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badbrainstorm@lemmy.world

California Has Dealt a Blow to Renewable Energy, Some Businesses Say (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by silence7 to c/california@lemmy.world

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[–] BaldProphet@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Home rooftop solar is expensive. California incentives were advantaging the wealthy while the working poor were unable to use them. When these wealthy landowners hooked up the solar they got taxpayer-subsidized deals on, they were reimbursed at the retail rate for the energy they sent back into the grid. This meant power companies had to raise rates that mostly the working poor were paying for electricity.

Reducing the amount of new rooftop solar installs because of fewer incentives that only benefit the wealthy isn't dealing a blow to renewable energy (it's a drop in the bucket of renewable energy). It's dealing a blow to taxpayer-funded inequality.

Solar only makes sense in large arrays. It just doesn't make financial sense, except as a luxury, to install them on homes.

[–] silence7 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It makes a ton of sense from a land use perspective and avoided transmission perspective - you get to use an existing developed area instead of turning open space into solar, and you don't need to build transmission to get the power to the people. Most of the cost of electricity is transmission and distribution anyways, so this is a big deal

[–] Followupquestion@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Reducing the incentives for residential solar and battery storage also reduces the resilience of the power grid, something which Puerto Rico in the wake of the last hurricane shows us is vital. Having the efficiency of large solar plants is great when everything is perfect, but if your power is cut due to high winds and dry weather, known as a PSPS, or the power lines are downed by an earthquake, local solar and power storage helps people keep their homes and lives running, and prevents the deaths of the chronically ill, children, and seniors who are most vulnerable to temperature extremes.

Put another way, we should be expanding residential solar and local power storage, and make it more affordable than ever so the people most at risk due to climate change, people too poor to escape it, are provided local power generation from that giant fusion reactor in the sky. Instead, solar becomes more and more out of reach. Also, you can always tell how politicians feel about something. Unlike the Federal government, California doesn’t offer a tax credit for clean energy generation and storage, which aligns perfectly with the profit motives of Governor Newsom’s best friends at PG&E and SCE (over $1MM in campaign donations last I heard).

[–] BaldProphet@kbin.social 0 points 10 months ago

but if your power is cut due to high winds and dry weather, known as a PSPS, or the power lines are downed by an earthquake, local solar and power storage helps people keep their homes and lives running

The majority of people with solar panels on their houses don't have power storage and also have their power turned off during PSPS and other outages.

Put another way, we should be expanding residential solar and local power storage, and make it more affordable than ever so the people most at risk due to climate change, people too poor to escape it, are provided local power generation from that giant fusion reactor in the sky.

I'd like to see solar panels and installation provided entirely free of charge to low-income homeowners and landlords of low-income tenants, but with a $68 billion budget deficit, I don't see that happening in California any time soon.

[–] NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

You're mixing up your incentives here. Most of the incentives for the wealthy have not been changed (tax credit for installing solar and property tax exemption) while the incentive that would directly benefit both the poor working class and the wealthy has changed. This article is talking about the incentive that benefits both classes (NEM 2.0 vs 3.0).

Rooftop solar is mandatory on all new homes being built in California (and if you're going through a builder, they choose which product goes on top).

In NEM 2.0 the electric companies would reimburse you for 100% of what your solar panels generated. In NEM 3.0 the electric companies only reimburse you for 75% of what your solar panels generated.

For the working poor, even if you're renting a home that has solar, under NEM 3.0 your electricity bill is higher than under NEM 2.0.

This affects everyone as there's less incentive to retrofit homes with solar because it takes longer to make it worth the cost. Anyone renting a home without solar pays the full cost of their electricity usage and electricity costs are going up.