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rooftop solar
Electricity Prices Down 30% in Australia Expose Idiocy of Trump's Attacks on Wind, Solar
Despite its small population of about 2 million, the state of South Australia is widely seen as a demonstration project for what the renewables revolution can mean for the lives of people in the industrialized democracies.
Feb 16, 2026
The government of the state of South Australia announced recently that its wholesale electricity price fell in Q4 ’25 to $37 AU per megawatt hour ( / MWh) (that would be $26.22 US). That’s the lowest wholesale electricity price in all of the continent of Australia. The reason the price is so low is because South Australia has a lot of wind, solar and battery power, and output was high late last year. Remember, October – December in Australia is spring into summer.
That’s 2.6 US cents per kilowatt hour. The average cost of electricity in the United States is roughly 17 cents per kilowatt hour, because it is mostly generated by expensive, dirty, planet-wrecking fossil fuels.
So here’s the thing: in Q3 of last year, the price of wholesale electricity was $104 AU / MWh.
That’s right. In one three-month period, the price fell by a third.
Since South Australia is demonstrating that wind, solar and battery can cause the wholesale price of electricity to plummet, it is also pulling the curtain from the Trump administration’s con game in the US.
It was not a matter of usage falling off. The government says, “underlying demand in South Australia ticked up by 1.2 per cent to a fourth quarter record high of 1,624 MW.”
Of course, how the fall in the price of wholesale electricity gets translated into consumers’ home electricity bills is politics, not engineering.
Some 74% of South Australia’s electricity consumption is provided by renewables, and the state plans to make that 100% by 2027, in only two years. Wind, solar and battery generated 100% of the state’s electricity for 99 days (27% of the time) in 2024, the last year for which full data are available as yet.
50% of homes in the state have rooftop solar. South Australia has been a pioneer in mega-batteries combined with its solar generation. The country as a whole has 3 gigawatts of battery storage capacity. South Australian needs more battery build-out, so as to smooth out the excess generation from rooftop solar at noon and during early afternoon, which has been producing negative energy pricing, forcing utilities to pay people to take their electricity.
South Australia, despite its small population of about 2 million, is widely seen as a demonstration project for what the renewables revolution can mean for the lives of people in the industrialized democracies. Its Labor government has been committed to the project. Only a decade ago, most of its electricity was coal-generated. Alas, its Liberals (i.e. conservatives) are now campaigning on more fossil fuels. Since so much of the progress was grassroots, with people just installing solar panels, the transformation seems difficult to halt or even slow substantially.
What the state is showing us is that wind, solar and battery power, when combined, are extremely inexpensive. Moreover, there is every prospect of solar panels becoming cheaper, more efficient, and less bulky over the next decade as scientific research burgeons. Renewables are already much less expensive than fossil fuels.
What the state is showing us is that wind, solar and battery power, when combined, are extremely inexpensive.
It is true that because they are a new source of energy, they are attended by construction costs, whereas old coal and gas plants built years ago have already sunk that cost. But wind and solar are now so cheep that in many localities it is less expensive to build a new solar farm and operate it than just to keep an old gas or coal plant in operation.
Since South Australia is demonstrating that wind, solar and battery can cause the wholesale price of electricity to plummet, it is also pulling the curtain from the Trump administration’s con game in the US. By using the might of the federal government to bolster coal and gas, Trump and his minions can keep expensive and dangerous sources of power in place, making you pay more for your electricity and arranging for your money to line the pockets of his Big Carbon campaign donors. If fossil fuels were competitive, Trump wouldn’t have to try so hard to stall permitting for new wind and solar projects.
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Climate Hope—and Wisdom—From Abroad
As Trump tacks tariffs onto films from “foreign lands,” we can still be inspired by other countries’ environmental visions, from China’s affordable electric vehicles to Germany’s balcony solar.
May 06, 2025
Every once in a while our mad king hits on an accidentally poetic turn of phrase in one of his strangely punctuated missives. In one of this week’s movie-based announcements (not the one about reopening San Francisco’s notorious island prison, which apparently followed a showing of Escape From Alcatraz on the Palm Beach PBS station) (not PBS’ fault, support them here), he declared that he was henceforth “instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
It was the last phrase—“foreign lands”—that attracted me; it conjures up European monarchs of earlier centuries dispatching sailors to see if fountains of youth or dragons or some such might be found off the edges of existing charts. (No, as it turned out, just Indigenous people who could be forced to part with their “foreign lands”). It’s a reminder that for Trump, and for many of us, a myopic focus on what’s happening here is a mistake, because we’ve long assumed that we’re at the head of the world. That unconscious supremacy—born in the actual enormous lead we had in living standards in the rubble of World War II—no longer makes much sense. So just a quick survey of what those funny people in other places are up to.
The rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.
Take China, emerging as Earth’s first electro-state. The Wall Street Journal had an excellent account this week of just how far our economies are diverging. Autos are a key piece of technology, one that produces both a large supply and technology chain, and a clue to a country’s identity. In America, Peter Landers, pointed out, the “standard family choice” is a $50,000 gas-fired SUV; in China,
A majority of new vehicles sold in China are either fully electric or plug-in hybrids, and a look around the recent auto show in Shanghai showed that local makers have mostly stopped introducing new gasoline-powered models. In the U.S., by contrast, the traditional combustion engine still powers about 8 in 10 new vehicles.
The price difference is overwhelming. Chinese car buyers no longer need to debate whether an EV can be made affordable, not when a decent starter model costs $10,000 and a luxury seven-seater with reclining massage chairs can be had for $50,000. Because of customer demand, even the low-end models come with advanced driver-assistance software.
Ten thousand dollars for a “decent starter model.” We’re not talking junk: “a new Toyota electric-powered sport-utility vehicle for about $15,000, complete with sunroof and cup holders.” Some of this comes because Chinese automakers are paid less (enough, however, to afford a new car); some of it comes from increasingly roboticized factories; and some of it comes from government subsidy. Because the government has decided it wants to own the future: Whose cars do you think are going to do better in, um, “foreign lands”? Bloomberg, in March, reported that Chinese automakers were “taking over roads from Brazil to South Africa”:
In South Africa, China-made vehicles account for nearly 10% of sales, or about five times the volume sold in 2019. In Turkey, Chinese brands claimed an 8% share in the first six months of 2024, up from almost none in 2022. In Chile, they have accounted for nearly a third of auto sales for several years running.
China sends more vehicles abroad than any other country, and its passenger car exports surged nearly 20% to 4.9 million in 2024 alone, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers—from less than 1 million in 2020.
In Brazil,
Luiz Palladino, 61, an engineer who has owned GM and Honda vehicles in the past and currently drives a Haval H6 EV, compared the car with much more expensive luxury cars.
“The moment I got into the car I thought: It’s in line with BMWs, Audis, with top-notch car finishing,” he said. “It has everything I want.”
Ok, that’s China (where thanks to huge solar buildout the use of coal for electricity dropped 5% in the first quarter, even as electricity demand surged). Now let’s look at Britain, where humans first learned to burn fossil fuels in quantity in the 18th century. There, the Labor government is apparently set to announce that all new homes will come with solar panels up top.
Housebuilders would be mandated by law to install solar roof panels on new properties by 2027 under new rules, seen by The Times, which ministers have claimed would slash energy bills and reduce emissions.
The change was estimated to add about £3,300 to the cost of building a semi-detached or terraced house and just under £4,000 for a detached property.
However, it was expected that new homeowners would recoup the extra costs within four years, with an average three-bedroom semi-detached saving more than £1,000 a year on energy bills.
This makes eminent sense because
Fitting solar power during construction is much cheaper than adding it to older buildings, which requires costly scaffolding and often new wiring. The payoff will be lower bills for consumers and lower emissions from buildings, which have become the second-biggest carbon polluter after transport.
And it comes despite the efforts of former British Prime Minister (and current Saudi lobbyist) Tony Blair to scupper such advances. Keir Starmer has four more years on his electoral mandate; Canada’s Mark Carney five, and after last week’s smashing election win Australia’s Anthony Albanese has three; the rest of the English-speaking world seems set to keep moving forward into a working energy future. And the rest of Europe too.
In Germany, for instance, as many as 3 million apartments may now have “balcony solar” arrays, solar panels that can be bought for a few hundred euros at the equivalent of Home Depot, hung from the railing of your veranda, and plugged straight into the wall, where they provide a reasonable amount of power. As France 24 reported recently:
City authorities in Frankfurt gave Christoph Stadelmann, a 60-year-old teacher, half of the 650 euros ($676) he paid for his kit at the beginning of last year.
Stadelmann expects to make his money back within three years.
Mirjam Sax said she would recommend balcony solar panels in spite of Germany's sometimes grey weather.
"If you've got a balcony, if you've got a bit of sun, you can put up a panel or two to see if it's worth it," she said.
"It's easy, and there's a price for every budget."
You can’t do that in America, because our country has fallen behind these foreign lands. As Grist reported last week, Underwriters Laboratory, which certifies appliances, hasn’t bothered to do the work to approve the systems, which means they can’t legally be installed in most places.
These challenges will take time and effort to overcome, but they’re not insurmountable, advocates of the technology said. Even now, a team of entrepreneurs and research scientists, backed by federal funding, are creating these standards. Their work mirrors what happened in Germany nearly a decade ago, when clean energy advocates and companies began lobbying the country’s electrical certification body to amend safety regulations to legalize balcony solar.
In 2017, Verband der Elektrotechnik, or VDE, a German certification body that issues product and safety standards for electrical products, released the first guideline that allowed for balcony solar systems. While such systems existed before VDE took this step, the benchmark it established allowed manufacturers to sell them widely, creating a booming industry.
“Relentless individuals” were key to making that happen, said Christian Ofenheusle, the founder of EmpowerSource, a Berlin-based company that promotes balcony solar. Members of a German solar industry association spent years advocating for the technology and worked with VDE to carve a path toward standardizing balcony solar systems.
Happily, we have some “relentless individuals” here as well—Cora Stryker, for instance, who this year started Bright Saver—to bring the balcony technology to America. I talked with her at some length last week: I’ve stuck our exchange into question-and-answer format below
- Is America finally getting balcony solar!? Tell me about how you heard about this new development and got involved.
Yes! We’re already doing installations in the SF Bay Area and we are looking for early adopters to help us start a “balcony” plug-in solar movement in this country like the one we are seeing in Germany. As you know, plug-in solar isn’t just for balconies. It can go almost anywhere—in the backyard, the side of a house, in front of a garage, etc. My cofounders and I started Bright Saver because we believe that the benefits of producing clean energy at home should be available to everyone, not just homeowners with good roofs who can commit to spending $20-30k, although our system is also great for folks like me who have maxed out our rooftop solar capacity and want more power. Rooftop solar is all or nothing—what we are offering is a more modular, lower-commitment, more affordable, and versatile solar option as an alternative.
In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.
I first heard about balcony solar when you started writing about it, actually! Then I met my cofounders Kevin Chou and Rupert Mayer—tech entrepreneurs who got the climate call—and I joined as the long-time climate advocate among us.
2) What's your hope for this project—how big can this get?
We can get big. Really big.
Seventy percent of Americans can’t get rooftop solar, but millions in that group want it. How can we produce more clean energy nationwide? We believe the solution is to address accessibility first, giving everyone an option to produce solar at home. This will give millions of Americans an option to become primary producers of their own energy, saving on electricity bills, and, we believe, bringing millions into the climate movement, giving us all hope that the power to address climate rests in our hands.
If we do this right, we follow in Germany’s footsteps, and produce several gigawatts of clean energy annually. However, unlike Germany, we can’t take the risk of letting it take 10 years to ramp up because we don’t have 10 years when it comes to climate. That’s why we started Bright Saver—to make this happen more quickly than it would on its own.
3) The U.S. has different wiring than Europe—explain if this is a problem and how it's overcome?
That’s been a structural—pun intended—concern for some time. In Europe, you can buy plug-in solar units at the grocery store for a few hundred Euros, plug them into the wall, and you’re done. Unfortunately, we can’t use those European systems because, as you point out, we have a 120-volt electrical system and most of Europe is on a 230-volt system.
Here, we are limited in the number of systems that are compatible with our electrical system and they are expensive and not easy to install. We exist to eliminate these barriers to adoption. For instance, as a nonprofit, we keep our prices low and we install the system, a complicated process that requires a licensed electrician.
My job is to put myself out of a job—if we jumpstart this movement now, we get more manufacturers into the game; competition drives down prices and increases ease of use, which stimulates more widespread adoption; and the virtuous cycle continues on market forces without us. In this political climate, I think we are all looking for solutions that give the power to us, literally, rather than relying on government to solve climate.
4) What do you need from local authorities to really make this happen?
We are primarily installing units in the backyard or front yard, where we believe permits are rarely a concern. I have young kids, and I can’t think of any parents who got a permit to put a trampoline or a slide in the backyard. Similarly, the 800 watt units we are installing are impermanent structures which you plug into an outdoor outlet like an appliance. They are half the electricity load of a hair dryer, and we include a smart power meter to make sure they never backfeed into the grid.
What we need is local and state legislation like what just passed unanimously in Utah. As you know, that legislation eliminates the ambiguity when it comes to mounted plug-in systems so folks can put them anywhere that is convenient for them. In fact, part of our nonprofit’s mission is to build a national coalition of advocacy groups to help pass such legislation in all 50 states—so please get in touch if you know groups that might want to join our coalition!
5) Why do you need donations to get this started?
Without donations, we stay small and grow slowly. I’ve been approached by several venture capitalists who say to me, you have huge market potential—let’s talk! But we want to keep lowering and lowering prices as we get bigger, not feeling the pressure of investors wanting us to raise prices and increase profits. We are a nonprofit because, well, w're not here to profit—we are here to bring solar to everyone who wants it.
We have a big vision to give all Americans the option to become energy independent. We plan to include home battery storage in the future, but we are only four months old, we have limited funding, and we need to start somewhere. Donating or becoming an early adopter will make it possible for us to stay true to our mission of serving everyone with solar energy and growing the climate movement so that every household of every means can start producing their own energy from the sun.
Many thanks to Stryker and her friends for getting this off the ground (and if you think it tickles me that she first read about the concept in this newsletter, then you’re right; that’s why I do this).
And here’s the thing. Though Americans aren’t used to it, there’s sometimes something useful in being behind all those other foreign lands. They’ve figured out what needs to happen, and all we have to do is copy. That’s what China did for decades—maybe it’s our turn. And now I’m going to go watch a bunch of foreign movies before the tariffs kick in.
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Some Bright News for a Dismal Week
Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world.
Sep 17, 2024
Not perhaps a week for good news—not with former U.S. President Donald Trump trying to initiate a pogrom in Ohio (and the Secret Service protecting him from a crazy right-winger). Not with insane floods across Central Europe where the blue Danube is now a raging brown monster, or in the Lake Chad region where hundreds are dead.
But there’s something else going on behind the scenes—silently. And it’s happening in places where people need it most.
Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Without waiting for what are often moribund utilities to do the job, business and home owners are getting on with electrifying their lives, and doing it cleanly.
This won’t just transform the climate, it will transform lives.
How do we know? Basically by good sleuthing. The first account I saw came from Azeem Azhar and Nathan Warren. They were looking at Pakistan, where power prices in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion have soared so dramatically that sales of electricity have gone down 10% in the last two years. That should cripple a country—”yet somehow it’s economy grew by 2% anyway.” Again, that should have been impossible: if there’s a truism, especially in the developing world, it’s that growth in energy use is tied to growth in economies. So what was happening? Basically, Pakistanis were buying huge quantities of very cheap Chinese solar panels and putting them up themselves. Pakistan, they reported, “has become the third-largest importer of Chinese solar modules, acquiring a staggering 13 gigawatts in the first half of this year alone.” This is particularly astonishing because the country’s entire official electricity generating capacity is only 46 GW. In other words:
in just six months, Pakistan imported solar capacity equivalent to 30% of its total electricity generation capacity—an absolutely staggering amount.
Energy analyst Dave Jones has gone to great lengths to track this spread on Google maps, finding building after building across the country with big new solar arrays on the roof. For middle-class Pakistanis, they can pay off the investment in a few years selling back power to the grid; in poor areas, things like tube wells for irrigation are now increasingly run on solar. This means not just a decline in natural gas use for centralized generation; it also means many noisy, dirty, and expensive diesel generators that used to provide backup power are being turned off. The great solar analyst Jenny Chase at BNEF has found much the same thing. As Azhar and Warren point out:
by the end of the year, Pakistan’s distributed solar system could be nearing half the capacity of its entire grid! This isn’t just growth; it’s a silent revolution in energy production.
Were it just Pakistan, it would be a wonderful story but perhaps not definitive. But I had a long talk last week with Joel Nana, an analyst at Sustainable Energy Africa in Capetown who told a very similar story. He’s been leading a project to help countries across the continent deal with the increase in distributed generation, and he reports something similar happening in country after country—Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, on and on.
“In Namibia we uncovered they have about 70 megawatts of distributed generation—that’s rooftop solar pv that’s about 11% of Namibia’s installed capacity. Eswatini, it’s an old figure, but they’re already at 30 megawatts and it’s a very small country. That’s about 15% of Eswatini’s installed capacity. South Africa is the biggest market, and it has five gigawatts of distributed solar—about 9% of South Africa’s installed capacity.”
“You will not see these numbers anywhere,” he said. “They’re not reported in national plans, not anywhere in continental statistics. No one knows about them. It’s only when you speak to the utilities,” and even they know mostly about the larger installations—there are doubtless far more hut-scale systems across Africa. People are driven by the high cost of electricity, but also by its unreliability—in much of the continent “load-shedding” is endemic, with diesel generators roaring on to compensate, at least at businesses solvent enough to afford it. But diesel fuel is expensive, and generators are hard to maintain. PV is “a no-brainer for most businesses if not all,” he said. “The prices just make sense. The African market is a huge market for some of the Chinese manufacturers, so we have availability—huge availability. The market is flooded with panels from China.”
All this, he points out, is happening without any help from governments, and except for South Africa without financing from banks, who haven’t yet learned how to evaluate the credit risk. The continent needs more trained solar installers, and coordinated standards. On the other hand, many nations probably won’t need the big and expensive increases in bulk electric supply they’ve been predicting. And Nana and his colleagues are working hard to figure out how to make the most of this—how to turn solar pv into real economic assets for entire communities, through practices like net metering.
This is extraordinary news, in large part because it’s happening in places where people most need power—I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Africa looking at communities getting their very first power thanks to the sun. (And I’m headed back as soon as the election is over, so watch this space for more). This won’t just transform the climate, it will transform lives.
It comes on top of more visible good news—the IEA said this weak that oil demand around the world is softening because of “surging” sales of electric vehicles. In China, demand for gasoline will peak this year or next and then decline sharply. Britain, where the coal era was born, will close it’s last coal-fired power plant at the end of this month, while California—arguably Earth’s most modern economy—has managed to weather its worst heatwaves ever without blackouts this simmer thanks to ever-growing batteries of… batteries. (The state’s one big recent blackout came when a gas-fired plant went down in Pasadena). Hey, photovoltaics are getting so sensitive that they’re starting to be useful indoors, where they could replace small disposable batteries.
But nothing beats the idea that solar panels are suddenly sprouting, as if by magic, precisely where they’re needed most. If we can get there fast enough—before we’re overwhelmed by droughts and floods—then a sunny new world is entirely possible.
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Solar Power vs. The Darkness of Trump
We desperately need clean energy now. That’s what this election is about.
Sep 08, 2024
To understand the primal stakes in this year’s election, and to understand the very exciting possibility for rapid progress in the climate fight, a new set of numbers is extremely useful.
They come courtesy of Electrek’s Michelle Lewis, reporting on the longtime renewable researcher Ken Bossong’s analysis of the data on electric generation provided each month by the Energy Information Administration. And what they show is the remarkable transformation over the last decade. In 2014, solar power “utility-scale solar provided a mere 9.25 GW (0.75%) of total installed US generating capacity.” Which is to say, less than one percent. But “by the middle of 2024, installed solar capacity had risen to 8.99% of total utility-scale capacity.” (Add another few percent for rooftop distributed solar).
That still sounds like a relatively small percentage—under ten percent. But in fact what it measns is that we’ve finally moved on to the steep part of an S curve, and if we can keep up anything like that pace of expansion it won’t be long before the numbers are truly incredible. Indeed, as Bossong pointed out on Twitter, “the combination of utility-scale and “estimated” small-scale (e.g., rooftop) solar increased by 26.3% in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.” Statistics numb the brain so let me say it another way: we are on the cusp of a true explosion that could change the world. We are starting to put out the fires that humans have always relied on, and replace them with the power of the sun.
Pretty much the same thing is happening with wind, and pretty much the same thing is happening around the world. Bloomberg predicted last week that global installations of new solar modules would hit 592 gigawatts this year—up 33 percent from last year. The point is, when you’re doing this a few years in a row the totals start to grow very very fast. When something that provides one percent of your electricity doubles to two percent, that doesn’t mean much—but when something that supplies ten or twenty percent goes up by a third that’s actually quite a lot. And more the next year.
For a long while, you could see this growth coming, but it hadn’t yet added up to enough to materially dent the use of coal and gas and oil. But that is starting to change. Here’s the most important number I can give you, supplied to me this afternoon by Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, who has been keeping careful track of the California electric grid. As I wrote earlier, it’s been moving to renewable energy faster than almost anywhere in the country. The result: “For the (almost) 6-month period from March 7 to September 4, fossil gas use on the grid was 29% lower in 2024 than in 2023.” I’m going to repeat that. “For the (almost) 6-month period from March 7 to September 4, fossil gas use on the grid was 29% lower in 2024 than in 2023.” That is, the use of natural gas to generate electricity has dropped by almost a third in one year in the fifth largest economy in the world. In 2023, fossil gas provided 23% more electricity to the grid than solar in that six month period. In 2024, those numbers were almost perfectly reversed: solar provided 24 percent more electricity than fossil gas, 39,865 GWh v 24,033 GWh. In one year. That’s how this kind of s-curve exponential growth works, and how it could work everywhere on earth,
All this is the premise for understanding why the fossil fuel industry is so freaked out about this year’s election. They can read these charts as easily as anyone, and they know what’s coming. If it keeps happening at this pace, it will quickly start reducing demand for their products—they have vast reserves of, say, natural gas in the Permian Basin that will stay there forever simply because there’s no market. They have to lock in customers right now, or else watch their whole business start to slowly, and then quickly, fade. And with that fade will come, inevitably, reduced political power. Right now they can still frighten politicians—hence the fact that Kamala Harris, with Pennsylvania on the line, has to insist she supports fracking. But four years from now, not so much.
And if Trump wins, there’s tons that he can do to slow the transition down. He can’t “kill wind,” as he has promised. But he can make it impossible for it to keep growing at the same rate—right now there are teams in the White House managing every single big renewable project, trying to lower the regulatory hurdles that get in the way of new transmission lines, for instance. A Trump White House will have similar teams, just operating in reverse.
Again, he can’t hold it off forever—economics insures that cheap power will eventually win out. But eventually doesn’t help here, not with the poles melting fast. We desperately need clean energy now. That’s what this election is about—will Big Oil get the obstacle it desperately desires, or will change continue to play out—hopefully with a big boost from the climate movement for even faster progress.
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The US Should Follow Australia Into the Sun
Here, in a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar; to be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar.
Sep 07, 2024
Australia’s Climate Council has issued a new report on clean energy in the country’s states.
Winter is ending in Australia, but it is worrisome that their August was among the hottest on record this year, presaging a hot dry summer to come, and raising the real risk of further massive bush fires of the sort that scorched the countryside and killed billions of animals in 2019-2020. The continent-country is highly vulnerable to climate change, with its two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, right on the sea and facing coastal erosion from sea-level rise. It is unfortunate that so many Australian politicians and firms have found it so difficult to let go of coal and fossil gas. Although Australia is a relatively small country, the emissions of which are not all that consequential, it just sets a poor example for the rest of the world, especially for developing countries, if a very vulnerable country like Australia is a big coal user. How can it scold China and India for using so much coal, which really is consequential for the fate of the world, if Canberra is itself so irresponsible?
Although Australia has had a love affair with coal, the dirtiest and unhealthiest of the fossil fuels, even that addiction is beginning to subside. Less that 50% of the country’s electricity now comes from coal, an unprecedented development.
Given how sunny it is in the U.S. South and Southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more [rooftop solar], but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles.
Obviously, not all the states are as environmentally conscious and ambitious as South Australia.
Western Australia and the Northern Territory are particularly bad actors, actually expanding their use of coal and fossil gas.
Some other states have made great strides and have ambitious goals. South Australia has gone in big on solar energy and has largely dumped coal, and is employing batteries to store and use the solar energy when it is needed at night and at usage peaks during the day. The state wants to have all its electricity come from renewables by 2027, in only three years. And it is a highly plausible plan. Already, 70% of the electricity in South Australia comes from renewables, the best record of any large state by far, though the small Australian Capital Territory in which the capital of Canberra nestles has reached 100% renewable electricity generation and in Tasmania it is 98.2%. South Australia is lightly populated, but some of the more populous states are beginning to make strides as well.
In the country as a whole, there is good news. Since 2018, Australia has doubled the share of renewables in its electricity grid, and much of this increase in clean electricity has been spearheaded by states and territories rather than the federal government.
With a population of 26 million (a little bigger than Florida, a little smaller than Texas), Australia has about 10 million households. A full 3.6 million of them, about 36%, have rooftop solar installations. Half of all households in Queensland now have panels on their roofs.
In the U.S., a country 13 times the size of Australia, only 4.5 million households have rooftop solar. To be at the same level as Australia, we’d need 47 million households with rooftop solar. Given how sunny it is in the U.S. South and Southwest, it is crazy that we don’t have more, but conservative state legislatures in the back pocket of Big Carbon have often legislated obstacles. Australia’s homeowners clearly have managed to outmaneuver the Coal Lobby there. (We have solar panels, and even in Michigan they much reduce our bill most of the year.)
The most populous Australia state, New South Wales, with over 8 million people, has made some strides in renewables. Some 35.6% of its electricity is from renewables, and 34% of its households have rooftop solar. 13% of its travel uses shared transportation, and there is an uptick in purchases of electric vehicles, though the absolute numbers remain small. NSW has banned offshore drilling and mining for fossil fuels.
South Australia, despite its thin population, is a technological leader in renewables. Not only do renewables supply 74.4% of electricity, but it has large battery projects that allow sunshine to be captured and used at night and at peak hours. The state hopes to phase out gas electricity plants in only a few years.
Batteries have also been key to California’s remarkable uptake of renewables.
Now Australia as a whole has six enormous battery projects in the pipeline.
At $1.7 trillion, Australia has the 13th largest GDP in the world. If the G20 states can get to carbon zero by 2050, that will solve the bulk of our climate worries, since all the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution will be absorbed by the oceans over time. The temperature will immediately stop rising and will decline over time. If we go on spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere after 2050, however, we will outrun the capacity of the oceans to absorb them, and the world will get very hot, and the climate could go chaotic.
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Why Is ‘Climate Change Crusader’ Newsom Waging War on Rooftop Solar?
The answer has more to do with protecting utility company profits the planet or low-income Californians.
Aug 14, 2024
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he’s in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He’s been called a “climate-change crusader” and a leader of America’s clean energy revolution.
“[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs,” Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. “We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us.”
These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet’s becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil fuel legislation. It’s also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Gov. Newsom might say, he’s also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.
Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.
Consider California’s residential solar program (its “net-metering“), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state’s utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They’ve called this alleged problem a “cost-shift” from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.
It’s true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state’s electricity rates up just isn’t true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California’s utility companies to turn a profit.
Here’s an example of how those rates work and why they’ve gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it’s those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.
In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn’t rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.
A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that’s the only way they turn a profit).
“What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. “Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation.”
However, such lower costs also mean less profits for utility companies, so they have found an ingenious workaround. They could appease climate concerns while making a bundle of money by building large solar farms in the desert. In the process, nothing about how they generated revenue would change, energy costs would continue to rise, and little would stand in their way, not even a vulnerable forest of Joshua trees.
Solar Panels vs. the Joshua Tree
“Why Razing Joshua Trees for Solar Farms Isn’t Always Crazy,” a troubling Los Angeles Times headline read. Sammy Roth, an intrepid environmental reporter who has written insightfully and cogently on the way humanity is altering the climate, was nonetheless all in on uprooting thousands of Joshua trees in California’s Kern County to make space for that giant solar farm. The “Aratina Solar Project,” a sprawling 2,300-acre installation in the heart of the Mojave Desert, would transfer electricity to wealthy coastal areas, powering more than 180,000 homes. As Roth reported, “There are places to build solar projects besides pristine ecosystems. But there’s no get-out-of-climate-change-free card… Hence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees. I feel kind of terrible saying that.”
He should feel terrible. Roth believes that tearing up Joshua trees, already in great jeopardy due to our warming climate, is the price that must be paid to save ourselves from ourselves. But is sacrificing wild spaces—and, in this case, also threatening the habitat of the desert tortoise—truly worth it? Is this really the best solution we can come up with in our overheating world? There do appear to be better options, but they would also upend the status quo and put far less money in the pockets of utility shareholders.
Just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County.
Here’s how Californians could think outside the box or, in this case, on top of it. A single Walmart roof averages 180,000 square feet. In California, there are 309 Walmarts. That’s 55,620,000 square feet or 1,276 acres of rooftop. Home Depots? There are 247 of them in California and each of their roofs averages 104,000 square feet, totaling 25,668,000 square feet, or around 589 acres. Throw in 318 Target stores, averaging 125,000 square feet, and you have over 39,750,000 square feet or another 912 acres. Add all of those up and you have 2,777 acres of rooftops that could be turned into mini-solar farms.
In other words, just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County. And that doesn’t even include all the Costcos (129), Lowes (111), Amazon warehouses (100+), Ikeas (8), strip malls, schools, municipal buildings, parking lots, and so much more that would provide far better options.
You get the picture. The potential for solar in our built environment is indeed enormous. Throw in the more than 5.6 million single-family homes in California with no solar panels, and there’s just so much rooftop real estate that could generate electricity without wrecking entire ecosystems already facing a frighteningly hot future.
In 2014, it was estimated that solar power from California homes produced 2.2 gigawatts of energy. Ten years later, that potential is so much greater. As of summer 2024, the state has 1.9 million residential rooftop solar installations capable of churning out 16.7 gigawatts of power. It’s estimated that 1 gigawatt can conservatively power 750,000 homes. This means that the solar generation now installed on California’s roofs could theoretically, if stored, power 12,525,000 homes in a state with only 7.5 million of them. Already, in 2022, it’s believed that the state wasted nearly 2.3 million megawatt-hours worth of solar-produced electricity.
And mind you, this isn’t just back-of-the-napkin math. A 2021 geospatial analysis of rooftop solar conducted by researchers at Ireland’s University of Cork and published in Nature confirmed what many experts have long believed: that the U.S. has enough usable rooftop space to supply the entire country’s energy demands and, with proper community-based storage, would be all we would need to fulfill our energy production demands—and then some! If properly deployed, the U.S. could produce 4.2 petawatt-hours per year of rooftop solar electricity, more than the country consumes today. (A petawatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one trillion kilowatt-hours.) The report also noted that there are enough rooftops worldwide to potentially fully feed the world’s energy appetite.
If residential solar has succeeded exceptionally well and has so much possibility, why are we intent on destroying desert ecology with massive, industrial-scale solar farms? The answer in Gavin Newsom’s California has much more to do with politics and corporate avarice than with mitigating climate change.
Profit-Driven Utilities
Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.
“Rooftop solar has value in avoiding costs that utilities would have to pay to deliver that same kilowatt-hour of energy, such as investments in transmission lines and other grid infrastructure,” reports the solar-advocacy group, Solar Rights Alliance. “Rooftop solar also reduces the public health costs of fossil fuel power plants and the costs to ratepayers of utility-caused wildfires and power shut-offs. Rooftop solar also provides quantifiable benefits through local economic development and jobs. It preserves land that would otherwise be used for large-scale solar development. When paired with batteries, rooftop solar helps build community resilience.”
Nonetheless, blaming rooftop solar for California’s increased electricity rates has been a painfully effective argument. So, here’s a question to consider: Why does it seem like Newsom is working on behalf of the utilities to limit small-scale rooftop solar? Could it be related to the $10 million Pacific Gas & Electric donated to his campaigns since he first ran for office in San Francisco in the late 1990s? Or could it be because key members of his cabinet are tight with PG&E executives? (Dana Williamson, his current chief of staff, was a former director of public affairs at PG&E.)
Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms.
Then, consider the potential conflict of interest when the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which previously worked for PG&E, was tasked by Newsom with drafting wildfire legislation to save the company from bankruptcy. PG&E would, in fact, end up hammering out a deal with CPUC to pass on the costs of the bailout, a staggering $11 billion, to ratepayers over a 30-year period.
It all worked out well for the company. In 2023, PG&E, which serves 16 million people, raked in $2.2 billion in profits, nearly a 25% jump from 2022.
“The coziness between Gavin Newsom and [PG&E] is unlike anything we’ve seen in California politics… Their motive is profit, which is driven by Wall Street,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of California Solar & Storage Association, who has over a decade of experience monitoring the industry. “[The utility companies] have to keep posting record profits, quarter after quarter. It’s a perversity that nobody is really thinking about.”
It’s pretty simple really. Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms. Ultimately, this means higher bills for consumers to cover the costs of a grid they are forced to rely on as home solar systems become increasingly expensive.
(More) Bad News for the Climate
Newsom’s war on rooftop solar has had another detrimental impact: It’s threatened the state’s clean energy goals. And the governor hasn’t said a word about that. The California Energy Commission estimates that, to meet its climate benchmarks, the state must add 20,000 megawatts of rooftop solar electricity by 2030. At this pace, they’ll be lucky to install 10,000 megawatts. With such a precipitous decline in home solar installations, the 20,000 megawatts goal will never be reached by that year, even when you include all large-scale solar developments now in the works.
The Coalition for Community Solar Access estimates that 81% of solar companies in the state fear they’ll have to close up shop. Bad news for the solar industry also means bad news not just for California, the nation’s leader in solar energy production, but for the climate more generally.
The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere.
A rapid decline in new solar installations also means massive job losses, possibly 22% of the state’s solar gigs, or up to 17,000 workers. In addition to such bleak projections, disincentivizing rooftop solar will also hurt the Californians most impacted by warming temperatures and in need of relief—those who can’t afford to live along the state’s more temperate coast.
“Rooftop solar is not just the wealthy homeowners anymore,” State Senator Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, recently told CalMatters. “Central Valley people are suffering from extreme heat. The industry has been making great strides in low-income communities. This [utilities commission decision] makes it harder.”
The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. All of this may also be a sign that rooftop solar across the country is in peril. Utility companies and those hoping to gut residential solar programs in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are already humming Newsom’s “cost-shift” tune.
“They [the big utilities] know it’s a pivotal time,” Bernadette Del Chiaro tells me, with a sense of urgency and deep concern for what lies ahead. “They are fighting really hard, and they are fighting hardest in California because where California goes, there goes the nation.”
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New Ally Joins Fight to Defend Rooftop Solar in California
"It's outrageous that California regulators keep attacking rooftop solar and it has to stop," said one attorney in the case.
Jul 09, 2024
A leading U.S. green group on Tuesday joined the legal challenge to a California rule banning solar contractors from installing or maintaining photovoltaic battery storage.
The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) joined an amended lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court against a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulation enacted last year in accordance with the wishes of Pacific Gas & Electric and two other investor-owned utilities.
The amended lawsuit supplements a complaint filed by CalPIRG, the Solar Rights Alliance, the California Solar & Storage Association, and a solar contractor adversely affected by the new CPUC rule. Climate campaigners and Democratic state lawmakers have previously launched challenges to the regulation.
CBD said the new rule "would increase the cost and administrative burden of installing rooftop solar and storage, vital technologies that make communities more resilient to utility blackouts and the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency."
Roger Lin, a CBD senior attorney, said in a statement: "It's outrageous that California regulators keep attacking rooftop solar and it has to stop. They're undermining California's climate goals and putting clean energy further out of reach for working-class families."
"This licensing trick is straight from the utility playbook and will cause electricity rates to skyrocket while worsening the climate emergency," Lin added. "People are dying from extreme heat and California desperately needs smart, resilient energy solutions. Instead, the board is propping up a brittle electricity grid that devastates critical habitats and promotes environmental injustice."
The new suit came on the same day that the California Energy Commission (CEC) announced nearly $19 million in new grants meant to assist communities in their efforts to automate the approval of residential solar energy permits.
"We are thrilled to be able to disburse funds to over 330 cities and counties across California to make it easier for residents to go solar," CEC Chair David Hochschild said in a statement, calling the program "a win for residents, building departments, solar businesses, and our environment."
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New Bill Seeks to Salvage Rooftop Solar for Working Class in California
"This is not a zero-sum game. We can't ignore our climate, the urgent need for energy justice, and the significant community benefits of rooftop solar and expect to have a fighting chance against climate change."
Feb 13, 2024
Backed by two climate action groups, Democratic state lawmakers in California on Tuesday launched an effort to reverse the damage done by state regulators last year when they slashed incentives for residents to install rooftop solar panels—wreaking havoc on the once-thriving industry even as the state faces an energy crisis.
Introduced by state Assemblymembers Laura Friedman (D-44) and Marc Berman (D-23), Assembly Bill 2256 would unwind the policy put in place last year by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which was supported by the state's three investor-owned utilities and sharply reduced the amount utilities pay people with solar panels when they sell surplus power to the grid.
The policy applied to homeowners as well as renters in disadvantaged communities, and critics warned it would put solar panels even further out of reach for low- and middle-income Californians.
A.B. 2256, sponsored by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Environment California, would require the CPUC to "consider the wider community benefits of rooftop solar" in its policymaking, said CBD.
"This bill will force state regulators to stop shirking their duty and consider renewable energy's wide-ranging benefits so rooftop solar is available to everyone," said Roger Lin, a senior attorney at CBD. "The commission's decision to tank the state's rooftop solar policy was a gift to corporate utilities and a gut punch to communities and our environment. We're in a climate emergency, and it's reckless for the commission to ignore the harm fossil fuels do to our health and environment when it's making energy decisions."
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said earlier this month that "rooftop only pencils out for the wealthy" under the CPUC policy, which has caused solar companies to lay off 17,000 workers in less than a year and pushed 75% of firms toward bankruptcy.
Rooftop solar power had "been making great strides in low-income communities," state Sen. Josh Becker (D-13) told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month, but "this [CPUC decision] makes it harder."
A.B. 2256 was introduced weeks after CBD, EWG, and the Protect Our Communities Foundation asked the California Supreme Court to overturn the CPUC policy following unsuccessful challenges at the commission and a state appeals court.
It also comes a day after Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group published a report marking the dramatic growth of rooftop solar nationwide over the past decade, with 10 times as much power produced in 2022 than 10 years prior.
California ranked as the state with the largest growth in small-scale solar generation, producing 24,121 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2022—just before the CPUC policy was introduced. In 2012 the state produced just 2,453 GWh.
"Rooftop solar is good for the environment and consumers," reads the report. "It reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, eases strain on the grid during periods of high demand, can increase resilience to threats like extreme weather, and limits the amount of land needed for clean energy—all at steadily falling costs."
The California Air Resources Board suggested in 2022 that disincentivizing solar power for residents was the wrong direction for the state to go in, saying the state needed to double its rooftop solar to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030.
"How can we weigh the costs and benefits of rooftop solar without considering all the benefits to our health, our neighbors, and what's left of our open spaces?" said Lin. "This is not a zero-sum game. We can't ignore our climate, the urgent need for energy justice, and the significant community benefits of rooftop solar and expect to have a fighting chance against climate change."
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California Needs More, Not Less, Rooftop Solar
Rooftop solar installations in the state have plummeted by more than 80% just during the time between regulators’ approval of a plan slashing energy credits and the court’s ruling upholding it.
Jan 30, 2024
A legal fight in California could determine whether the state will meet its clean energy and climate goals—or whether power companies’ greed could prevent millions of hardworking residents from reaping the many benefits of rooftop solar.
On January 29, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and two other environmental groups filed an appeal with California’s Supreme Court over a ruling that rubber-stamped the state’s misguided solar policy. Our appeal argues that the ruling bent over backward to uphold the policy, which state regulators approved following a request from California’s three largest utilities.
The policy, and the ruling upholding it, threaten the growth of affordable, renewable energy in California.
Experts say 75% of California’s once-thriving rooftop solar installation companies face a “high risk” of bankruptcy
And showing that irony is alive and well, the same utility regulators who approved the plan to impede solar power’s much-needed expansion are now arguing in unrelated litigation that California faces an electricity supply crisis and must generate more energy.
How do we meet that crisis? By finding ways to maximize, not minimize, a diversified energy portfolio with a heavy reliance on clean energy like solar and wind. California needs more, not less, rooftop solar to meet its goal of 100% clean energy by 2045.
But rooftop solar installations have plummeted by more than 80% just during the time between regulators’ approval of the plan and the court’s ruling upholding it.
Going Back to Court
At issue in the Supreme Court case is the three environmental group’s challenge to the solar policy approved last year by the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC. The state’s three investor-owned monopoly utilities, led by Pacific Gas & Electric, asked the commission to back its plan to hike fees for customer-owned solar—its only real competition.
The CPUC has long been effectively an extension of the utilities, almost always approving whatever rate increases, clean energy restrictions, and other obstacles they can dream up. And the utilities pursue these policies to protect and grow their profits, not to benefit captive ratepayers.
With solar, the CPUC signed off on the utilities’ plan to slash the credits rooftop solar owners could get from their electric company for the surplus energy they generate and sell back to the grid. The credits allowed households to lower their monthly electricity bills.
A key issue we’re asking the Supreme Court to review in our just-filed appeal is the CPUC’s failure to assess the far-reaching benefits of widespread customer-owned rooftop solar.
The decision immediately put the brakes on rooftop solar’s growth in the state, as EWG warned. Recent developments back us up. Experts say 75% of California’s once-thriving rooftop solar installation companies face a “high risk” of bankruptcy. At least 17,000 well-paid solar jobs have also been lost.
All of this is due to the CPUC’s disastrous decision.
EWG, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Protect Our Communities Foundation sued in the California Court of Appeals over the CPUC’s approval of the plan. Oral arguments took place December 13, and the court upheld the plan.
Our Key Arguments
We think the appeals court deferred inappropriately to the CPUC’s decision and failed to acknowledge important legal steps that should have led to a rejection of the policy.
A key issue we’re asking the Supreme Court to review in our just-filed appeal is the CPUC’s failure to assess the far-reaching benefits of widespread customer-owned rooftop solar. Instead, in approving the utility’s plan, the commission looked at a narrow set of economic factors only. We’ll argue this violates the CPUC’s duty under state law to look at a broader range of benefits.
As adopted by the CPUC, the revised policy reduces by almost 75% the compensation that rooftop solar owners get for the clean power they generate. That’s a huge disincentive for other people to install solar and will further shrink the industry.
Solar is one of the leading energy solutions, but California can’t even seem to agree with itself on the right path forward.
The appeals court neglected to heed our warning that the CPUC also failed to meet a duty to consider the barriers facing would-be rooftop solar customers in disadvantaged communities, areas where people already struggle to pay sky-high utility bills.
California’s confused position
The CPUC, and therefore California, will defend the solar policy approval in the Supreme Court just as the state tries to call for a greater energy mix in a separate legal case.
EWG, Friends of the Earth, and Mothers for Peace have a lawsuit ongoing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit challenging a separate decision by the state to extend the life of the dangerous, outdated Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. We believe that solar and other clean energy can make up for the electricity generation lost by shutting the plant.
In that lawsuit, California is arguing—apparently with zero self-awareness—that the state is in the midst of an energy crisis and needs to generate more electricity. Oral arguments in that case were held on January 10 and the court has not yet issued a decision.
Solar is one of the leading energy solutions, but California can’t even seem to agree with itself on the right path forward.If we’re successful in these two legal challenges, we can right the course of the state’s clean energy future.
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EPA, Sanders Launch $7 Billion Program to Expand Rooftop Solar in Poor Neighborhoods
"At a time when people are struggling to make ends meet, all while dealing with the existential threat of climate change, we must make residential rooftop solar a reality for low-income and working families that need it most," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Jun 28, 2023
President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday opened a $7 billion grant competition aimed at increasing access to residential solar power for millions of low-income households across the United States.
The initiative was announced by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan in Waterbury, Vermont. Regan was joined by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other members of the state's congressional delegation, who touted how local rooftop solar installations are lowering energy bills while improving public and planetary health.
Regan emphasized that the Biden administration's "Solar for All" program will replicate those benefits in disadvantaged neighborhoods nationwide, simultaneously alleviating the cost-of-living crisis, rampant air pollution, and the climate emergency—all of which are driven to varying degrees by the country's reliance on fossil fuels.
"Solar for All will accelerate the deployment of residential solar in communities that for too long have lacked access to the cost-saving benefits of clean energy generation at home."
"For too long, overburdened communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have been left behind and locked out of clean energy investments and climate solutions," Regan said in a statement. "This historic boost in solar investments will advance millions of residential solar projects nationwide, protect people and the planet, deliver environmental justice, save families money, and create good-paying jobs."
The grants are part of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) established by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The EPA said that it will award "up to 60 grants to states, territories, tribal governments, municipalities, and eligible nonprofits to create and expand low-income solar programs that provide financing and technical assistance, such as workforce development, to enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from residential solar."
Applicants have until September 26 to request grants in amounts ranging from $25 million to $400 million.
"All communities deserve to participate in America's growing clean energy economy," said Regan. "Under this competition, we will bring more communities along, working together to build a healthier and cleaner future for all."
A long-term study published in November showed that rooftop solar is becoming more accessible to low- and moderate-income households, but not quickly enough to stave off the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
Sanders sponsored the inclusion of the Solar for All program in the IRA and has long advocated for its swift implementation.
As The Hill reported Wednesday:
In December, at a meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the Vermont senator voted to advance the nomination of Joe Goffman, President Biden's nomination to lead the EPA's air office, but said he would not back him in the full Senate without a written commitment that the full $7 billion would go toward installation of residential solar.
The panel advanced Goffman's nomination this April, but it has yet to receive a full Senate vote.
"At a time when people are struggling to make ends meet, all while dealing with the existential threat of climate change, we must make residential rooftop solar a reality for low-income and working families that need it most," Sanders said Wednesday.
"This $7 billion residential solar program that I introduced and the EPA is administering is a major step in the right direction," he added. "I look forward to working with the EPA on this program to make it more affordable for low-income and working-class families to install solar on their homes and save money on their electricity bills, as well as help create millions of good jobs in Vermont and across the country."
According to the EPA:
The new grant competition will provide funds to expand existing low-income solar programs as well as develop and implement new Solar for All programs nationwide. Solar for All programs ensure low-income households have equitable access to residential rooftop and residential community solar power, often by providing financial support and incentives to communities that were previously locked out of investments. In addition, these programs guarantee low-income households receive the benefits of distributed solar including household savings, community ownership, energy resiliency, and other benefits.
"Solar for All will accelerate the deployment of residential solar in communities that for too long have lacked access to the cost-saving benefits of clean energy generation at home," said GGRF acting director Jahi Wise. "The Solar for All program strengthens low-income and disadvantaged community-focused solar programs across the country, bringing long-needed cost savings and pollution reduction to American communities."
In addition to unveiling the $7 billion Solar for All initiative, the EPA announced that it plans to launch two other GGRF programs in the coming weeks: A $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) grant competition to expand the deployment of clean technologies at the national scale and a $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) grant competition to increase local clean financing capacity via community lenders.
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