From Inside Climate News

Rooftop solar as we know it is under threat from a case before federal regulators, and a broad array of clean energy advocates and state officials are getting nervous. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering a request from an obscure consumer group that wants to end net metering, which is the compensation mechanism that allows solar owners to sell their excess electricity to the grid. By selling the electricity they don’t need, solar owners get credits on their utility bills, producing savings that help to cover the costs of solar systems. Monday was the deadline to file comments in the case, and those who responded were overwhelmingly opposed to the petition, but clean energy advocates say there is still a real chance that FERC will decide to throw out state laws that allow net metering. “We want to be able to decide for ourselves what happens on the local grid,” said Brad Heavner, policy director for the California Solar & Storage Association. “This is clearly a local issue.” He told me that getting rid of net metering “is pretty close to saying solar is illegal.” I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would be accurate to say that ending net metering would fundamentally undermine the economics of rooftop solar.

This case exists because the New England Ratepayers Association, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit organization, filed a petition in April that says net metering is an unfair subsidy that leads to a shift in costs to consumers who do not have rooftop solar. The argument is a familiar one, often made by utilities and fossil fuel companies. It overlaps in some ways with arguments made by social justice groups that have long said that white people are getting a disproportionate share of the economic benefits of solar. But the key difference is that utilities and fossil fuel companies are often trying to hold back development of rooftop solar, while the social justice groups are often trying to expand access to solar. Also, there is little evidence that the growth of solar leads to noticeably higher bills for non-solar customers. The filing asks FERC to rule that net metering should be subject to wholesale pricing rules enforced by the federal government, effectively ending net metering. Like this? Click to receive free EP Blog updates The goal of the petition “is to eviscerate state net metering and therefore eviscerate financing tools to make rooftop solar systems affordable,” said Tyson Slocum of the consumer group Public Citizen. His group has said that New England Ratepayers is not being forthright about its sources of financing and is falsely claiming to stand up for low-income consumers. New England Ratepayers, which does not disclose its donors, got 90 percent of its budget from 15 companies or individuals paying dues of $20,000 or $5,000 each, according to the organization’s 2018 tax form. I asked the New England Ratepayers to respond to these points. “NERA has hundreds of individual and business members, and like many organizations uses its own judgment on how it determines its budget and membership fee tiers,” said Marc Brown, president of New England Ratepayers, in an email. “The unifying common denominator for its members is that they all pay electric utility bills, and are concerned about the cost-shift imposed on them by retail net metering.” Looking at the filings in the case, there is a striking difference between the diversity of the hundreds of parties who want FERC to reject the petition, and the fewer than a half-dozen who support it. The opponents of the petition include Republicans who are wary of federal encroachment on state authority, such as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. They also include social justice organizations such as the San Diego branch of the NAACP, which says solar is a vital part of developing a fairer and cleaner energy system. Meanwhile, the supporters include the Heartland Institute, a leader in advancing climate denial, and Citizens Against Government Waste, an organization that describes itself as a watchdog for fiscally conservative causes.

Don’t miss information like this Free updates