How California’s new rooftop solar proposal would hobble our transition to clean energy

A year ago, state regulators trotted out a solar tax that threatened to kill California’s flourishing rooftop solar industry, and the backlash was immediate. But the California Public Utilities Commission’s revised rooftop solar plan is no improvement.

The $50-a-month tax is gone, but deep inequities remain. Under the new proposal, the divide between those who can afford solar and those who can’t is all but guaranteed to grow.

The new proposal eliminates a $600 million dollar equity fund that would have brought rooftop solar to low-income communities and communities of color. The commission claims the fund is superseded by a new California law intended to encourage rooftop solar and storage for these communities. But the law came with no money: It’s subject to legislative appropriations that may or may not happen. It also fails to fund critical marketing and education to reach disadvantaged communities.

By replacing guaranteed spending to expand rooftop solar with uncertain funding and no outreach to the people being left behind, the commission’s new proposal deals a serious blow to racial and economic justice.

It gets worse: The new proposal drastically cuts how much credit new rooftop solar customers will receive for excess electricity they send back to the grid.

Under existing “net metering” policies, solar customers pay only for their net electricity use each month, factoring in both their contributions to the grid when they generate more than they use and the power they take from the grid, particularly at night. Regulators want to give new rooftop solar customers only a fraction of the value of the extra power they generate. Worse, utilities will collect full payment for that excess power when it goes to other customers.

As a result, California’s for-profit utilities will reap more income while new rooftop solar customers — including those in disadvantaged communities — get far less.

The new plan also continues net-metering benefits for existing rooftop solar customers for nine years, meaning households that can afford to install rooftop solar despite these changes will benefit far less than those that invested in it years ago. How is that equitable? And why is the commission letting early adopters benefit from rooftop solar and punishing those who couldn’t afford it?

A core rationale for regulators’ bizarre proposal is the misguided idea that because solar customers are saving money, other customers are paying more than their fair share. So what’s next? A charge for weatherizing our homes or buying energy-efficient appliances?

Regulators are refusing to consider several rooftop solar benefits in calculating how much to pay solar customers for the surplus electricity they generate, claiming these “non-energy” benefits are hard to quantify. These benefits include better power reliability and resiliency, reduced air pollution and hundreds of new clean-energy jobs. Important research is underway to quantify these technological and societal benefits, and regulators should be ensuring that California’s net-metering policies are flexible enough to take that data into account.

The new proposal locks in surplus electricity rates for nine years, however. That means that even when research shows how much rooftop solar is really worth, new customers could continue to be stuck with today’s lower compensation rates. That would be yet another win for corporate utilities like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. What could be more inequitable than that?

The original solar tax was a terrible idea because it would have stalled rooftop solar across the state. Now, in an effort to ensure more rooftop solar investment, the commission is leaving communities with the fewest resources behind.

Regulators are scheduled to vote on the new plan in December. They must reconsider this deeply flawed proposal or risk torpedoing the state’s renewable-energy transition, harming disadvantaged communities and tarnishing California’s well-deserved reputation as a climate leader.