California is once again going to side with PG&E to kill the solar community

You’d think, given California’s ambitious clean energy goals, that the state would be eager to support solar projects of all shapes and sizes.

In 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission dramatically reduced the rate that utilities pay homeowners with new solar panels for excess energy sold to the grid, reducing demand for residential solar power and resulting in layoffs of thousands of solar workers. solar energy. In 2023, the Commission significantly reduced incentives for schools, businesses and residential buildings to install solar panels.

On Thursday, the commission is scheduled to vote on a proposed decision that could effectively doom community solar projects – smaller facilities often connected to battery storage facilities that are intended to be located relatively close to the communities they serve. Renters, low-income residents and others who cannot afford or have access to rooftop solar panels can “subscribe” to the clean energy these facilities produce and receive bill reductions for environmental value and energy fed into the grid.

Community solar brings benefits: more clean energy available to a wider range of people. These projects could reduce the need for larger facilities and costly long-distance transmission infrastructure, mitigating some of the more adverse effects of the green energy transition. They also provide a cost-effective way for builders to meet state regulations that require most new buildings to be connected to solar energy.

However, in California, community solar rollout has been slow, largely due to complex and stringent regulations, little or no return on investment for developers, and volatility for customers.

Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, wanted to change that with AB2316. The 2022 bill would direct the Public Utilities Commission to establish a Community Renewable Energy Program that would ensure that at least 51% of electricity goes to low-income customers, prohibit cost-sharing by people not covered by the program, and would pay prevailing rates wages – which are essentially union wages – for facility construction workers.

This legislation helps explain why an extremely unusual coalition of interest groups that often fight each other bitterly – including solar developers, ratepayer advocates, climate activists and labor unions – have banded together and insisted that the Public Utilities Commission endorse the same social photovoltaic plan.

The centerpiece of this plan is a new compensation structure that they say will make it easier for community solar projects to earn and stabilize customer loans by encouraging participation from both developers and ratepayers.

But private utilities in California, including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, don’t like the idea. They claim this payment structure is illegal under federal law. Utilities have presented alternative proposals for improvements rather than reworkings of current programs, which they admit has resulted in several projects.

Nevertheless, the Public Utilities Commission sided with the utilities and issued a proposed decision that closely resembled Southern California Edison’s unsuccessful plan.

This terrified almost everyone – except private utilities.

Neil Chatterjee, who headed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under former President Donald Trump, warned California Public Utilities Commission Chair Alice Reynolds in an April letter that the proposed decision would “disrupt markets across the country” and undermine community solar programs in other states , questioning their legality. John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s clean energy adviser, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have reportedly expressed similar concerns. A bipartisan group of California lawmakers also called on the commission to reject the proposed decision.

Experts are not convinced by the committee’s argument that the coalition’s proposal violates federal law. In his letter, Chatterjee noted that the federal government has historically declined to intervene in state regulations regarding community and home solar programs.

The proposed decision “would completely destroy incentives and opportunities for solar energy,” Ward told the editorial board. “We need to make the program workable, not fix a program that doesn’t work.”

The Commission should propose a more reasonable plan. The coalition framework is a good starting point. Some details require further discussion – such as the size of the facility and distance from customers – but the committee must act quickly.

Given the uncertain outcome of the November presidential election, a delayed decision could make it more difficult for California to use or maximize federal funds, such as the recently allocated $250 million to expand community solar programs “that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to implement and benefit from solar energy in residential buildings.

“The Biden administration has made solar energy a priority. They want to get 20 gigawatts of community solar by 2025,” enough to power 5 million homes, Derek Chernow, west regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access, which developed the coalition’s framework, told the editorial board.

“Without California, we cannot access our domestic numbers. It’s so simple.”

California also won’t be able to meet its own climate goals without an aggressive, comprehensive approach that encourages solar projects of all sizes – from rooftop panels to utilities to utility-scale developments.

Instead, the state is doing everything it can to ensure that the green energy transition remains the exclusive domain of private utilities and their selected partners.

In a world increasingly devastated by climate change, utility-scale investments should not be the default solution. Just as we need more fill casing, we need more fill power.

Californians face the second-highest energy bills in the country. The Public Utilities Commission says it wants to reduce these costs, but the recent approval of a flawed plan allowing private utilities to charge customers a flat monthly fee in exchange for a small reduction in electricity rates is leaving many ratepayers behind.

The Commission should enable communities to produce more clean electricity locally, sustainably and cheaply.

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