Close to Home: PUC proposal threatens solar in California

When my daughter was less than a month old, I awoke to the sound of sirens and chaos here in Santa Rosa and will never forget opening my door to a wall of fire. Only a few miles away, Coffey Park residents had seen their entire neighborhood leveled in a matter of hours. In the following years PG&E settled with Tubbs fire victims and survivors, including them in a $13.5 billion settlement with victims of fires started by faulty PG&E utility equipment.

The Tubbs fire and California’s other extreme wildfires make it clear that we need to move quickly to reduce our dependence on utility wires and aging grid infrastructure that have sparked so much devastation across the state. Climate scientists have been predicting these challenges for decades, and yet utilities are still using their political influence to attack one of the best fire mitigation technologies we have: rooftop solar.

I began my career in the solar industry in 2000, during the opening days of the California electricity crisis. At that time, solar was a nascent technology with an industry small enough to fit almost all of us into a single conference center. We watched as that crisis cost our state over $40 billion — an entirely avoidable expense had we had the right policies in place beforehand.

Over 20 years later the solar industry has flourished across the globe despite endless barriers being erected along the way. Contractors, homeowners and businesses from all income levels have benefited enormously from solar power. Now, yet another energy behemoth in California aims to manipulate markets and stymie competition through stealthy policy channels, only this time it isn’t Enron.

Utilities like PG&E are attempting to disincentivize rooftop solar and make it less affordable for working Californians. The utilities are focused on protecting its energy market share, which is put in jeopardy when consumers can produce their own energy. That’s why utilities have been lobbying the California Public Utilities Commission to slash net energy metering benefits — the financial credit received when solar users produce excess electricity and send it back to the grid — for new California solar installations.

Rooftop solar is a proven method to reduce dependence on utility companies. Net metering is crucial to keeping solar affordable and accessible. Slashing benefits would make it harder for middle-and low-income Californians, as well as schools, businesses and nonprofits, to install solar. Californians’ great progress toward energy autonomy will begin to reverse, and we would once again become more dependent on utilities for energy.

The Tubbs fire, which destroyed so much of my community in 2017, is no longer the most destructive fire in California history. It was eclipsed by the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, which was sparked by faulty PG&E equipment and destroyed over 18,000 structures. And that will not be the last of it. We need decentralized solar and battery solutions that aren’t dependent on a last generation utility company responsible for billions in damages and scores of lives lost with no vision beyond its own profits and survival.

On Sept. 8, President Joe Biden’s Energy Department announced a historic blueprint to transition the nation’s electric grid from 4% solar in 2020 to 45% in 2050. This bold vision will be led by California as a world leader in renewable energy. The Public Utilities Commission must side with Californians and protect the benefits that have allowed solar to be installed on over a million California homes and businesses and lessen our dependence on utility companies. The PUC must send a message that utilities like PG&E don’t get to decide the future of California energy. We do.

Aaron Masseira owns Ideal Solar. He lives in Santa Rosa.

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