Stockton— The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has released a revised Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 proposal that falls far short of ensuring a robust and cost-effective onsite solar market that guarantees rooftop solar is accessible and affordable for California’s working families and environmental justice communities.
While the proposal scraps an onerous solar tax, the facts underlying the proposal defy the basic premise of environmental and climate justice by ignoring any social justice criteria for evaluating the value of rooftop solar, particularly to communities disproportionately affected by industrial pollution, weather-related resiliency issues, inflated electrical bills and those in need of Green local jobs.
The proposal slashes NEM credits by as much as 80% for new solar customers as soon as April, 2023. That policy change leans solely on data extrapolated from the Lookback Study, which calculates the value of rooftop solar using what is referred to as an avoided-cost calculator. The CPUC commissioned the engineering firm E3 to conduct the study. The firm counts California investor-owned utilities PG&E, SoCal Edison, and SDG&E among its clients. That conflict of interest leaves significant doubt as to the reliability of their conclusions.
“If you fail to take public health, resiliency, and long-term affordability into consideration when measuring the benefit of distributed green energy, then you cannot claim the proposal is either equitable or climate justice-centered,” said Esperanza Vielma, the executive director of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water (EJCW) and co-founder of the Coalition for Environmental Equity and Economics (CEEE).
The updated proposal also unfairly affects aspirational solar growth programs such as the Sustainable Churches Project. That project is the signature social justice program of Green the Church, led by CEEE co-founder Pastor Ambrose Carroll. “Green the Church’s vision to advance social and climate justice by adding solar panels, backup storage, and charging stations to Black churches across California has taken a body blow. Our projects don’t pencil out with such an immediate and steep decrease in net metering. That needs to change,” said Pastor Carroll.
Francisco Moreno, the executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America (COFEM) and CEEE co-founder, concluded, “We believe that Governor Newsom and the CPUC commissioners need to do better. It’s simply unfair for the emerging communities we serve to have California turn its back on fair net metering credits and continued solar growth just as immigrants and other working communities have begun to adopt solar. We need more solar to reach our environmental justice and climate goals, not less.”
The CEEE is a project of EJCW, Green the Church and COFEM. Collectively, these organizations represent large portions of the Black church, environmental justice and immigrant advocacy communities.
For more information, call CEEE Communications Director Leo Briones at (323) 574-2524.
