installing rooftop solar panels and storage, key technologies that make communities more resilient to power outages and the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.”

Roger Lin, senior attorney for CBD, said in a statement: “It is outrageous that California regulators continue to crack down on rooftop solar panels, and it must stop. They are undermining California’s climate goals and making it even harder for working-class families to access clean energy.”

“This licensing gimmick is straight out of the utility playbook and will skyrocket electricity rates while worsening the climate crisis,” Lin added. “People are dying from extreme heat, and California desperately needs smart, resilient energy solutions. Instead, the board is maintaining a fragile electric grid that is destroying critical habitat and promoting environmental injustice.”

The new lawsuit was filed the same day the California Energy Commission (CEC) announced nearly $19 million in new grants to help communities automate residential solar permit approvals.

“We are excited to provide funding to more than 330 cities and counties across California to make it easier for residents to go solar,” CEC Chairman David Hochschild said in a statement, calling the program “a win for residents, building departments, solar companies and our environment.”