Don’t derail decarbonization with narrow-minded rooftop solar policy – Santa Monica Daily Press

Amy Butte / Climate Protection Santa Monica

The future of rooftop solar systems is at a critical juncture with a proposed decision from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). California has over 9 gigawatts of rooftop solar power out of a total of 23 gigawatts of solar power. We will need 3 to 4 times that amount to achieve 100% renewable electricity per SB100 by 2045. Santa Monica’s plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 is targeting 10 times our current installed megawatts, in part by conquering the multi-family housing market. This will be impossible with the proposed policy, which would require single or multi-family homes with solar rooftops to pay huge fees to the utility while earning much smaller credits for feeding additional electricity into the grid.

To replace gas, which is currently burned for half of California’s electricity, solar energy must be stored. In 2021, 89% of new large-scale solar projects included storage, while for rooftop solar systems that figure is 15% and growing. Despite supply shortages, the Santa Monicaans installed 30 systems with batteries in the last 2 years. Importantly, three million electric cars using half their battery capacity could replace all nighttime fossil generation. Vehicle-to-Grid is currently being piloted in Torrance and elsewhere.

The CPUC intended to incentivize storage with its proposed “net billing” policy, but it deals a blow to rooftop solar systems so severe that, with or without batteries, the industry and its 60,000 jobs are at risk. With the highest monthly solar fees in the country, the payback period for rooftop solar systems would increase to over 18 years, making it an uneconomical investment. For low-income customers, payback periods lengthen slightly and then dramatically over four years as subsidies drop. Solar energy fed into the grid earns “avoided cost” credits based on wholesale electricity values, which exclude the cost of adding new transmission lines and other benefits of local generation.

When the Clean Power Alliance, the community-chosen electric utility for Santa Monica and 31 other cities, imports cheap solar power from the desert, we pay the cost of transmission to Southern California Edison. A recent study estimated that by maximizing rooftop and community solar, Californians would save 2.3 cents per kWh, or a total of $120 billion, by 2050. During a heat wave last July, a wildfire near a high-voltage power line in Oregon nearly shut down California’s power grid.

People are motivated to take responsibility for their CO2 emissions and the reliability of their electricity supply by participating in the sustainable energy transition. Utilities and the CPUC claim that rooftop solar is shifting costs to everyone else because power from remote solar farms is cheap at times when rooftop solar is feeding the grid. However, 12 percent of California solar adopters in 2019 had incomes less than $50,000, and another 29% had incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 — up from 9% and 24% a decade earlier. Financing such as solar loans, leases and power purchase agreements are easily accessible and require no down payment. When guaranteed returns are provided for building transfers to utilities while eliminating returns from rooftop solar investors, we are wasting resources needed to meet our climate goals.

Rooftop solar systems do not impact wildlife or native, public and formerly protected areas like remote solar farms do. The bonfire that burned down the town of Paradise was caused by a ruptured wire on a high-voltage pylon. Recent studies have shown that migratory waterbird deaths in large solar parks increase during autumn migration because they are mistaken for lakes.

Electrification is essential for decarbonization. California requires all new buildings to have solar roofs and all new car sales to be electric by 2035. Santa Monica has incentives for all-electric buildings and expanding EV charging. Electricity consumption will change as buildings go electric and electric cars are bought, which people want to charge with their own solar power. If we abandon the solar market, as it becomes mainstream and begins to reach apartment dwellers, we will all be holding the pocket of an outdated supply system that is less likely to be decarbonized. The CPUC must propose a new, less narrow-minded plan to achieve an equitable and sustainable energy system.

Climate Action Santa Monica (CASM) is a community-based environmental organization dedicated to local climate governance and adaptation. We have joined the coalition of over 600 organizations to save California Solar and are taking simple action against Governor Newsom and the CPUC. Amy Butte runs the CASM Climate Corps program for youth and has a background in the renewable energy business.