Recent critiques of the California Public Utility Commission’s proposed solar residential rooftop reforms seem to generate more heat than light.
Generally overlooked in the reform debates are the economic inequity, high cost and declining benefit of the current policy. Current rooftop solar policy is inequitable and worsening.
“It has been well documented – and surprises no one – that households with solar are disproportionately wealthy (as well as disproportionately White),” Professor Severin Borenstein said in a recent University of California at Berkeley article. “So, when a customer installs solar, their share of the fixed costs is shifted to other ratepayers who are poorer on average. Net energy metering hurts the poor. It’s that simple.”
In the words of the Public Advocates Office, the current rooftop solar policy “is essentially a regressive tax on low-income…
CPUC plan is an overdue correction for rooftop solar energy – Marin Independent Journal
