The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) is about to vote on its Net Metering (NEM) proposal. This is the second time in less than a year that the state has proposed reforming NEM, which offers generous rebates to homeowners with rooftop solar, for the excess electricity they put back onto the power grid.
To say I am deeply disappointed by the CPUC’s NEM proposal is an understatement. Why am I disappointed with the current reforms? Because the CPUC is keeping structural policies that have been shown to have a demonstrated negative impact upon customers. According to California regulators, “Californians today spend more than $3 billion a year to support NEM programs,” and “households without NEM systems pay $100 to $234 more per year, depending on utility.”
Affordability is a critical issue for lower income Californians who cannot adopt rooftop solar and therefore bear too great a financial burden for the state’s electrical system. And, because of historical policies and access to credit barriers – this ultimately results in impacting California’s communities of color the most.
Renters cannot add rooftop solar to their rental unit, and low-income Californians who may own a home or an apartment may not be able to get financing for costly solar panels. Make no mistake, the issue is that California’s policies are in fact socially regressive – wealthier Californians benefit by fee eliminations and excess rebates for power returned to the grid. And, the CPUC’s NEM proposal will embed and institutionalize these rate inequities by freezing them in place. So, working-class, and poor Californians pay higher rates for power and are forced to pay a greater burden for maintaining the grid: an unfair double-whammy.
I’m a big fan of solar and all renewable energy. I’m also a proponent of social justice and breaking down structural barriers within policy and systems that continue to negatively impact so many communities.
Blatant inequities plaguing the existing NEM is why even the Natural Resources Defense Council and The Utility Reform Network (TURN) strongly supported the original plan to reform NEM, to make it fairer for all customers and for low income Californians. But the CPUC’s new NEM proposal has walked away from many of the needed reforms. Under the CPUC’s updated NEM proposal, only new homes with rooftop solar would see their subsidies reduced – existing rooftop solar customers would essentially be unaffected or “grandfathered” — a negative historical policy to protect some communities over others.
Indeed, TURN staff attorney said about the cost shift caused by NEM “will explode in the coming decade and threaten affordability for all customers.” It will also keep a regressive policy at a time when we need to be socially progressive by stopping structural inequities today. California has been a leader in the past on so many social issues, don’t change now.