California should do more to incentivize clean energy in lower-income areas. And the state should be promoting the installation of a million batteries to store the energy that the solar panels capture. That’s how we can truly democratize energy. But adding a tax and removing incentives will hurt the solar market, and making solar more expensive for everyone does nothing to help our most vulnerable.
California has been hit hard in recent years by the changing climate, with record droughts and catastrophic wildfires. That’s another reason this proposal makes no sense; we should be pulling out all the stops to slow global warming. California is already so far behind on meeting its 2030 climate goals that the state isn’t projected to hit them until 2063. And our 2050 goals? We are on track to reach them by 2111.
Now California is about to take a big step backward by setting up huge barriers for consumers to adopt solar power. Installing panels on roofs is one of the fastest ways to produce renewable energy. They can be installed without complicated permitting or land fights, and they produce immediate reductions in dirty and dangerous emissions.
Rooftop solar also helps protect open space by generating electricity in places that are already built up. Every home, apartment building, school, farm and business that installs solar panels makes the air cleaner, reduces the need for costly investments in the grid and helps communities keep the lights on in the face of wildfires and blackouts. It also gives people a sense of self-sufficiency and independence from the grid. Is it any surprise that the big utilities want to take that away?
PG&E and other utilities want us to rely on their grids. But how much can Californians really depend on them? In the case of PG&E, we are talking about a company that pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of 84 Californians because it failed to maintain a transmission line that ignited the deadly Camp fire in 2018.
This is just another case of the big guys — the investor-owned utilities — fighting for themselves and hurting people who have invested or want to invest in solar panels.
Incentives matter when creating a new energy infrastructure. In Nevada, for instance, the state’s rooftop solar adoption rate plummeted 47 percent in the year after the state’s public utilities commission made solar more expensive for consumers by adding higher fixed costs on net-metering customers and reducing the price paid to customers for the excess energy they generate. A public outcry compelled the Nevada Legislature to reverse the changes, and more people started putting solar panels on their rooftops again. It’s common sense.