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california public utilities commission
Why Is ‘Climate Change Crusader’ Newsom Waging War on Rooftop Solar?
The answer has more to do with protecting utility company profits the planet or low-income Californians.
Aug 14, 2024
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he’s in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He’s been called a “climate-change crusader” and a leader of America’s clean energy revolution.
“[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs,” Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. “We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us.”
These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet’s becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil fuel legislation. It’s also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Gov. Newsom might say, he’s also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.
Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.
Consider California’s residential solar program (its “net-metering“), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state’s utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They’ve called this alleged problem a “cost-shift” from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.
It’s true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state’s electricity rates up just isn’t true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California’s utility companies to turn a profit.
Here’s an example of how those rates work and why they’ve gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it’s those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.
In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn’t rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.
A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that’s the only way they turn a profit).
“What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. “Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation.”
However, such lower costs also mean less profits for utility companies, so they have found an ingenious workaround. They could appease climate concerns while making a bundle of money by building large solar farms in the desert. In the process, nothing about how they generated revenue would change, energy costs would continue to rise, and little would stand in their way, not even a vulnerable forest of Joshua trees.
Solar Panels vs. the Joshua Tree
“Why Razing Joshua Trees for Solar Farms Isn’t Always Crazy,” a troubling Los Angeles Times headline read. Sammy Roth, an intrepid environmental reporter who has written insightfully and cogently on the way humanity is altering the climate, was nonetheless all in on uprooting thousands of Joshua trees in California’s Kern County to make space for that giant solar farm. The “Aratina Solar Project,” a sprawling 2,300-acre installation in the heart of the Mojave Desert, would transfer electricity to wealthy coastal areas, powering more than 180,000 homes. As Roth reported, “There are places to build solar projects besides pristine ecosystems. But there’s no get-out-of-climate-change-free card… Hence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees. I feel kind of terrible saying that.”
He should feel terrible. Roth believes that tearing up Joshua trees, already in great jeopardy due to our warming climate, is the price that must be paid to save ourselves from ourselves. But is sacrificing wild spaces—and, in this case, also threatening the habitat of the desert tortoise—truly worth it? Is this really the best solution we can come up with in our overheating world? There do appear to be better options, but they would also upend the status quo and put far less money in the pockets of utility shareholders.
Just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County.
Here’s how Californians could think outside the box or, in this case, on top of it. A single Walmart roof averages 180,000 square feet. In California, there are 309 Walmarts. That’s 55,620,000 square feet or 1,276 acres of rooftop. Home Depots? There are 247 of them in California and each of their roofs averages 104,000 square feet, totaling 25,668,000 square feet, or around 589 acres. Throw in 318 Target stores, averaging 125,000 square feet, and you have over 39,750,000 square feet or another 912 acres. Add all of those up and you have 2,777 acres of rooftops that could be turned into mini-solar farms.
In other words, just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County. And that doesn’t even include all the Costcos (129), Lowes (111), Amazon warehouses (100+), Ikeas (8), strip malls, schools, municipal buildings, parking lots, and so much more that would provide far better options.
You get the picture. The potential for solar in our built environment is indeed enormous. Throw in the more than 5.6 million single-family homes in California with no solar panels, and there’s just so much rooftop real estate that could generate electricity without wrecking entire ecosystems already facing a frighteningly hot future.
In 2014, it was estimated that solar power from California homes produced 2.2 gigawatts of energy. Ten years later, that potential is so much greater. As of summer 2024, the state has 1.9 million residential rooftop solar installations capable of churning out 16.7 gigawatts of power. It’s estimated that 1 gigawatt can conservatively power 750,000 homes. This means that the solar generation now installed on California’s roofs could theoretically, if stored, power 12,525,000 homes in a state with only 7.5 million of them. Already, in 2022, it’s believed that the state wasted nearly 2.3 million megawatt-hours worth of solar-produced electricity.
And mind you, this isn’t just back-of-the-napkin math. A 2021 geospatial analysis of rooftop solar conducted by researchers at Ireland’s University of Cork and published in Nature confirmed what many experts have long believed: that the U.S. has enough usable rooftop space to supply the entire country’s energy demands and, with proper community-based storage, would be all we would need to fulfill our energy production demands—and then some! If properly deployed, the U.S. could produce 4.2 petawatt-hours per year of rooftop solar electricity, more than the country consumes today. (A petawatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one trillion kilowatt-hours.) The report also noted that there are enough rooftops worldwide to potentially fully feed the world’s energy appetite.
If residential solar has succeeded exceptionally well and has so much possibility, why are we intent on destroying desert ecology with massive, industrial-scale solar farms? The answer in Gavin Newsom’s California has much more to do with politics and corporate avarice than with mitigating climate change.
Profit-Driven Utilities
Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.
“Rooftop solar has value in avoiding costs that utilities would have to pay to deliver that same kilowatt-hour of energy, such as investments in transmission lines and other grid infrastructure,” reports the solar-advocacy group, Solar Rights Alliance. “Rooftop solar also reduces the public health costs of fossil fuel power plants and the costs to ratepayers of utility-caused wildfires and power shut-offs. Rooftop solar also provides quantifiable benefits through local economic development and jobs. It preserves land that would otherwise be used for large-scale solar development. When paired with batteries, rooftop solar helps build community resilience.”
Nonetheless, blaming rooftop solar for California’s increased electricity rates has been a painfully effective argument. So, here’s a question to consider: Why does it seem like Newsom is working on behalf of the utilities to limit small-scale rooftop solar? Could it be related to the $10 million Pacific Gas & Electric donated to his campaigns since he first ran for office in San Francisco in the late 1990s? Or could it be because key members of his cabinet are tight with PG&E executives? (Dana Williamson, his current chief of staff, was a former director of public affairs at PG&E.)
Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms.
Then, consider the potential conflict of interest when the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which previously worked for PG&E, was tasked by Newsom with drafting wildfire legislation to save the company from bankruptcy. PG&E would, in fact, end up hammering out a deal with CPUC to pass on the costs of the bailout, a staggering $11 billion, to ratepayers over a 30-year period.
It all worked out well for the company. In 2023, PG&E, which serves 16 million people, raked in $2.2 billion in profits, nearly a 25% jump from 2022.
“The coziness between Gavin Newsom and [PG&E] is unlike anything we’ve seen in California politics… Their motive is profit, which is driven by Wall Street,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of California Solar & Storage Association, who has over a decade of experience monitoring the industry. “[The utility companies] have to keep posting record profits, quarter after quarter. It’s a perversity that nobody is really thinking about.”
It’s pretty simple really. Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms. Ultimately, this means higher bills for consumers to cover the costs of a grid they are forced to rely on as home solar systems become increasingly expensive.
(More) Bad News for the Climate
Newsom’s war on rooftop solar has had another detrimental impact: It’s threatened the state’s clean energy goals. And the governor hasn’t said a word about that. The California Energy Commission estimates that, to meet its climate benchmarks, the state must add 20,000 megawatts of rooftop solar electricity by 2030. At this pace, they’ll be lucky to install 10,000 megawatts. With such a precipitous decline in home solar installations, the 20,000 megawatts goal will never be reached by that year, even when you include all large-scale solar developments now in the works.
The Coalition for Community Solar Access estimates that 81% of solar companies in the state fear they’ll have to close up shop. Bad news for the solar industry also means bad news not just for California, the nation’s leader in solar energy production, but for the climate more generally.
The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere.
A rapid decline in new solar installations also means massive job losses, possibly 22% of the state’s solar gigs, or up to 17,000 workers. In addition to such bleak projections, disincentivizing rooftop solar will also hurt the Californians most impacted by warming temperatures and in need of relief—those who can’t afford to live along the state’s more temperate coast.
“Rooftop solar is not just the wealthy homeowners anymore,” State Senator Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, recently toldCalMatters. “Central Valley people are suffering from extreme heat. The industry has been making great strides in low-income communities. This [utilities commission decision] makes it harder.”
The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. All of this may also be a sign that rooftop solar across the country is in peril. Utility companies and those hoping to gut residential solar programs in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are already humming Newsom’s “cost-shift” tune.
“They [the big utilities] know it’s a pivotal time,” Bernadette Del Chiaro tells me, with a sense of urgency and deep concern for what lies ahead. “They are fighting really hard, and they are fighting hardest in California because where California goes, there goes the nation.”
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New Ally Joins Fight to Defend Rooftop Solar in California
"It's outrageous that California regulators keep attacking rooftop solar and it has to stop," said one attorney in the case.
Jul 09, 2024
A leading U.S. green group on Tuesday joined the legal challenge to a California rule banning solar contractors from installing or maintaining photovoltaic battery storage.
The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) joined an amended lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court against a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulation enacted last year in accordance with the wishes 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 new CPUC rule. Climate campaigners and Democratic state lawmakers have previously launched challenges to the regulation.
CBD said the new rule "would increase the cost and administrative burden of installing rooftop solar and storage, vital technologies that make communities more resilient to utility blackouts and the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency."
Roger Lin, a CBD senior attorney, said in a statement: "It's outrageous that California regulators keep attacking rooftop solar and it has to stop. They're undermining California's climate goals and putting clean energy further out of reach for working-class families."
"This licensing trick is straight from the utility playbook and will cause electricity rates to skyrocket while worsening the climate emergency," Lin added. "People are dying from extreme heat and California desperately needs smart, resilient energy solutions. Instead, the board is propping up a brittle electricity grid that devastates critical habitats and promotes environmental injustice."
The new suit came on the same day that the California Energy Commission (CEC) announced nearly $19 million in new grants meant to assist communities in their efforts to automate the approval of residential solar energy permits.
"We are thrilled to be able to disburse funds to over 330 cities and counties across California to make it easier for residents to go solar," CEC Chair David Hochschild said in a statement, calling the program "a win for residents, building departments, solar businesses, and our environment."
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New Bill Seeks to Salvage Rooftop Solar for Working Class in California
"This is not a zero-sum game. We can't ignore our climate, the urgent need for energy justice, and the significant community benefits of rooftop solar and expect to have a fighting chance against climate change."
Feb 13, 2024
Backed by two climate action groups, Democratic state lawmakers in California on Tuesday launched an effort to reverse the damage done by state regulators last year when they slashed incentives for residents to install rooftop solar panels—wreaking havoc on the once-thriving industry even as the state faces an energy crisis.
Introduced by state Assemblymembers Laura Friedman (D-44) and Marc Berman (D-23), Assembly Bill 2256 would unwind the policy put in place last year by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which was supported by the state's three investor-owned utilities and sharply reduced the amount utilities pay people with solar panels when they sell surplus power to the grid.
The policy applied to homeowners as well as renters in disadvantaged communities, and critics warned it would put solar panels even further out of reach for low- and middle-income Californians.
A.B. 2256, sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Environment California, would require the CPUC to "consider the wider community benefits of rooftop solar" in its policymaking, said CBD.
"This bill will force state regulators to stop shirking their duty and consider renewable energy's wide-ranging benefits so rooftop solar is available to everyone," said Roger Lin, a senior attorney at CBD. "The commission's decision to tank the state's rooftop solar policy was a gift to corporate utilities and a gut punch to communities and our environment. We're in a climate emergency, and it's reckless for the commission to ignore the harm fossil fuels do to our health and environment when it's making energy decisions."
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said earlier this month that "rooftop only pencils out for the wealthy" under the CPUC policy, which has caused solar companies to lay off 17,000 workers in less than a year and pushed 75% of firms toward bankruptcy.
Rooftop solar power had "been making great strides in low-income communities," state Sen. Josh Becker (D-13) told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month, but "this [CPUC decision] makes it harder."
A.B. 2256 was introduced weeks after CBD, EWG, and the Protect Our Communities Foundation asked the California Supreme Court to overturn the CPUC policy following unsuccessful challenges at the commission and a state appeals court.
It also comes a day after Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group published a report marking the dramatic growth of rooftop solar nationwide over the past decade, with 10 times as much power produced in 2022 than 10 years prior.
California ranked as the state with the largest growth in small-scale solar generation, producing 24,121 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2022—just before the CPUC policy was introduced. In 2012 the state produced just 2,453 GWh.
"Rooftop solar is good for the environment and consumers," reads the report. "It reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, eases strain on the grid during periods of high demand, can increase resilience to threats like extreme weather, and limits the amount of land needed for clean energy—all at steadily falling costs."
The California Air Resources Board suggested in 2022 that disincentivizing solar power for residents was the wrong direction for the state to go in, saying the state needed to double its rooftop solar to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030.
"How can we weigh the costs and benefits of rooftop solar without considering all the benefits to our health, our neighbors, and what's left of our open spaces?" said Lin. "This is not a zero-sum game. We can't ignore our climate, the urgent need for energy justice, and the significant community benefits of rooftop solar and expect to have a fighting chance against climate change."
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