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SOLAR 2

10/15, see main older

SEE IRA BBB

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NO MERRI

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amazing how many sunshine states [florida, desantis 3/22] have citizen initiatives to get green solar power quashed by corps, that run crypto initiative to confuse/defeat them

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GRIST 7 26

Inside the government’s push to divert Puerto Rico solar funds to a bankrupt utility

Naveena Sadasivam

AN 3 26

Katie Miller, the podcaster and wife of White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, has taken a sudden interest in solar energy. Many observers are wondering why, with the specter of paid shilling looming.

A confidential strategy memo obtained by Politico raises that possibility. There is a campaign underway by members of the renewable energy lobby group to “MAGA-fy solar power,” as the publication terms the bolstering trend.

The memo shows the American Clean Power Association launched the “American Energy First” campaign to engage former President Donald Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway and conservative influencers like Miller “to amplify the benefits of solar energy” and “note the harm that could result from reckless trade policy.”

The memo cites an American Energy First poll showing solar power is popular with Trump’s base.

“As part of the campaign, ACP is working with a series of conservative influencers to secure opinion media placements authored by conservative columnists, former Republican lawmakers,” the memo states.

Miller denies being paid for her posts. “I do not have a paid partnership” with the American Clean Power Association, she said in a statement to Politico.

It’s worth noting that Miller did work full-time for former boss Elon Musk during the early months of Trump’s second stint, and he has extensive investments in solar power and battery storage. She has been a staunch defender of Musk.

While there is speculation about Miller’s motives, many are heartened by her posts.

Renewable energy interest has waned in Trump 2.0, as Republicans ended President Joe Biden-era tax credits for renewables.

President Trump, who has called renewables "unreliable," also signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to “end preferential treatment” for wind and solar, and the Energy Department dissolved its renewable division, nixing a number of projects in the pipeline.

That means things like the social media become more important.

“We have to try new creative things rather than let this administration drive the narrative with their baseless attacks on solar and wind,” one Senate staffer working on renewable energy issues told Puck.

That has manifested itself on several fronts, including polling favoring renewables among conservatives, and Newt Gingrich publishing an opinion piece in The Daily Caller calling solar a key piece of an “energy abundance” strategy.

The pro-renewables blitz may be working. Puck reports that there is a perceived “softening” in the Trump administration’s rhetoric on solar, while the Interior Department has slightly loosened its permitting process for solar projects.

Whatever the reason for the newfound embrace of solar, the interest in renewable power arrives at a time when oil is choked by the Iran war and domestic needs, particularly for artificial intelligence data centers, are both huge factors.

One renewable that won’t likely benefit, Puck wryly notes: “Trump’s hatred for wind turbines ruining his golf course views runs so deep.”

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BILL MCKIBB 2 25? 26

CHINA WILL OWN AUTO SECTOR WITH ev; 3 CITIES MAKE MORE CARS THAN FORD? BETTER ONES?

CO2 PEAKED YRS EARLY?

1 IN 5 SICK DIE FROM AIR POLUT? INDIA REALLY Bad air

CHINA BUILDS = 3 COAL PLANTS ON ALT ENERGY A DAY?!

china taking climate leadership abandoned by us trump

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an 725

Two Senate Republicans are now blocking a confirmation vote for three of President Donald Trump's nominees to positions in the U.S. Treasury Department in protest of one of the administration's newest policies.

Politico's Kelsey Tamborino and Josh Siegel reported Monday that Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Curtis (R-Utah) are now holding up votes for Treasury Department general counsel Brian Morissey, assistant Treasury Secretary Francis Brooke and Treasury Department undersecretary Jonathan McKernan. According to Politico, Grassley and Curtis are blocking the officials' confirmation to protect lucrative solar and wind energy projects in their states. And they're apparently not the only Senate Republicans willing to go to the mat for those projects.

"The pair, alongside other GOP senators, have escalated their pressure on the Trump administration in recent days to back off its efforts to strangle new solar and wind energy projects, warning that potential cancellations would make it harder to meet growing power demand," Tamborino and Siegel wrote.

READ MORE:'She is very very dumb': Fox News host mocked after flubbing basic civics lesson

One part of Trump's massive new tax and spending law is the repealing of renewable energy investments made possible by former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman detailed last month, the legislation will "kneecap America’s renewable energy industry" while making China the de facto world leader in green energy technology.

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In July, Trump issued an executive order instructing the Treasury Department to "strictly enforce" provisions in the new law that end tax credits for renewable energy development, which would be the responsibility of the Treasury officials Curtis and Grassley are blockading. The order also specified when a project was said to have begun construction, which Grassley said goes against what Congress has already passed.

“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade. Moreover, Congress specifically references current Treasury guidance to set that term’s meaning in law,” the Iowa Republican said in the Congressional Record. “This is a case where both the law and congressional intent are clear.”

According to Politico, the tax and spending law defunds all projects slated to start generating power after 2027. Several Republicans fought for compromise language that was included in the final bill that allowed more time for renewable energy projects beginning construction in the next six months.

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alternet-no lnx

Home | Republicans have been lying to their voters for years — and now those same voters are dying

Thom Hartmann June 14, 2024

This is a climate change story that fossil fuel billionaires and their GOP lackeys would rather you didn’t know.

As more and more people are killed by extraordinarily severe weather in places where it used to be unusual it’s going to get harder and harder to keep Red State citizens from finding out how badly they’ve been screwed by the unholy alliance between Republicans and oil barons.

Severe weather in the United States is not only getting worse, it’s moving.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

There’s a reason L. Frank Baum placed his 1901 novel The Wizard of Oz in Kansas: the worst and most frequent tornado activity in the world at that time was in the American Great Plains states — particularly Kansas.

Now that’s changing, as weather extremes are moving to the Midwest and the South. Recently, deadly tornadoes — some with wind velocities in excess of 200 mph — have ravaged Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana.

This new burst of unusually extreme weather is driven by global warming and its impact on the Arctic, our oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico.

And it’s going to be America’s new normal, although in all probability this is just the beginning and over time it will get a lot worse.

America has always had the most extreme weather of anyplace else on Earth, according to Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina.

China has more people and a larger landmass than we do, but, Cutter told ABC News, “they don't have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather.”

The severity of America’s Great Plains states’ historically extreme weather was the result of geography.

While there’s a massive amount of land on either side of the European/Asian land mass, the United States is bracketed by two giant bodies of water, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We also have a huge mountain range — the Rockies — that helps determine where turbulent air from the west ends up, particularly as it encounters colder air from the north and warmer air from over the Gulf of Mexico.

As North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello told ABC News, it’s because of “where we are on the globe,” adding, “It’s truly a little bit ... unlucky.”

But now, as the Gulf of Mexico is heating up faster than the oceans on either side of us, combined with “bomb cyclone” cold weather coming down from Canada because melting ice in the Arctic is making the Jet Stream less stable, that severe weather is moving to the Midwest and South.

This appears to be one of the most consequential outcomes of climate change, severe weather-wise, for the United States.

As Victor Gensini, associate professor in the Earth, Atmosphere and Environment Department at Northern Illinois University, told The Chicago Tribune, the Midwest and South are replacing the Plains states as the epicenter of severe weather.

“That’s a really, really big deal for human exposure and vulnerability,” Gensini told Ezra Maille. “A tornado that goes through a wheat field in Kansas is not a big deal, but a tornado that goes through southern Cook County is a huge deal.”

He added that the Great Plains will probably continue to experience more and more severe drought while tornado activity is shifting toward the East and South.

The fossil fuel industry has known with a high level of certainty how severe weather was a probable outcome of America’s dependence on their products ever since the 1970s.

Yet for the fifty years since then — and continuing to this day — they fund phony “science” and shills to deny climate change or try to spin it as a positive, all while pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers and personal bank accounts of mostly Republican politicians.

We’re at least 40 years behind where we should be in dealing with the fossil fuel/global warming crisis because giant oil companies have run massive disinformation campaigns while funding the political careers of hacks in Congress willing to lie to the public for them.

President Jimmy Carter declared a national crisis in 1979 and proposed legislation to create “this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

FDR had sold bonds to the public to fund a government corporation that would develop synthetic rubber for fighter plane tires back in the day, and Carter wanted to do the same to end our dependence on fossil fuels:

“Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II,” Carter said, “so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.”

In that same July 15, 1979 speech, he proposed the government issue bonds that would fund:

“[T]he creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.”

But it all came crashing down 43 years ago when the fossil fuel industry’s candidate, Ronald Reagan, replaced Carter, killed the solar bank and the bond program, and even took Carter’s solar panels off the roof of the White House.

The big question now is how long the GOP will be able to keep up their climate change denial in the Red states currently being hammered by extreme weather before their citizens catch on to what’s happening and demand action to reduce our carbon emissions.

As Dr. Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), told me yesterday:

“It is rather ironic that many of the states that are seeing the worst climate change impacts—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—are red states, with governors and legislatures that are far more interested in doing the bidding of polluters than representing the people they’re supposed to be representing.

“Unsurprisingly, these states are all among the lowest when it comes to per capita spending on public education. The alliance of rightwing politicians and polluters prefers a poorly educated electorate, ignorant of the environmental health damage being done to them.”

So, what can be done other than offering subsidies for electric cars?

Number one on the list is to put a price on carbon, which will bend market incentives toward green and renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels.

According to the World Bank, there are currently 70 carbon pricing programs in place around the world, covering a bit over 23 percent of all emissions. Some are outright carbon taxes, typically with a rebate program to low- and average-income consumers, and some are cap-and-trade type programs (like President George HW Bush put into place to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions).

Canada’s carbon tax, which they put into place in 2019, is working so well that they actually sped up the process of implementation this year.

The original plan called for the initial $10/ton carbon tax to go up $10 every year until it hit $170/ton. The money collected is then recycled back to low- and average-income consumers to compensate them for the extra costs they’ll incur driving and heating their homes. But the program has been such a success that Canada’s government announced this week they’re raising the carbon tax by a full $15 this year.

They can pull this off because the rebates represent, for most Canadians, far more money in their pockets than the cost of the carbon tax. The brunt of the tax is instead borne by Canadian businesses, which is the group that's been designed to push toward green -- and tax-free or even green-subsidized -- energy sources.

An average taxpayer in Alberta province, for example, now gets a $386 check or bank deposit from their government every three months. It’s $340 quarterly in Saskatchewan, $328 in Newfoundland, $248 in Nova Scotia, and $264 in Manitoba.

This is a system that could work very well here in the US, if only there was the political will to make it happen. And, as we cut emissions and figure out new and better ways to pull existing carbon out of the air and oceans, we may be able to dial back on the increasing severity of storms that are ravaging Red states.

The obstacle to pricing carbon in the US is widespread ignorance of how severe our problem is and its origins in fossil fuel emissions. Fully 58% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say climate change is “not an important concern” and a mere 17% believe human activities like burning fossil fuels “contribute a great deal to climate change.”

Hopefully the deadly disasters sweeping Red states now will wake up Republican voters and motivate them to demand their Republican politicians stop taking money from fossil fuel billionaires and do something now to stop climate change from getting any worse.

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*right-wing media are helping local anti-renewable energy activists spread unsubstantiated claims that a damaged industrial solar project may be leaking toxic chemicals into a Texas community’s water supply, while other conservative pundits on social media amplify viral video of the storm’s aftermath to bash solar energy.

On March 15 and 16, severe and destructive hailstorms hit central and north Texas. In the aftermath, local media reports amplified unconfirmed concerns from local anti-solar activists about the panels at a local solar farm damaged by the storm supposedly leaching cadmium, a toxic metal. Those credulous reports — and a social media video showing footage of damaged solar panels — helped trigger a deluge of commentary from right-wing websites and influencers who falsely insisted that solar power is unsafe and unreliable.

Related

  1. ### Right-wing media are targeting federal loan guarantee to embattled solar company in proxy war over Biden’s energy policy

12/18/23 2:35 PM EST

  1. ### Jesse Watters hosts oil industry-funded scientist to buttress his climate denial and attack green energy

08/30/23 3:08 PM EDT

  1. ### What do The Wall Street Journal, Tucker Carlson, Rep. Lauren Boebert, Steve Bannon, and an online troll called “Catturd” all have in common?

02/19/21

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MMA 12 23

Congressional Republicans have signaled their intention to find scandal in the Department of Energy’s loan program that would aid their efforts to repeal President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act and its historic $369 billion in climate and energy provisions. Now, right-wing media are assisting those GOP efforts by targeting solar energy company Sunnova in reporting that mischaracterizes its federal loan guarantee and attacks the renewable energy industry as a whole.

On November 22, The Washington Free Beacon reported, “A solar company that was awarded a $3 billion Department of Energy loan has been accused of scamming dementia patients on their deathbeds into signing five-figure, multi-decade solar panel leases.” The article noted that the accusation “comes as the DOE’s Loan Programs Office is facing scrutiny from Congress over potential conflicts of interest involving the $3 billion federal loan to Sunnova Energy,” and quoted a former Energy Department official who claimed, “This is reminiscent of the mortgages of the 2000s, just getting people to sign, with no care at all as to the consequences. … Why not just call it subprime solar?"

While the report is troubling and worthy of scrutiny, the incidents documented by The Washington Free Beacon are not evidence that taxpayer money has been wasted or misused, nor is the story representative of all residential solar programs. In fact, as E&E News reported, “A loan program office official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly emphasized that the Sunnova project is a loan guarantee and that no money has actually gone out the door.” The article also cited clean energy lobbyist Joe Britton, who pointed out the political nature and the hypocrisy of the attacks:

In lieu of have a smoking gun of taxpayer dollars going to a company and then that company going into default … they’ve gone down a host of other tributaries that they think might be worthy of political attack,” Britton said.

“The company may be really successful, they may have great technology, they may be able to scale well and create a ton of new U.S. manufacturing jobs. But they’re finding other angles of trying to attack them,” he continued, pointing to efforts to tie recipients of money to China without putting similar scrutiny on the oil and natural gas industry.

Nevertheless, congressional Republicans have seized on the reporting by The Washington Free Beacon to probe the loan guarantee awarded to Sunnova, while Fox News’ Jesse Watters has suggested “the entire solar industry is a scam” that is being funded by “400 billion of your money.”

Right-wing media targeting Sunnova

Led in part by Watters’ coverage, Fox News has spent the past year spreading misinformation about offshore wind turbines and misleading viewers about the Inflation Reduction Act in an effort to undermine Biden’s climate agenda.

In reality, the IRA has transformed the clean energy landscape by funding new developments and electric vehicle production across the U.S. Since its passage, 272 clean energy projects have been announced in the United States, representing $278 billion in new investment and creating over 170,000 new jobs, according to Climate Power. Meanwhile, Canary Media reports that “solar is the fastest-growing source of electricity in the U.S., making up almost half of all new power capacity in the first three quarters of 2023.”

  1. ### Right-wing figures are using the cancellation of two offshore wind projects to make misleading claims about renewable energy

11/14/23 2:47 PM EST

  1. ### Jesse Watters is bringing his egregious brand of climate denial to the 8pm hour

07/17/23 2:48 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox has shamelessly spent 2022 bootlicking the fossil fuel industry

12/30/22

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6 23 heat wave dome saves day

https://www.alternet.org/environment/solar-texas/

9 22 almost daily headlines on solar and battery tech breakthrus?

gop BS on CA blackouts eg shillenberger; no mention that climate creates heatwave, or that ca got big % during peak demand from wind and solar?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/the-best-economic-choice-renewable/

'The best economic choice': Switching to :{renewable energy could save the world $12 trillion by 2050:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:

Jessica Corbett Common Dreams

Peer-reviewed research released Tuesday by a team at the University of Oxford reveals that transitioning to 100% clean energy within the next three decades could save not only live...

an 6 22

Renewable sources of energy are "bailing out" the Texas power grid as early summer temperatures spike and demand surges, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The boost has prevented a recurrence of the blackouts which plagued Texas during the winter months of 2021 when electricity usage exploded, overwhelming providers and transmission networks.

"Several experts told CNN that it's owed in large part to strong performances from wind and solar, which generated 27 gigawatts of electricity during Sunday's peak demand -- close to 40% of the total needed," the outlet said.

CNN noted that while Republicans in the politically crimson Lone Star State have been reliably outspoken about their opposition to sustainable sources such as wind and solar, Texas "has a massive and growing fleet of renewables. Zero-carbon electricity sources (wind, solar, and nuclear) powered about 38% of the state's power in 2021, rivaling natural gas at 42%."

Michael Webber, an energy expert and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, explained that "Texas is, by rhetoric, anti-renewables. But frankly, renewables are bailing us out. They're rocking. That really spares us a lot of heartache and a lot of money."

Perhaps somewhat ironically, CNN pointed out, "Texas generates the most wind energy in the country: In 2020, it produced more wind electricity than Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma — the next three highest states — combined, according to the US Energy Information Administration."

Solar, meanwhile, is viewed as an invaluable power source during the summer due to there being less wind and because "there's a good chance the sun is beating down," experts told CNN.

Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas in Austin, confirmed that renewables "are acting as a hedge against high fuel prices." He added, however, that "about half of the solar that could be produced is not being produced right now because there's no more room on the lines. The numbers for renewables would probably be higher if we had the transmission capacity to move them around."

Renewables have driven down prices because they are generated naturally, unlike fossil fuels, which require massive industrial refinement operations and energy-intensive efforts to be delivered to consumers. Oil and natural gas are also finite resources, a fact that has contributed to the increased costs of fuel worldwide.

Yet even with their much-needed cushioning, renewables are not a complete fail-safe against future collapses of the power grid.Texas is currently experiencing sweltering heat that normally arrives in August, causing people to crank up their air conditioners earlier in the season than in previous years.And engineers are facing additional challenges, like designing batteries that can store enough electricity to sustain communities when sunlight and wind are not immediately available.

But the biggest variable by far is climate change, which scientists have for decades warned will get catastrophically worse unless humanity's addiction to fossil fuels is curbed. More than 107 million Americans are experiencing record-shattering heat in the waning weeks of spring.

Andy Dessler, the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M University, stressed to CNN that "everything's getting hotter. August is getting hotter; June is getting hotter. It is hot and this is the future."

CNN's full report is available here.

https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/03/21/rooftop-solar-attack-florida-gov-desantis-signs-bill-gutting-solar-net-metering/

an 3 22 ukraine

On Monday, March 7, the Republican-controlled Florida State Senate sent House Bill 741 — which removes green energy incentives for Florida homeowners — to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for approval. Because MAGA Republicans are dogmatic in their disdain for green energy and love of fossil fuels, DeSantis is almost certain to sign HB 741 into law. But in an op-ed published by the Miami Herald on March 14, Mark Hertling — an Orlando, Florida resident and retired U.S. Army officer — argues that DeSantis should veto HB 741 because it’s the type of bill that helps Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“(DeSantis) is likely to sign HB 741, which would negatively affect the solar industry and eliminate any incentive for individual Floridians to generate their own power at a time when we should be finding ways to expand homegrown energy,” Hertling explains. “To a degree,Florida’s decision to rapidly curtail available and cheaper domestic energy sources gives Putin money in his pockets and leverage over the West.”...

an 3 22 ukraine

On Monday, March 7, the Republican-controlled Florida State Senate sent House Bill 741 — which removes green energy incentives for Florida homeowners — to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk for approval. Because MAGA Republicans are dogmatic in their disdain for green energy and love of fossil fuels, DeSantis is almost certain to sign HB 741 into law. But in an op-ed published by the Miami Herald on March 14, Mark Hertling — an Orlando, Florida resident and retired U.S. Army officer — argues that DeSantis should veto HB 741 because it’s the type of bill that helps Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“(DeSantis) is likely to sign HB 741, which would negatively affect the solar industry and eliminate any incentive for individual Floridians to generate their own power at a time when we should be finding ways to expand homegrown energy,” Hertling explains. “To a degree, Florida’s decision to rapidly curtail available and cheaper domestic energy sources gives Putin money in his pockets and leverage over the West.”

Only a fraction of the oil and gas used in the United States has been coming from Russia. So, when President Joe Biden banned Russian oil/gas imports, it was a symbolic way to take a stand against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. But Western Europe gets a lot of oil from Russia, and Hertling argues that European countries have been much too reliant on Russian oil.

“For those of us who spent most of our professional lives in the U.S. Armed Forces, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not a complete surprise,” Hertling explains. “When I served as the commanding general of the United States Army-Europe, Vladimir Putin’s expansion was something we tracked and reported on daily, given his invasion of Georgia in 2008, his takeover of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and his other adventures in Moldova and Azerbaijan. We also understood why the world let Putin get away with it: The Europeans — and to a lesser degree the U.S. — depended on Russian fossil fuel.”

Hertling adds, “In the last three weeks, we have managed to cripple Russia’s economy, which is almost singularly based on its oil and natural gas industry. In the future, many nations, the U.S. included, must find ways to exploit alternative energy sources.”

Hertling goes on to explain why solar panels have been beneficial to Floridians.

“When I retired in Orlando eight years ago,” Hertling notes, “we put solar panels on our new house.… When we put solar panels on our home, our electric bills were cut by two-thirds. With tax exemptions, we paid for the panels in just a few years. And returning power to the grid while we were paying less gave us the knowledge that we were contributing to the community and an improved environment.”

Hertling continues, “In sunny Florida, we always wondered why most of our neighbors didn’t do the same. In all likelihood, HB 741 would significantly reduce the demand for rooftop solar power generation in Florida, taking roughly 1.5 million kilowatt hours of energy offline each year.”

In light of the crisis in Ukraine, Hertling writes, the last thing DeSantis should do is sign HB 741 into law.

“I am not suggesting that HB 741’s proponents support Putin’s criminal actions,” Hertling writes.“I am suggesting that any claim that rooftop solar is regressive — which is a dubious claim, as most Florida rooftop solar users make less than $100,000 a year — is counter-intuitive.Yet impact matters more than intent.… That DeSantis would pick this moment to support this is baffling. If he wants to be on the right side of history, Floridians, and our environment, he must veto HB 741.”

1/22

On January 11 Sunshine State senators advanced a utility-backed bill to restrict residents’ ability to install solar panels on their homes.

The bill, which would alter net metering rates so as to make installing solar panels less financially viable for Florida residents, is backed by Florida Power & Light (which wants to own all solar generation) and is sponsored by Republican State Sen. Jennifer Bradley (who received $10,000 PAC contribution from FPL’s parent company a month before she filed a bill nearly identical to text given to her by an FPL lobbyist).

icn 421

inside Clean Energy: The Coast-to-Coast Battle Over Rooftop Solar

As California works on a new net metering policy, other states are grappling with similar issues.

By Dan Gearino

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Inside Clean Energy: In South Carolina, a Happy Compromise on Net Metering

:{BY: DAN GEARINO

The agreement between Duke Energy and Sunrun may allow other states to resolve the debate after years of conflict. Read More}:

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alabama Public Service Commission Upholds and Increases 'Sun Tax' on Solar Power Users

:{BY: JAMES BRUGGERS

Opponents say the monthly fee slashes solar customers’ savings in half and amounts to a disincentive to generate electricity from sunlight. Read More}:

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inside Clean Energy: Rooftop Solar Gets a Lifeline in Arkansas

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https://insideclimatenews.org/campaign-archive/clean-economy-weekly/1827249

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in California, Solar on (Almost) Every New House

In California, rooftop solar is now a standard feature for new houses. The state’s new building code, which took effect Jan. 1, requires solar on new construction, with few exceptions.

This is a big step for the country’s largest market for rooftop solar. But for the builders who must follow the rules, the shift is more routine. They are used to the building code being updated every three years, and have had plenty of time to prepare, said Brandon De Young, executive vice president of De Young Properties in Fresno.

His company, which builds about 100 houses per year, specializes in energy efficient construction and already had solar as a standard feature. Even though the code may take away some of the distinctiveness of what he offers, he has been a strong supporter of the policy.

“In our view, it’s a no-brainer: this is the right way to go,” he told me. “We believe this as citizens and as a company.

The rules affect the roughly 80,000 new houses built in California each year. 

The new systems will add up to a projected 1 gigawatt of new rooftop solar on homes between now and 2024, according to Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables.

That’s a lot, and it will come on top of the 26.2 gigawatts of solar already installed in the state, the most in the country by a large margin. Of that total, 6.4 gigawatts are on houses....

https://yyy.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/sep/27/the-palestinian-entrepreneur-bringing-power-to-gaza-majd-mashharawi

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SunShot met its goal. Now what?

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By David Ferris in Energywire 7:16 AM EST

One of the Department of Energy's key goals under the Obama administration was the SunShot Initiative, which sought to spur the adoption of solar by making it as cheap as other forms of electricity by 2020. Did it work?

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https://insideclimatenews.org/campaign-archive/clean-economy-weekly/1826185

can a Field of Mirrors Slash Industry Emissions?

BY: DAN GEARINO

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:{heliogen AI, bill gates

A company says its mirrors can generate heat high enough for industrial processes such as making steel, and Ford's latest EV aims to bring some muscle. That and more in this week's Clean Economy Weekly. Read More}:

sacramento–Today, Senators Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jim Nielsen (R-Red Bluff) joined a large coalition of homeowners, school officials, farmers, and small businesses to announce bipartisan legislation aimed at creating a solar bill of rights to protect the right of consumers to generate and store their own clean energy on-site, without interference from utility companies. 

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Senate Bill 288 enables more consumers to install and maintain renewable energy technologies by addressing some of the main barriers consumers currently face. These challenges include outdated tariffs that make it financially unattractive to install renewable energy technologies, including solar, and unreasonable barriers to connecting to the grid. Although known as the Solar Bill of Rights, SB 288 is technology neutral and applies to all renewable sources of energy and energy storage.

Currently, consumers — including everyday homeowners seeking to lower their electric bills, farmers who see solar as a reliable source of energy, and schools seeking to invest more in their students and less in their energy bills — face unnecessary obstacles and interference from utilities. For instance, many consumers who install on-site energy storage systems and are connected to the electric grid may at times receive no compensation at all for the additional electricity they are storing and putting back into the grid during the times of day when it is most needed. Instead, these same consumers could later be charged for electricity that they themselves discharged onto the electric grid. SB 288 requires the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Independent System Operator, and the board of publicly owned utilities around the state to update relevant tariffs to ensure fair compensation of these distributed energy resources (DERs).

“To fight climate change, California is moving aggressively to 100% renewable energy,” said Senator Wiener. “To meet our 100% renewable energy goal, we must make it easier for individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and public agencies to generate their own renewable energy. This legislation is about ensuring that we all have access to the benefits of solar and other sources of renewable energy. When our public agencies put up barriers to make it harder and less attractive to install renewable energy, we’re all worse for it. California needs to move away from a purely centralized, monopoly approach to energy in California. If we’ve learned anything from our push toward 100% renewable energy and from the recent wildfire disasters, it’s that we need both a diversity of energy sources and more decentralized energy generation. We must make it easier and more affordable — not harder and more expensive — to install and use these technologies.”

“With solar energy being mandated for new homes, it is important for individual homeowners to have fair compensation for energy produced on their properties,” said Senator Nielsen.

The Solar Bill of Rights promotes energy independence by recognizing that all Californians have a right to:

●      Generate, store and use renewable energy on their property without interference from utility companies.

●      Interconnect their solar and storage to the grid quickly, without utility red tape.

●      Be free from discriminatory fees and charges associated with installing solar or storage technologies.

“Reliable and affordable electricity is critical to my business,” said Bill Carriere. “By investing in solar on my farm, I can save money and feel confident that I will have reliable, affordable power.  Electric utilities feel threatened by my right to produce my own power for my business, and we need the legislature to step in and make sure those rights can’t be taken away.”

"No one owns the sun,” said Madera homeowner Ramon Torres. “We all know the benefits of going solar but the right to tap into those benefits is not protected. The law should protect  my rights and the rights of my neighbors to go solar.”

"Solar energy has become an important part of managing our schools, saving us significant operational funds that can be much better spent on the educational needs of our kids," said Dr. Ken Testa, Director of Facilities for the Merced City School District. "But despite the state's commitment to solar energy, there are real barriers for consumers that need to be seriously addressed, particularly at the interconnection level."

The Solar Bill of Rights will also make it easier for storage customers to provide grid services with their battery, helping to create a more reliable electric grid and receive a fair credit in return.

"Every Californian has the right to make their own energy from the sun without the utility getting in the way, especially in these uncertain times," said Solar Rights Alliance Director Dave Rosenfeld. "The Solar Bill of Rights will guarantee those rights for everyone - homeowners, renters, farmers, businesses, schools - regardless of where you live or what you do. We're grateful to Senators Scott Wiener and Jim Nielsen for working together to stand up for our personal freedoms."

In addition to Senator Nielsen, SB 288 is co-authored by Senator Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) and Assemblymembers Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), and Robert Rivas (D-Hollister). Over 50 people joined today’s announcement including dozens of solar workers, farmers, school officials, small business owners, disability rights activists, and organizations including Vote Solar, Solar Rights Alliance, California Solar & Storage Association, Brightline Defense, California Housing Partnership Corporation, and Environment California.

SB 288 was officially introduced on February 13 and will be set for a hearing in the coming months. For the full text of the bill, please click here.

Senators Wiener and Nielsen Join Homeowners, School ...

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov › news › 20190219-senators-wiener-and-nielsen...

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:{Feb 19, 2019 - ... School Officials, and Farmers to Announce Bipartisan Legislation to Create Solar Bill of ... Senate Bill 288 enables more consumers to install and maintain renewable ... including solar, and unreasonable barriers to connecting to the grid. ... SB 288 requires the California Public Utilities Commission, the ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

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guk no lnx 719

Device could bring both solar power and clean water to millions

Researchers say one invention could solve two problems for people lacking basic resources

Nicola Davis

@NicolaKSDavis

Tue 9 Jul 2019 16.00 BST Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2019 17.04 BST

A woman fetches drinking water from a well in Zimbabwe

More than 780 million people worldwide lack basic access to safe drinking water. Photograph: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

A device that can produce electricity from sunlight while simultaneously purifying water has been produced by researchers, an invention they say could solve two problems in one stroke.

The researchers say the device is not only a source of green energy but also offers an alternative to current technologies for purifying water. These, they add, often consume large amounts of electricity and require infrastructure beyond the reach of many communities that lack basic access to safe drinking water – a situation thought to affect more than 780 million people worldwide.

“These people spend a collective 200m hours a day fetching water from distant sources,” said Prof Peng Wang, a co-author of the research from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

With solar farms often located in arid regions, the device could provide clean water where it is needed most. What is more, the team say it could be used in a backyard or on an industrial scale.

“Having a significant amount of freshwater produced continuously on a daily basis [means] many challenging tasks can then be easily achievable,” said Wang. “The generated clean water can be used [for] cleaning solar panels to remove dust particles; it can be use to irrigate plants and crops, making desert agriculture possible.”

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, Wang and colleagues reveal how they constructed the device.

On the top is a horizontal commercial silicon solar cell and beneath this are several tiers through which saline, brackish or contaminated surface water is run. Waste heat from the solar cell warms the saline water passing immediately beneath it – the water evaporates, passes through a membrane and condenses to yield clean water, releasing heat in the process that warms the saline water in the tier below that – the process is then repeated for the next tier. The purified water flows out of the device and is collected.

The team found the device can be used to purify saltwater as well as seawater contaminated with heavy metals, with the water collected containing levels of lead, copper, sodium, calcium and magnesium all below the levels deemed safe for drinking water by the World Health Organization.

While the team outline various versions of the device, they reveal that under conditions on a par with a bright, cloudless day the energy efficiency of the solar cell was about 11% – a figure they say is on a par with what would be expected without the distillation section attached, and higher than previously reported by others working on such devices.

The device was also able to produce clean water from seawater at a rate they say is higher than conventional solar stills.

The device, while not the first to make use of solar distillation, has a particular advantage: by combining two types of device that typically each require a large land area, and mounting systems, the approach is relatively compact.

Wang said the device turned the traditional link between water and electricity on its head: conventionally, electricity is produced by heating water to produce steam that is then used to turn turbines. While he said the team was still working on scaling up the device and reducing costs, they are optimistic.

“It is our hope that we move quickly to push this technology towards its large-scale adoption,” he said.

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Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Make Fuel and Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Says Study

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Arizona Public Service Company

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Arizona_Public_Service_Company

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icn -->

http://www.startribune.com/arizona-utility-finally-comes-clean-about-political-spending/509097912/

AP

Facing what it saw as a threat to its monopoly from a surging rooftop solar industry, Arizona's largest utility secretly funneled millions of dollars to back favored candidates for the state commission regulating it.

Arizona Public Service Co. recently acknowledged it gave money to groups that spent $3.2 million in the 2014 Arizona Corporation Commission races. The disclosure in filings with the commission came after the utility refused for the past four years to confirm or deny its participation in the election despite broad suspicion that it did.

The spending raises questions about whether a regulated monopoly such as APS should be allowed to contribute money to political causes that could adversely affect customers, and whether it should be permitted to keep such spending secret.

"They are still taking ratepayer money and using it against the ratepayers to jack up their rates," said Tom Ryan, an attorney in metro Phoenix who has been a critic of some commission members.

The 2014 move by APS and its owner, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., was a break from a decades-long practice by the state's utilities of not meddling in political races involving their regulators. The utility spent on elections again in 2016 and 2018 but publicly disclosed it.

The shift led to years of negative press, along with an FBI investigation that continues to this day.

Pinnacle West and APS CEO Don Brandt was involved in deflecting news reports as the company funneled a combined $12.8 million to 15 political groups in 2014, including the $3.2 million that was spent in commission races.

The utility finally disclosed the spending late last month after a Democrat who took office in January joined with other commissioners to demand records.

It also provided details of $4.1 million in spending to influence its regulators' 2016 election and nearly$40 million to defeat a citizens' initiative last year that would have required that it get much more of its power from solar and other renewable sources.APS previously acknowledged those contributions.

"That was a policy issue with direct impact on our customers and our business and on Arizona," Jenna Rowell, the utility's director of external relations, said of the 2018 spending. "So we got involved in that early, we were up front about that. In addition to all of the required disclosures, we talked frequently and openly about why we were getting involved against that effort."

Brandt was getting updates from executives overseeing the company's political efforts in the 2014 and 2016 elections, according to documents provided to the commission.

Company officials haven't made Brandt available for interviews. Rowell pointed to a 2014 letter from the company's then-chief operating officer when asked why it dumped its long-held policy of not engaging in political races for its regulators.

"As you undoubtedly are aware, the political landscape is changing," now-retired COO Mark Schiavoni wrote to two commission candidates who inquired about the utility's 2014 political spending. "Because of the tactics a number of organizations are employing to misrepresent important regulatory issues, we may need to respond in the future to set the record straight on issues of importance to Arizona, our customers and our company."

One group that received funding from the utility also spent $704,000 in the 2014 secretary of state's race, including giving $437,000 to support Republican candidate Justin Pierce, the son of then-outgoing Commissioner Gary Pierce.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office launched an investigation tied to the spending, and Pinnacle West was forced to confirm in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has received grand jury subpoenas for information "pertaining to the 2014 statewide election races in Arizona for Secretary of State and for positions on the ACC (Arizona Corporation Commission)."

The FBI confirmed to The Associated Press that its investigation into political spending in certain 2014 statewide races remains ongoing, though it declined to provide details. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to say whether a grand jury was still examining the 2014 spending.

Neither APS nor the FBI has disclosed which possible violations of law are being investigated.

Pinnacle West insists no ratepayer money was spent on its political efforts, but former Commissioner Bill Mundell said the claim was disingenuous, given that the company gets nearly all its money from utility customers.

The 2014 effort came as APS was faced with a growing rooftop solar industry and consumers' embrace of solar panels that could cut their power use — and the utility's profits. APS wanted commissioners to lower the amount it had to pay for power rooftop solar customers sent back to its utility grid. The commission ultimately did lower that payout for future solar installations.

Vernon Parker, who lost his 2014 commission race, said he drew APS' ire by going to a pro-solar gathering where he gathered campaign petition signatures.

"The bizarre thing is that I would have been fair," Parker said. "Any issue that would have been raised, I would have asked, 'What does this mean to our ratepayers?'"

Commissioner Andy Tobin, who was backed by the utility in his 2016 race even though he said he discouraged it, said APS should have been up front about its 2014 spending and explained its belief that the solar industry posed a threat to its business.

"That's what they should have done, and I don't know why they didn't," Tobin said.

419 icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10042019/iowa-solar-fee-warren-buffett-midamerican-energy-who-gets-hurt-small-businesses

Entrepreneurs Built Iowa’s Solar Economy. A Utility’s Push for Solar Fees Could Shut Them Down.

BY: DAN GEARINO

Lawmakers are considering a new fee for rooftop solar at the urging of a utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.Meet the small business owners whose futures are at stake.

:{

}:

This story was co-published with The Weather Channel.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa — Walking between rows of solar panels in the largest project their company has ever done, the co-owners of Ideal Energy feel a mix of pride and unease. One giant task is almost done, and many more are just ahead.

"I couldn't have done it with anyone else," said Troy Van Beek, an entrepreneur and former Navy SEAL, about his wife and business partner, Amy Van Beek.

Over the past 10 years, this couple has been a leader in launching a solar industry in Iowa, showing how entrepreneurs can build a market almost from scratch.

Now, they and other small business owners are in a political fight for their future as they try to keep Iowa lawmakers from passing legislation that they fear could kill the state's still young rooftop solar industry.

Customers' utility-bill savings would cover the cost of adding solar. It's part of a national wave of utility-backed plans that would reduce the financial benefits of home solar, to the benefit of utilities. The leading supporter of the Iowa bill is MidAmerican Energy, a utility owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

The entire state of Iowa had less than 1 megawatt of solar installed in 2009 when the Van Beeks started Ideal Energy. Nearly all of the country's solar development was in the sunniest states or in states with substantial subsidies for rooftop solar, of which Iowa was neither. Today, Iowa is up to 96 megawatts, the majority of it installed on homes and businesses.

Ideal Energy is one of about a half-dozen Iowa solar installers that entered the market when it was nearly nonexistent and built it project by project.

The site of the couple's walk was a 1.1 megawatt solar array with battery storage, located in a field about a mile from their Fairfield office. In California and other leading solar states, 1.1 megawatts is nothing special. Here it's huge.

It is a showpiece for everything Ideal Energy can do, and a leap from the small rooftop solar systems they installed when the company consisted of Amy doing all the marketing and Troy doing all the installations. Now with about 30 employees, the company still installs systems on houses, although the co-owner is much less likely to be climbing on the roof and turning screws.

Iowa only ranks 39th in installed solar power. (Wind energy is king here, with more than 8,400 megawatts.) The state's solar market has been so small that most of the large national players don't bother with it.

To kickstart solar in Iowa, local businesses needed to take risks—and that's what Troy and Amy did.

Building a Solar Industry Almost from Scratch

In the mid-2000s, Iowa's solar industry was "microscopic," consisting of a few solo entrepreneurs and some electrical contractors who occasionally did solar as a sideline, said Barry Shear, owner of Eagle Point Solar in Dubuque, who started his company in 2010 and is a founding board member of the Iowa Solar Energy Trade Association.

There were projects here and there, but nothing resembling the solar economy that has started growing there recently. It now tops 800 employees at 64 businesses, most of which are installers or developers, according to the national Solar Energy Industries Association.

"If you're in a place like Iowa, it's probably not going to make sense for an entrepreneur to say, 'I'm going to go all-in on solar,'" said Eric O'Shaughnessy, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Lab.

He has studied the role of entrepreneurs in the solar economy and found that the pioneers were often very small businesses that did not stick around. But some of those early businesses lasted long enough to build a base of customers and help to popularize solar in their regions.

"There are people who took risks way back when, and a lot of this is because of them," O'Shaughnessy said, referring to the solar boom that has taken hold in many parts of the country.

Another other key element has been policy support, such as tax credits, said Matt Edwards, co-owner of CB Solar of Des Moines, a solar installation company that launched in 2013.

"Without that jumpstart, maybe there isn't an industry," he said.

The key federal policy has been the investment tax credit, which currently allows solar system owners to deduct 30 percent of the cost of a project. This credit will soon phase out, dropping in value in 2020 and 2021 and then going away. In addition, Iowa has a 15 percent solar tax credit, which is set to step down on the same timetable as the federal credit.

Iowa's solar companies have been preparing for the loss of the tax credits, which they think they can endure because the prices of solar components continue to fall. But the addition of solar fees, which could take effect this year if the measure passes, would be too much, solar advocates say.

"Margins are razor thin everywhere, so anything you do that affects the economics is important, and utilities know that," said Becky Stanfield, Midwest director for Vote Solar. "They are trying to design these charges to be just enough to suppress the solar market."

The Utilities' Argument

The leading Iowa solar companies work together on policy issues, but they are up against some heavy hitters. MidAmerican is leading the charge for the solar fee legislation, joined by statewide business groups.

MidAmerican says the proposal means solar customers would pay "their share" of the costs to maintain the electricity grid. Almost all solar customers are connected to the grid, allowing them to buy electricity when they need it and sell excess power to the grid for a credit. Solar advocates point out that rooftop solar helps decrease demand for power from the grid, avoiding the cost of building new power plants and reducing the burning of fossil fuels that contributes to climate change.

Versions of the bill have passed in the Iowa Senate and a House committee. The next step is a floor vote in the House, which could happen any day. The fact that a vote hasn't yet happened is a sign that the House's Republican majority doesn't yet have the votes to pass it. People on both sides of the issue say this is a close one.

The bill does not specify an amount for the fee, but MidAmerican says a typical household with rooftop solar should pay an additional $328 per year to cover grid services. This figure, which is about $27 per month, is likely what MidAmerican would seek to charge if the bill passed. And that is enough to deter future customers, Troy believes.

The Solar Entrepreneurs Fighting for a Future

Troy Van Beek grew up in rural Wisconsin and became a Navy SEAL, the special operations force that does some of the military's most dangerous work. From there, he moved to private security, eventually working with two partners to start a security firm.

Everything changed for him on a hot day in Nairobi. He was sitting behind the wheel of an SUV that was stopped in traffic. A man walked up to the vehicle's open window and began to speak.

"He had a bottle in his hand and he said he was going to break the bottle on my face if I didn't give him 50 shillings," the equivalent of less than one U.S. dollar, Troy said. "I looked up at his face and he had the most bloodshot eyes I've ever seen. "I was like, 'Ok, you win,' and I paid him off and I slipped out of there."

The encounter weighed on him. At the root of it, he thought, was a grossly unfair distribution of resources between the wealthy world and everywhere else. He began to think about how energy policy played a role in this, and saw value in the sustainability of renewable energy.

"It transformed me," he said.

He looked online for college programs that specialize in sustainability and found one at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield.

Amy was born in Fairfield. Her parents had moved there in the late 1970s as part of the influx of people who built a community based on the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru who popularized transcendental meditation.

The meditation community, many of whom had come from the coasts, had an uneasy relationship with the people who had been in Fairfield for generations. "It was totally weird," she said. "It was like we were living in a fishbowl here. It didn't mix well with traditional Midwest culture."

She left Fairfield to go to art school, but soon returned and finished a studio art degree at Maharishi University. She started working at her family's construction business, which is where she found her affinity for shepherding big projects.

She had her first conversation with Troy at a dinner party in 2006, and they married in 2012.

Finding Solar Demand in an Untested Market

Fairfield, population 10,400, has elements of a typical Iowa county seat city, from the Hy-Vee grocery store to the grain elevator. But they are intermingled with the architecture and philosophy of the several thousand residents who have made meditation a central part of their lives.

In 2008, city leaders in Fairfield convened a panel to draft a plan for how to encourage businesses and households to better embrace renewable energy and sustainable living. Troy became a member of the committee.

He got to know the people in Fairfield's business community and learned what they needed in terms of managing their energy use and costs. He found one big obstacle: There was no local company that could provide the energy services that the businesses wanted.

In response to this demand, he and Amy started Ideal Energy there in 2009, working out of their house. They started as a consulting firm, working with clients on ways to reduce energy use. They did not intend to specialize in solar installations, but that turned out to be what many of their early clients wanted.

Southeast Iowa had a steady supply of solar customers, including households, retailers, small factories and farms.

Ideal Energy and Iowa's other solar pioneers took risks in entering an untested market, but they also had some lucky breaks. A big one came from the utility Alliant Energy, which had a solar rebate in the early 2010s that, when added with federal and state tax incentives, made it so that the energy savings from projects would cover costs within a year or two.

The Alliant rebates contributed to what was, by Iowa standards, a solar boom from 2012 to 2014. The state had its first year with more than a megawatt of new solar in 2012, with 1.08, which jumped to 3.94 in 2013, followed by 15.19 in 2014, before Alliant began phasing out the program because the demand was more than the company had budgeted for.

Alliant, the state's second-largest utility after MidAmerican, has not taken a position on the legislative proposal.

'We Want to Survive This Process'

Ideal Energy's most significant customer turned out to be just up the road from its offices. The 1.1 megawatt solar and storage project, about three times larger than any other the company has done, is in a farm field across the street from Maharishi University.

Completed in mid-December, the project's solar panels are mounted on racks that tilt throughout the day to follow the sun, increasing their power output. Together, the solar array and batteries will provide enough electricity to meet more than one-third of the campus' needs.

Amy says other large projects are being finalized, though she can't discuss the details quite yet.

At the same time, the legislative proposal "threatens our business and the people we employ," Troy wrote in an op-ed in an Iowa newspaper.

If the bill doesn't pass, the Van Beeks will be able to concentrate again on managing their growth. At about 30 employees, they are still small enough that they can personally oversee every project, and they don't want to lose that.

They can see that the solar market, a market they played a big role in building, is gaining momentum. They want Ideal Energy to make it through growth with its values intact.

"We want to grow at a rate that we can do this sustainably," Troy said. "We want to survive this process."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

CLEAN ENERGY

NERN - MIDWEST

SOLAR ENERGY

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Gary Cohn, the former head of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council who left after losing a battle over steel tariffs, said he tried to sell Trump on solar jobs -- and seemingly failed as the administration eventually imposed tariffs on the industry.

Cohn said in an interview with the Freakonomics podcast that he “vividly” remembers having a conversation with the president comparing the less than 50,000 coal-mining jobs with more than 350,000 solar-panel installers, according to a transcript released late Wednesday.

“And by the way, 10 years ago, we had no solar-panels installers,” Cohn said on the podcast. “It’s an industry that’s going to continue to grow. And we have to recognize where this country is going, not where this country has been.”

Trump ended up slapping tariffs on solar equipment imported into the U.S. The president understood, Cohn said, that “in West Virginia, and southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, you better go talk about coal.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Eckhouse in New York at beckhouse@bloomberg.net

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24-Hour Solar Energy: Molten Salt Makes It Possible, and Prices Are Falling Fast

In the empty Nevada desert, halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, a field of shimmering mirrors concentrates the sunlight onto a tower with a light so bright you can't look directly at it. Kevin Smith sees this as the future of energy. Using molten salt, his company is trying to prove that concentrated solar power can make the sun an affordable clean energy source day and night.

READ THE STORY

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California Becomes First State to Require Solar on New Homes

Sunny California is officially the first state in the nation to require solar panels on most new homes.

The California Building Standards Commission unanimously confirmed the standards during a vote on Wednesday, The Mercury News reported.

Keep reading...

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15102018/rooftop-solar-net-metering-policy-utility-charges-michigan-dte-nevada-alec

national fight that could slow the spread of rooftop solar has landed in Michigan, where utility regulators are weighing a proposal that would cost consumers more to produce their own power.

The outcome could have widespread significance for net-metering, a popular policy in many states that has spurred dramatic growth in rooftop solar installations. Clean energy advocates say it is the most worrying attempt to undermine rooftop solar that they've seen since a 2015 Nevada policy that nearly killed the market there and later was undone after massive blowback.

"It is very clear that DTE is trying to put a dagger in the heart of rooftop solar in Michigan," said Becky Stanfield, a senior regional director for Vote Solar.

The underlying arguments being spread by utility groups and their supporters are "already contagious" for other states, she said, and will become more so if this is adopted in Michigan, a state that is controlled by Republicans but perceived as more politically moderate.

Right now, DTE Energy customers who generate their own electricity from solar panels are paid the full retail price for any excess power that they produce and sell to the grid.The utility wants state regulators to cut that by about 75 percent for future rooftop solar systems. It also wants to create a new monthly charge based on the size of a household's rooftop solar system.

DTE, Michigan's largest utility, says the plan would end what amounts to a subsidy for rooftop solar.

That's a familiar argument. The Edison Electric Institute, a trade group for electricity utilities, is supporting DTE's proposal using a policy framework that echoes one put forward by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national group that advances corporate interests through state government actions.

Putting the Brakes on Solar Growth?

The change to net-metering was teed up by a 2016 law, supported by utilities and signed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, that increased the state's renewable energy requirements for utilities but allowed lower payments for net-metering customers.

The Public Service Commission followed with an order this year that requires utilities to set new rates for paying rooftop solar customers that are lower than the full retail price, but it allowed flexibility in how much lower. Stanfield saysDTE went to the extreme.

The company's proposal would change how rooftop solar owners are compensated for electricity they sell to the grid. Instead of paying them the same retail rate that the utility charges customers, it would pay them a much lower wholesale rate. Last year, that averaged about 75 percent less than DTE's full retail rate.

The utility is also proposing a new $2.31 per-kilowatt monthly charge for rooftop solar customers, something the Public Service Commission's staff had recommended against.

The commission—whose three members were all appointed by Snyder—will decide the case in a process that begins in earnest in a few weeks when parties file their initial testimony, with a ruling likely next spring.

DTE declined to say what the impact of its proposal would be for solar panel owners, but Vote Solar estimates that the proposed changes would mean a homeowner with a 5 kilowatt system loses about $498 per year.

The new rates would apply to new installations, while customers who already have rooftop solar would be able to keep their current rates for 10 years.

In a rapidly growing market, those new customers would quickly outnumber the existing ones, but DTE's plan would put the brakes on that growth, said Joseph Nagle, co-owner of Strawberry Solar, a solar installer in Detroit.

"They're definitely going to make it harder to sell," he said.

Nevada saw the results of that kind of change after it slashed its net-metering rates in 2015. Solar growth came to a near-standstill, and major solar installers, including Sunrun and SolarCity, announced they were stopping local operations, closing offices and cutting hundreds of jobs. The backlash forced the state to reverse course in 2017, and Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill restoring net-metering payments.

ALEC's Shadow in the DTE Proposal

DTE spokesman Peter Ternes says the Detroit-based company "is overwhelmingly in favor of renewable energy." In fact, it has plans to expand its solar and wind power. It and most other utilities support renewable energy development in the form of large solar farms and wind farms that generate electricity they can sell—as opposed to consumers generating their own power.

In its push to lower the rates it has to pay rooftop solar owners who sell power to the grid, the company is using arguments similar to those that are being promoted across the country by ALEC, a group that uses state legislators to advance corporate interests.

ALEC's talking points on net-metering describe rooftop solar customers as not paying their share to maintain the grid. That was a key argument in a presentation that the Edison Electric Institute gave to the Michigan Public Service Commission last spring.

"It's not a coincidence that several of these proposals have come out with similar structures," said Kevin Lucas, director of rate design for the Solar Energy Industries Association. The arguments don't mention other studies have found that the flow of rooftop solar power can help states both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid costly new infrastructure investments that customers would end up paying for.

In states that already have substantial development of rooftop solar, this would not be politically tenable, Lucas said. But it can happen in Michigan, where rooftop solar is gaining momentum. DTE currently has about 1,700 home and business customers with rooftop solar in Michigan, less than 1 percent of its 2.2 million customers.

"Much of the case here is trying to stop this industry before it gets a foothold," Lucas said.

More States' Solar Policies Targeted

Versions of this debate are happening in many states, said David Littell, principal at the Regulatory Assistance Project, a nonprofit that advises utility regulators.

Most utility commissions want to encourage the development of renewable energy, he said, but they also want to make sure that utility companies are on solid financial footing.

About half of U.S. states have net metering policies that pay the full retail rate for excess power, although this is limited in some states by caps or other restrictions, according to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency. Other states have net metering, but with lower compensation.

Kansas, which is allowing utilities to chargehigher fees to rooftop solar owners, is one state that recently changed rates for rooftop solar. South Carolina and New Hampshire are among states with caps on eligibility for net-metering.

What the discussion lacks, Littell said, is a model policy that both utility groups and clean energy advocates will concede is fair.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

CLEAN ENERGY

REGULATION

SOLAR ENERGY

anomaly?

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28092018/aep-solar-energy-appalachia-ohio-coal-just-transition-utility-regulatory-battle

Appalachian Ohio, a region hurt by the decline of coal, may become home to one of the largest solar projects east of the Rockies.

American Electric Power submitted a plan Thursday evening to work with two developers to build 400 megawatts of solar in Highland County, Ohio. It would more than triple the state's current solar capacity and be a big step forward for solar energy in a part of the country where renewable energy has been slow to develop.

AEP says the plan would save consumers $218 million over 20 years because solar power from the project would be less expensive than conventional energy sources.

"This is something that Appalachia needs," said Dan Sawmiller, Ohio energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The jobs of this renewable energy economy are going to go somewhere and I think it's important that they go where they're needed."

But the project's structure would break the established regulatory mold in Ohio, a state where utilities don't own power plants and generators compete with each other to supply the cheapest power to the grid.

The savings and the jobs promised are a turnaround from the arguments state officials listened to when they rejected clean energy proposals in recent years. If the new plan is approved by Ohio regulators, it could serve as a template for other new projects in Ohio and in other states.

'Just Transition' in Appalachia

The decision to put the project in Appalachian Ohio, which covers the southern and eastern parts of the state, is part of an attempt to bring economic development to an economically depressed region.

"It's a really hopeful move," said John Quigley, director of the Center for Environment, Energy and Economy at Harrisburg University, who has written about so-called "just transition" for poor communities affected by the shift from fossil fuels to the new green economy.

"It's an eye-opener for policymakers that there's a huge economic development opportunity for solar, especially in communities negatively affected by the energy transition," he said.

Another recent example is Xcel Energy's plan to close its coal-fired power plant in Pueblo, Colorado, and build renewable energy projects there.

Highland County, Ohio, where AEP and its solar developers chose to build, has an unemployment rate higher than the state average, and nearby counties have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state. AEP says its plan would bring 3,900 new jobs, most of them in construction, plus 113 full-time jobs in solar manufacturing. Details on the manufacturing jobs were not immediately disclosed.

The plan is part of a boom in solar development that is happening across the country. Some other big solar projects have also been announced in the region but not yet built, including a 150 megawatt solar farm being developed by Invenergy in Hardin County, Ohio. The AEP project would go into service in 2021 if approved.

Challenging Ohio's Regulatory System

This project is unusual for Ohio because a utility, AEP Ohio, would benefit financially from an electricity generation project. That would be normal in much of the country, but Ohio has a separation between utility companies and the owners of power plants.

AEP's proposal is seeking to make an exception to this rule by having solar developers operate the solar farms on behalf of AEP Ohio. The costs would be passed on to the utility's consumers, which AEP says is justified because of benefits to the environment and the local economy.

Opponents likely will argue that this violates Ohio's open market for electricity generation. In the market, owners of power plants compete to offer the lowest prices and utility companies do not own power plants. More than a dozen states similarly have open markets for electricity generation, including much of New England and the Great Lakes region, and Texas, among others.

Ned Hill, an economist at Ohio State University, says that having a utility pay for certain power plants could stifle investment in competing projects—including other renewable energy projects. He has opposed previous proposals by energy companies and utilities to subsidize coal and nuclear plants, and says this plan is bad for some of the same reasons.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio will decide whether to approve the plan in a process that will unfold over the next few months and that likely will focus on the types of questions Hill is raising.

Sawmiller, from NRDC, said he can understand why there are concerns about what this project means for the competitive market, but he thinks the market is structured in a way that has held back renewable energy development.

"If you rely exclusively on the market you lose some of the innovative economic development that's laid out in this filing," he said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

CLEAN ENERGY

COAL

NERN - MIDWEST

==

Facebook Joins 100% Renewable Energy Revolution

Facebook announced Tuesday it will slash greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent and transition global operations to 100 percent renewable energy by the end of 2020 in efforts to "help fight climate change."

Similarly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that his company's enormous Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada will run entirely on Tesla Solar by the end of 2019.

===

Solar's Hitting a Cap in South Carolina, and Jobs Are at Stake by the Thousands

BY: JAMES BRUGGERS

Solar energy's popularity jumped with net metering. Now, utilities plan to cap the program 3 years earlier than expected, and it’s an issue in the governor’s race.

Read More

https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=3ff154ff26&e=06876ede6b

==

==

American solar market may be about to get boost from an unexpected source: Energy analysts say the Chinese government's decision to dramatically cut its solar power subsidies will create a glut of solar panels and send their prices tumbling worldwide.

It comes at a crucial time for American solar installers. Falling prices could take the sting out of President Trump's solar panel tariffs, which have raised costs in the United States and led to billions of dollars in cancelled and frozen U.S. investments.

"It's changing the tone from negative to positive for the U.S.," said Xiaoting Wang, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062018/georgia-solar-power-renewable-utility-scale-clean-energy-investments-2018-election

Over the past five years, Georgia has become one of the nation's leading states for solar power, but it didn't get there in the usual way.

It doesn't offer tax credits, and the legislature has never created a state renewable portfolio standard requiring utilities to sell renewable energy. There is no net-metering law to let solar homes sell excess energy back to the grid at retail prices.

Instead, an early Trump supporter who leads the state's Public Service Commission has been pushing Georgia Power, the state's largest utility, to invest in clean energy by ensuring that solar is included in the utility's long-term power plans, updated every three years. Lauren "Bubba" McDonald, Jr., saw other states moving toward solar, looked at Germany's record-setting solar investments, and concluded that Georgia was being left behind with its focus on nuclear and coal. He wasn't going to let it stay there.

McDonald could have more solar support joining him on the regulatory commission soon. Solar advocates expect a voter backlash this fall against the all-Republican, elected commission over a costly nuclear power plant expansion.

If voters boot one or both of the PSC members on the ballot and replace them with pro-solar Democrats, that would solidify a solar-friendly block on the commission—likely leading to more utility-scale solar, and, as Georgia Tea Party activist Debbie Dooley argues, potentially influencing the General Assembly to take a fresh look at giving rooftop solar a boost.

"The cost overruns have become an issue," said University of Georgia political science professor Trey Hood. While it's hard for any Democrat to win statewide office Georgia, he said, "people can directly connect the dots" between the PSC and their power bills.

Solar advocates from both parties see potential for ramping up clean energy in the state even more.

"Georgia is at a clean energy crossroads," said Jennette Gayer, state director of the group Environment Georgia. "We have the potential to continue to grow our clean-energy footprint. The question is do we flatline or continue that upward trajectory."

Falling Prices, Low Interest Rates, Lots of Sun

Georgia's solar capacity has increased dramatically in the past five years, ever since the PSC required Georgia Power—an investor-owned utility with 2.5 million customers—to install hundreds of megawatts of solar farms starting in 2013.

With Georgia lawmakers avoiding policies that could be viewed by conservatives as subsidies, the state achieved much of its solar growth through an energy planning process with Georgia Power that is overseen by the PSC.

The commission doesn't view its solar requirements as a type of mandate. "It's an agreement between Georgia Power and the PSC," said commission spokesman Bill Edge.

...

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/california-solar-homes-2566690235.html

         California Set to Require Solar on Most New Homes

California could become the first state in the country to require solar panels on most new homes.

The state's energy commission will vote on the new standard on Wednesday, May 9 and they are expected to approve it, the Orange County Register reported.

If approved, the mandate would apply to all houses, condos and apartment buildings up to three stories tall that obtain building permits after Jan. 1, 2020. The exception will be for homes that are shaded by trees or buildings or have a roof too small to accommodate solar panels.

The plan will not require the home to reach "net-zero" status, which means the total amount of energy consumed is equal to the amount of renewable energy created. But homebuilders who install a battery, like a Tesla Powerwall, will get a "compliance credit" that allows them to further reduce the size of the solar array.

The standards could add $25,000 to $30,000 to the construction costs compared with homes built to the 2006 code, C.R. Herro, the vice president of environmental affairs for Meritage Homes, told the Orange County Register. Herro added that the homeowner will save an estimated $50,000 to $60,000 in reduced operating costs over the solar system's 25-year lifespan.

However, critics warn the new mandate could worsen the state's housing shortage by making homes more unaffordable. Other detractors argue that the proposal does not go far enough, and that California should mandate net-zero homes.

The Golden State, with 19.8 gigawatts of solar PV capacity, is the nation's undisputed solar champion (it has five-times the capacity of second-ranked North Carolina.) About 15 to 20 percent of new single-family homes in California currently include solar installations.

Two years ago, San Francisco became the first major city in the U.S. to require all buildings 10 floors or less to designate at least 15 percent of the rooftop for solar use. The famously green metropolis was following in the footsteps of the smaller towns Lancaster and Sebastopol. The municipalities, which are also in California, passed similar mandates in 2013.

California has emerged as an environmental warrior in recent years. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Air Resources Board are leading a coalition of 17 states and the District of Columbia in suing the Trump administration for blocking greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles that aimed to reduce air pollution and curb U.S. drivers' contributions to the global climate crisis.

elated Articles Around the Web

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-state-policies-2563502732.html

Ten of the nation's sunniest states get a failing grade for policies that actively block, or don't encourage, rooftop-solar development, according to Throwing Shade, a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity.

Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin account for more than 33 percent of the total rooftop-solar potential of small buildings in the contiguous U.S. but less than 8 percent of net generation in 2017. All of them get an "F" in today's report.

"Instead of leading us out of the climate crisis, these sunny states are casting a long shadow across our potential for rooftop solar," said Greer Ryan, a renewable energy and research specialist with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the report. "The Trump administration certainly isn't going to fix our climate, so it's vital that these states step up."

...

===

==

https://www.alternet.org/environment/donald-trump-just-dealt-major-blow-renewable-energy

President Trump has imposed steep tariffs on imports of solar panels and energy cells. The 30 percent tariff is a major blow to the renewable energy industry and comes as Trump moves to incentivize the fossil fuel industry, loosening environmental restrictions and moving to open up new public waters for offshore drilling. On Monday, Trump also announced tariffs on imports of some washing machines. The moves will likely further escalate tensions over trade with China and other nations.

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-schools-us-2513536603.html

5,500 K-12 Schools Have Already Gone Solar

:{:{

Nearly 5,500 K-12 schools in the U.S. are harnessing the sun's rays for energy, according to a new report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the Solar Foundation and clean energy nonprofit Generation 180. That means about five percent of all K-12s in the nation are solar powered.

The study, Brighter Future: A Study on Solar in U.S. Schools, 2nd Edition, touts that this switch to renewableshas allowed schools to reduce their electricity bills, all while freeing up resources to invest in education. Roughly four million students attend such schools.

A total of 5,489 schools have a combined capacity of 910 megawatts, which is enough to power more than 190,000 homes, the study found.

Here are some notable state achievements from the Brighter Future report:

As GreenTechMedia reported, cumulative PV capacity on K-12 school buildings has increased by 86 percent since 2008. The reason behind the surge is down to dipping installation prices and new financing options. The cost of installing solar in schools has decreased 66 percent in the past seven years.

...

==

'Blocking the Sun': New Report Documents Efforts to Undermine Rooftop Solar

:{:{

While nearly 9 in 10 Americans support the development of more solar energy, electric utilities and fossil fuel-backed special interests are trying to hold off the inevitable renewable-energy future by promoting policies that would make rooftop solar harder to obtain.

A new report released Thursday by Environment America Research & Policy Center documents 20 entities, across 12 states, who sought to roll back key policies driving solar power over the past year.

"It's completely clear that Americans want more solar power, for the good of our environment, our health and our local economies," said Bret Fanshaw, solar program coordinator with Environment America and report co-author. "We cannot allow for a narrow set of interests to block the ability of everyday citizens to tap into clean and renewable solar power on the roofs of our homes and businesses."

Fueled by strong public policies, solar energy is growing by leaps and bounds, with enough solar capacity installed in the U.S. to power 1 in 14 American homes. The American public has demanded solar power because it is clean and increasingly affordable, with costs down two-thirds over the past decade.

The "Blocking the Sun" report shows, however, that electric utilities and special interests are actively undermining access to solar energy across the country.

According to a Frontier Group analysis of the most recent N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center '50 States of Solar' report, at least 90 policy actions in U.S. states could affect the growth of rooftop solar generation as of mid-2017. They include limits on net metering or new utility fees that make solar power less affordable.

"We're seeing a continued, concerted effort to knock down some of the best solar policies out there by some of the most powerful state utilities and fossil fuel actors" said Hye-Jin Kim, policy associate at Frontier Group and report co-author. "We've done this study three years in a row, and despite overwhelming public approval of solar power, the industry attacks on pro-solar policies continue."

Often operating in dense regulatory proceedings, electric utilities like Duke Energy, Rocky Mountain Power and Arizona Public Service have urged state officials to lower credits to solar users,add special charges to rooftop solar owners and force customers into rate plans that would reduce the benefits rooftop solar can provide on your electricity bill.

Efforts by electric utilities to stall solar progress have been coupled with, and in some cases, orchestrated by, fossil fuel front groups such as the Consumer Energy Alliance and utility trade groups such as the Edison Electric Institute.

In many cases, it's working.The Indiana Energy Association, an industry group, successfully lobbied on behalf of the state's biggest electric utilities to phase out Indiana's key rooftop solar program this year, replacing it instead with a new policy that limits compensation for generating rooftop power.

The Trump administration has appointed allies of the electric utilities and fossil fuel companies to key positions within the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. Those appointees are making a concerted effort to undermine solar power at the national level. Studies put forth by Energy Sec. Rick Perry question the value of rooftop solar and attempt to justify support for coal and nuclear plants over renewable energy.

The "Blocking the Sun" report recommends state and national decision-makers resist utility and fossil fuel industry attempts to reduce the economic viability of distributed solar energy, and reject policies to limit the use of this clean, renewable and increasingly economical source of power.

"To meet our major environmental challenges and reach 100 percent renewable energy, we must harness the power of the sun on exponentially more rooftops across America," said Fanshaw. "The people want this to happen—it's up to our public officials to stand up to powerful interests and make going solar easier, not harder."

==

ref

https://environmentamericacenter.org/reports/amc/blocking-sun-utilities-and-fossil-fuel-interests-are-undermining-american-solar-power

11/17

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Solar power is clean, affordable and popular with the American people. The amount of solar energy currently installed in the U.S. can power one in 14 American homes; that amount is expected to triple within the next five years.

The growth of American solar energy in the past decade has been the result of smart solar-friendly state policies like net metering and tax incentives for solar infrastructure, putting clean energy within financial reach of millions more Americans. The recent appointment of officials favored by electric utilities and fossil fuel interests to key positions within the Department of Energy and other federal agencies makes the preservation of strong solar policies in the states more important than ever.

In 2017, utilities continue to chip away at key state policies that put rooftop solar on the map in the United States, making it harder for Americans to invest in clean energy.

This report documents 20 fossil fuel-backed groups and electric utilities running some of the nation’s most aggressive campaigns to slow the growth of solar energy in 12 states, including eight attempts to reduce net metering benefits and seven attempts to create demand charges for customers with solar power. Citizens and policy-makers must be aware of the tools that utilities are using to undermine solar energy across America and redouble their commitment to strong policies that move the nation toward a clean energy future.

A national network of utility interest groups and fossil fuel-backed think tanks has provided the funding, model legislation and political cover to discourage the growth of rooftop solar power.

At thestate level,electric utilities have used the support provided by national anti-solar interests, as well as their own ample resources, to attack key solar energy policies.

As of mid-2017, there were at least 90 ongoing policy actions in U.S. states with the potential to affect the growth of rooftop generation, such as limits on net metering or new utility fees that make solar power less affordable.

State decision-makers should resist utility and fossil fuel industry influence, and reject policies such as

In addition, state leaders should embrace ambitious goals for solar energy and adopt policies that will help meet them, including:

Policymakers should also uphold our country’s commitment to reduce carbon pollution. Solar power will play a major role in any strategy to reduce global warming pollution and the carbon footprint of the energy we generate and consume.

==

==

tariff threat, update https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-trump-itc-2489470074.html

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-us-solar-boom-2488025107.html

uk FT tempest in a teapot

https://www.ecowatch.com/electric-cars-uk-2476528989.html

==

fla bs beat? but

https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-2457456703.html

How Utilities Are Trying to Slow Down Rooftop Solar

:{:{

By David Pomerantz

The New York Times reported earlier this month about how utilities around the country, and their trade group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), have worked to weaken rooftop solar policies in an attempt to stave off the threat to their business model.

The article featured some of Energy and Policy Institute's reporting, including :{our :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{expose:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: of Brian McCormack, former EEI executive and current Chief of Staff to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, for his role in attacking rooftop solar while at EEI, as well as our uncovering of Florida utilities' deceptive anti-solar ballot initiative in that state last year.

Some important aspects of the story of utilities' efforts did not make it into the Times coverage though:

Upset About EEI? There's a Good Chance You're Funding Them

The Times exposed the central role played by the Edison Electric Institute in driving the utility industry's anti-rooftop solar strategy:

At a January 2016 board meeting of the Edison institute, attended by chief executives of the country's largest utilities, Thomas R. Kuhn, the group's president, counseled against complacency.

"Years, ago, I think a lot of people said, 'That's not going to come to our area,'" he said, according to a recording of his remarks made available by a participant. "And now we see it in each and every state," he said.

"EEI is happy to come to any state at any time," he added. "We have two dozen states we are working on."

If you're angry about EEI, here's some bad news for you: there's a high chance that you're paying the salaries of the trade association's executives.

Our report *Paying for Politics* detailed how the nation's investor-owned electric utility customers are subsidizing EEI via their bills every month. Investor-owned utilities embed their EEI membership dues into rates, forcing their customers to pay for a policy agenda constructed primarily for the benefit of utilities' shareholders, not their customers. Since most customers have no choice about their utility, there's not much they can do about it.

Despite Efforts, Utilities Cannot Stop Distributed Solar Energy

And here's some better news: The Times story focused onIndiana, where utilities scored a victory when they lobbied to pass a law that would unravel net metering, the policy that dictates how much a utility must pay solar owners for the excess electricity they sell back to the grid. But another state reveals how the utilities' strategy can, and often will, backfire.

In Nevada, utility NV Energy succeeded in 2015 at lobbying regulators to reduce net metering payments. The industry perceived it as a victory that other utilities could learn from—in January 2017, EEI and NV Energy announced that Tony Sanchez, an NV Energy senior vice-president who helped lead the utility's efforts in the net metering debates, was taking on a "key loaned executive" role with EEI.

But while the utility industry celebrated what they thought was a big win for NV Energy, Nevadans became furious at the lost solar jobs and the utility's influence at slowing down the growth of a technology that people from across the political spectrum love. The utility's victory was short-lived. In June 2017, the legislature unanimously passed, and Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed, a bill to restore the old net metering rates.

Not only that, but last November, the state's voters passed by a large margin a ballot initiative to break up NV Energy's monopoly entirely—political observers in the state perceive the amendment's success in part as a referendum on NV Energy's unpopularity in the wake of the company's attacks on solar.

The Nevada story should serve as a warning for utilities: In places where they try to attack popular pro-solar policies, a popular backlash risks weakening their political capital with regulators and legislators.

In the long run, utilities have even bigger problems than their political fortunes. Even where they win short-term victories on policies like net metering, the combination of rooftop solar panels plus batteries, which are getting cheaper faster than anyone expected, will enable more and more customers to buy less and less electricity from their utilities. Dave Roberts of Vox recently authored a piece on the topic aptly headlined: Utilities fighting against rooftop solar are only hastening their own doom.

As Roberts writes, quoting a recent McKinsey study:

"In a low-cost storage environment," McKinsey writes, the rate structures utilities are monkeying around with "are unlikely to be effective at mitigating load losses." In other words, customers are still going to keep generating more of their own power.

The Times piece was important to expose how utilities are coming after solar. But it's worth remembering that in the long run, they won't stop distributed renewable energy, and will be better served learning to co-exist with it than to keep fighting it.

desmog

On June 3, two days after President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi exchanged a hug with French President Emmanuel Macron during an official visit to Paris. Modi and Macron pledged to achieve emissions reductions beyond their nations’ commitments under the Paris Agreement, and Macron announced he will visit India later this year for a summit on solar power.

For observers who equate India’s energy production with a reliance on coal, this exchange came as a surprise. Modi’s internationally visible pledge would put India three years ahead of schedule to achieve its “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” to the Paris climate agreement. Instead of shifting to 40 percent renewables by 2030, India now expects to surpass this goal by 2027.

==

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/11/26/rooftop-solar-threatened-arizona-biggest-public-utility-takes-over-commission-regulates-it

==

}:}:

Swanson's law - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Swanson's**_law

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px !important;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

2.

:{:{Swanson's:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Law is an observation that the price of :{solar:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: photovoltaic modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume. At present rates, costs halve about every 10 years. The Law is named after Richard :{Swanson:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the founder of SunPower Corporation, a :{solar:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: panel manufacturer.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

== Percent margin needed to pass Florida's Amendment 1, a ballot measure that investor-owned utilities are promoting as pro-solar but that opponents say aims to protect the utilities' monopoly and slow the state's transition to solar power:60

Amount raised by Consumers for Smart Solar, the group promoting Amendment 1: more than $21.5 million

Percent of that amount which came from big utilities and other companies whose bottom lines would be hurt by encouraging consumers to switch to solar power: 80

Amount contributed to thedeceptive pro-Amendment 1 campaign by Duke Energy alone: more than $5.7 million

Amount contributed by Florida Power and Light, which is owned by Florida-based NextEra Energy: almost $5.5 million

Amount contributed by the 60 Plus Association, a conservative political advocacy group that's received tens of millions of dollars from organizations associated with the brothers that run the Koch Industries oil and chemical conglomerate: over $1.4 million

Factor by which the amount raised by Consumers for Smart Solar exceeds total funds raised by the grassroots opposition campaign group, Floridians for Solar Choice, a politically diverse coalition that includes the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, the Christian Coalition and various Republican groups: 10

Number of professional signature-gathering firms the utility-backed campaign hired in order to get its measure on this year's ballot:2

Date on which Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, in her dissent from the 4-3 decision allowing Amendment 1 to appear on the ballot, warned that the initiative was a "wolf in sheep's clothing": 3/31/2016

Date on which the Clear Language Institute, a nonprofit that promotes using easy-to-understand language in legislation, bestowed its first "Deceptive Language Award" on the pro-Amendment 1 group for misleading voters: 10/2/2016

Florida's ranking among states for solar energy potential: 3

Its ranking among states for installed solar capacity: 14

Number of electricity customers in Florida: 9 million

Number of rooftop solar systems in the state: fewer than 12,000

Date on which early voting begins in Florida: 10/24/2016

In a recent poll, percent of likely Florida voters who said they planned to vote for Amendment 1: 84==

good one failed # sigs: bad one deceptive

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article69246732.html

alford astroturf florida initiative: 60 plus

bs: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-black-chamber-of-commerce-joins-effort-in-support-of-consumer-friendly-smart-solar-amendment-300119839.html**

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) today announced that it has joined the Consumers for Smart Solar effort in support of the Smart Solar Amendment, a consumer-friendly alternative to the Shady Solar Amendment proposed by Floridians for Solar Choice.

The NBCC, who submitted a brief to the Florida Supreme Court on the determination of Floridians for Solar Choice's proposed ballot title and summary for the 2016 General Election ballot, decried the Shady Solar Amendmentas misleading, flying under "false colors" by not disclosing to voters that the amendment would require a restructuring of Florida's framework for regulating electric utilities. To view NBCC's brief in full, please click here.

"As an advocate of small and minority-owned businesses, the National Black Chamber of Commerce is concerned with the substantial, negative impacts the Shady Solar Amendment may have on small and minority businesses," said Harry C. Alford, President/CEO of NBCC. "These negative impacts – potential increases in electric service rates and higher state and local taxes – are why we oppose the Shady Solar Amendment."

"We are proud to join the Consumers for Smart Solar effort and support their consumer-friendly Smart Solar Amendment," said Alford. "We know this amendment will make solar energy choice a constitutional right for Floridians; but, most importantly, it provides much-needed protections for all Florida consumers and businesses."

For more information on NBCC, please visit NationalBCC.org, follow @NationalBCC and like FB.com/NationalBCC.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/green-tea-party-solar

==

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/nations-first-solar-roadway-coming-to-historic-route-66/

===

chile free?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/renewable-energy-soars-record-breaking-levels-across-globe

==

solar economy scher (sp) bk

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariff

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a feed-in tariff on 31 January 2008 effective immediately.[116]

In 2010, Marin Energy Authority launched the first Community Choice Aggregate Feed-in Tariff program. The program was updated in November 2012, and now offers 20-year fixed-price contracts, with prices varying by energy source (peak, base-load, intermittent) and progress towards the current program cap of 10-MW.

Municipal utility companies enacted feed in tariff pilot programs in Palo Alto and Los Angeles: Palo Alto CLEAN (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now) is a program to purchase up to 4MW of electricity generated by solar electric systems located in CPAU's service territory. In 2012 the minimum project size was 100 kW. Rates of purchase are between 12.360 ¢/kWh to 14.003 ¢/kWh depending on the length of the contract. The City began accepting applications on 2 April 2012.[117]

On 17 April 2012, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved a 10MW FiT Demonstration Program.[118]

As of 1 January 2010 state laws allowed homeowners to sell excess power to the utility. Previously the homeowner would get no credit for over-production over the course of the year. In order to get the California Solar Initiative (CSI) rebate the customer was not allowed to install a system that deliberately over-produces thereby, encouraging efficiency measures to be installed after solar installation. This over-production credit was not available to certain municipal utility customers namely Los Angeles Water and Power.

Florida

==

ammonia fertil

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/ammonia-fertilizer-farming

==

nevada loss

==

http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/05/09/we-were-booming-and-now-we-re-dead-how-nevada-s-solar-industry-bright-spot-turned-dark

boom dead

Louise Helton, owner of One Sun Solar Electric in Las Vegas, says that since January her company is doing more work removing solar panels from rooftops than installing them.

But at least she’s still in business, unlike many solar entrepreneurs in Nevada. She’s had to diversify into LED lighting installation and other sources of income.

“During the recession, rooftop solar was the bright spot in the Nevada economy,” Helton tells DeSmog. “We were booming. And now we’re dead.”

It was a decision by the Public Utility Commission of Nevada (PUCN) in December that delivered a fatal blow to rooftop solar in the sunniest state in the U.S.

By removing a key incentive for rooftop solar customers — net metering — the PUC made it prohibitively expensive for existing and future solar customers to use solar panels to generate part or all or their electricity needs.

And it turned electricity-generating rooftop panels from a net-plus for homeowners to a technological albatross, at least for the near future.

“You have people making decisions to buy these panels with fixed incomes,” Helton says.

“Seniors have tried to make the right decision to preserve their future dollars. All of this is impacting them. Now the value of your greatest asset, a home, and the equity, for solar panels to present themselves as something that was a huge asset, now they’re the opposite. It’s devastating.”

At the end of April, a subcommittee of Governor Brian Sandoval’s Nevada energy task force said that existing Nevada solar customers should be grandfathered in under an old rate structure, which would grant them a cheaper power rate until 2035.  

That marks an about-face from the most controversial provision of the PUCN’s December decision.

But if the full task force agrees to grandfather existing customers, and makes the PUCN agree to the same, it won’t do anything to revive rooftop solar, an industry that was dominated by smaller entrepreneurs.

The fact that Sandoval convened the Task Force in the first place, solar advocates say, suggests that this former utility energy lawyer knows his appointed PUCN members may have inflicted lasting damage on the solar energy industry in Nevada, something that an aide to Sandoval admitted.

End of Net Metering

What upended Nevada’s solar energy industry was the PUCN’s decision to change the rules for net metering.

Net metering lets customers bank credit for excess electricity that goes into the grid during the daytime, then pull out the same amount of energy — a kilowatt for kilowatt exchange — when they need it.

Solar customers that don’t generate enough electricity must pay Nevada Energy (NVE), the only electricity utility in the state, for the difference. Net metering has allowed solar to thrive and encouraged people to make those investments for their homes and businesses, solar industry advocates say.

Under the old rules, NVE paid customers about 11 cents per kilowatt hour for energy they returned to the grid. Homeowners could typically save 10 to 20 percent on their energy bill, though some solar customers have reported seeing their bill drop to single dollars during some months.

No residential and commercial solar customers were getting rich, despite what some solar detractors have argued. Because customers are regulated on how big they can build a system, based on historic twelve months of power use, they can only build a system that can produce what they used in the last twelve months.

There was a benefit to the utility, too: no line loss. A customer can send out one kilowatt of energy that goes directly to his nearest neighbor.

The end of net metering not only eliminated most of the savings rooftop solar customers enjoyed, it also created a revenue stream for NVE at the expense of those customers.

NV Energy Takes Bigger Solar Cut

Every kilowatt generated on a Nevadan’s roof is one less kilowatt NVE can sell. At least that was the case until the new rate structure went into effect.

Under the new rules, solar customers are put in a new rate classification. Initially, their connection charge would go up by five dollars a month, under a tiered structure. After four years, they will pay $38 a month just to be connected to the grid. That’s before they’re charged for the energy they consume.

Exactly how much more solar energy customers will pay under the new rate system remains to be seen. The hottest weather hasn’t begun yet and, come June, residents will have a better idea. But there’s widespread fear that they will be paying quite a lot more.

What’s angered Nevada solar customers is that NVE is now monetizing the kilowatt hour (kWh) value. Whereas under net metering there was no monetization (just a kilowatt-for-kilowatt exchange), now NVE will value the kWh generated by a solar customer at less than what they’ll sell at full retail.

Scott Shaw, director of research and commercial development for Go Solar, an energy efficiency and solar installation company in Las Vegas, tells DeSmog that solar customers will be subsidizing other ratepayers for the benefit of the utility.

“When a solar customer sends energy to the grid it is during peak demand times. If you want to just look at the value of energy, at peak demand NVE is paying triple to five times what they would pay on the open market. Now NVE is guaranteed to pay two cents per kilowatt during demand time and sell it back to customers at 33 cents.”

Shaw and other solar advocates say there is no cost shift to non-solar customers — everything is already paid for fully. NVE gets paid fully for that one kWh of solar that it didn’t generate, that was provided at peak daytime hours, with no coal or gas or employees or long runs of wire involved — essentially at no cost to NVE.

Rooftop solar owners say they want the option of getting that one kWh back later at night when they need it, without being charged more for it, and without NVE charging them or their neighbors a premium for it.

Like in the good old days of 2015.

Who Pays For Solar?

In 2013, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway purchased NVE for $5.6 billion.

“Owning utilities isn't a way to get rich,” Buffett has said. His statement may be accurate, solar advocates say, unless the utility is a monopoly and can access a new revenue source.

In this case that revenue source is solar energy. And if homeowners and businesses have already made the investment in capturing that energy, even better.

Solar advocates in Nevada insist the PUC decision to end net metering is a power grab to control solar rather than kill it.

In 2013, when Warren Buffet was preparing to buy NVE, bill SB123 was making its way through the Nevada legislature. SB123 required NVE South to:

With the passage of SB123, NVE was able to take their remaining coal-fired power plants offline and replace the power with solar. And they could own part of that solar field instead of making power purchase agreements with solar farms.

NVE got permission to pass on the costs of building those solar farms to the ratepayers. Ratepayers would help offset the value they were losing by taking coal-fired plants offline before the benefits of the coal-fired plants had been utilized.

But Scott Shaw says that NVE ran into a conundrum. Suddenly the demand for extra power was reduced because of the increase in solar customers.

According to Shaw:

“A utility’s profit is regulated on rates for selling the product. For transmission and generation, it’s not regulated by the PUC. When you have a bunch of rooftop solar putting out energy during peak demand, NVE will find it very hard to justify generation stations or new solar fields in the desert and transmission to support it when they go to the PUCN to ask for money. Where any utility makes their most revenue is in building generation facilities and transmission lines.”

Shaw and other industry watchers said that, not long after Buffet’s purchase of NVE, the PR campaign kicked in to denigrate solar customers as energy freeloaders. And not just in Nevada.

During an interview with CNBC in February, Buffett argued that when solar customers don't pay to maintain the power grid it leaves everyone else to pick up the tab.

That’s the argument the PUC used when changing its rate structure for solar customers. The commission justified its move to end net metering with a study designed to look at the impact of solar on non-solar customers. The study concluded solar customers were not contributing enough money to maintain the electrical grid, and they were actually making non-solar customers pay more to make up the difference.

Louise Helton tells DeSmog the PUC cost shift study was part of an orchestrated campaign by the utility and their backers to discredit and undermine net metering and that a recent third party analysis refutes some of the cost shift study’s conclusions.  

“The third party analysis showed that in a cost of service study the methodology should have at least 11 different points,” Helton says. “PUC only looked at two of them in the cost shift study, avoided energy costs and line loss. They didn’t look at avoided capacity and several other very important points that would show solar customers are not benefitting at the expense of non-solar customers.”

Anti-solar commercials made by Solar Energy Fairness were dropped onto the Las Vegas and Reno TV markets, presumably to siphon off energy from the ballot initiative signature gathering.

“Big rooftop solar’s plan forces Nevada families who don’t have solar panels to pay higher power bills to subsidize rooftop solar,” intones the narrator. 

The ads are “an attempt to pit ratepayer against ratepayer,” claims Frank Rieger, founder and president of Las Vegas rooftop solar company Sol-Up.

“They say the non-solar ratepayers are paying for the solar ratepayers, subsidizing the solar system owners. The opposite is true. If there wasn’t any solar in Nevada, then the utility could do whatever they want. Solar is the only guarantee to the non-solar rate payers that their prices will stay stable. Because solar is the only competition now for the monopoly (NVE).”

Nevada Hemorrhages Solar Jobs

Since January, national rooftop solar companies SolarCity and Sunrun have stopped seeking new business in the state and laid off hundreds of workers. The few small companies left are trying to stay above water and telling potential customers to be patient and wait out the storm.

“My feeling is 80 percent of all (small solar) companies are gone,” Frank Rieger tells DeSmog.

“But the worst problem is not the new regulation,” Rieger says. “It is the negativity. Everyone is talking down solar as if it doesn’t make sense anymore. Which is stupid. Regulations only regulate power back into the grid. Nobody can regulate what you create. If you never feed back into the grid your financial benefits are the same.”

SolarCity and others are continuing to challenge the changes to net metering, both in the courts and at the ballot box.

SolarCity and local companies faced a setback in March after a Carson City judge ruled to disqualify a ballot measure that would restore more generous rates for rooftop solar customers. Judge James Russell said his ruling was not about the merits of solar but about what he saw as the flawed framing of the measure.

Nevada solar companies and allies are now collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would restore net metering if voters pass it in November. Unlike with referenda, ballot initiative language isn’t scrutinized by a judge.

Still, it’s an uphill slog even if the initiative does pass in November, according to a spokesperson for Bring Back Solar, the activist group pushing for the initiative. If voters say yes, the initiative must be considered by the state legislature when it convenes next year. And the legislature can change anything.

If they change one word, the initiative goes back to the people for another vote, meaning that the soonest it would go into effect would be July 1, 2017.

Solar companies left in the state would then have to limp along for at least one more year.

Brighter Days Ahead For Solar?

The residential solar market is booming in the U.S. with a 66 percent increase between 2014 and 2015. Until the end of last year, Nevada was riding the crest of that wave.

In 2015, the Solar Foundation reported over 8,000 jobs in solar in Nevada and it ranked number one in solar jobs per capita.

This year will be very different. And Nevada may not be the last state to kill solar, at least temporarily.

Though solar advocates recently preserved incentives in California, anotherbattle over residential solar incentives is heating up in Arizona.

There is one wild card in the game: battery technology. Many experts say that, at least right now, from a financial standpoint it doesn’t make much sense to install a rooftop solar array, which typically runs between $15,000 and $30,000, even with a federal incentive that can give them a 30 percent tax credit on the panel price.

But once the price of battery storage becomes more attractive for energy-generating households, utility rates could be irrelevant. New research shows that costs are falling fast enough for battery storage capacity, and that technology will soon be cheap enough for households with existing rooftop solar systems.

NONPROFIT LOSES FIRST ROUND IN FIGHT WITH N.C. OVER THIRD-PARTY SOLAR SALES: North Carolina regulators ruled against NC WARN after it installed solar panels on the roof of a church and sold it the electricity, saying the arrangement violates the state's private utility monopoly system. The nonprofit says it will take the case to court. (4/18/2016)

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cda coal to solar plant nat am

http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/31/nanticoke-solar-farm/

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/01/largest-floating-solar-farm/

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/22/warren-buffett-war-solar-west/

http://desmogblog.com/2016/02/21/warren-buffett-s-quieter-quest-kill-solar-west

There are solar battles blazing all across the West right now, as utilities anchored to fossil fuel power plants strain to avoid the inevitable spread of solar across their areas of operation.

Not a month goes by without a story of some assault on solar-friendly policies by utilities or by the utility commissions that are often in their pocket.

Not a month goes by without a story of some assault on solar-friendly policies by utilities. Photo credit: Snake River Alliance

During the holidays at the end of 2015, it was Nevada’s utter dismembering of its net metering policy. Nevada is—or was—one of 42 states that offered net metering, a program through which customers with solar arrays are compensated for the energy they produce on their rooftops or in small installations connected to the electric grid.

NV Energy Inc. unleashed this full frontal attack on the program that—in one quick vote of three unelected commissioners—pulled the rug out from under 17,000 solar customers and eviscerated at least 8,000 solar jobs. And the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) was happy to oblige.

Nevada has the highest number of solar jobs per capita in the U.S., but for how long?

As Nevada’s PUCN invited this “solar black hole” over one of the nation’s sunniest states, many pointed out how NV Energy fought tooth and nail against the successful net metering plan and ultimately secured its demise.

NV Energy, the state’s largest utility, is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy. This net metering battle was high profile.

Many have pitched it as a Buffett vs. Musk showdown, as NV Energy’s demands would prove to cripple Solar City’s business in the state, which was dependent on a consistent net metering program.

Elon Musk & communities v Warren Buffet & Big Biz. Fight for distributed #solar in Nevada https://t.co/eBXuKplNhV pic.twitter.com/PtlvO6ta3Z

— Amanda *$ (@Starbuck) December 23, 2015

But this is far from the only move Buffett is making against solar. In Utah, Rocky Mountain Power—a division of PacifiCorp, which is a fully-owned subsidiary of … you guessed it … Berkshire Hathaway Energy—proposed a charge for solar net metering customers similar to that which passed in Nevada. The Utah Public Service Commission voted that proposal down.

There’s a decent bit of spotlight on the net metering battles, but Buffett’s holdings are actively engaged in a quieter war on another solar front.

Yet just last year, Berkshire Hathaway Energy signed President Obama’s Climate Commitment, pledging to “lead on climate action.”

PURPA: “The Backdoor Solar Answer Out West”

At issue is a relatively little known federal statute that has been a huge boon to solar development around the country and especially in the big Western states. It’s called PURPA or the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act and it basically ensures that renewable generating facilities of a certain size (up to 80 megawatts; the projects that fit these conditions are called Qualifying Facilities or QFs) can sell their power to utilities for a certain fair price. That price is called the “avoided cost rate” in utility-speak and is basically what the utility would have had to pay for the same amount of power from another source or to generate it itself.

Problem is, utilities would rather generate the power themselves because they get a better return on those power plants that they own. Utilities don’t want to be told they have to enter into long term contracts with outside developers, even if the cost of the power is the same as what they would pay to generate it themselves.

But that’s what PURPA does. By mandating that the utilities approve these long term contracts with medium-scale solar and wind projects, the act has historically allowed a renewable energy developer to lock in a 15 to 20-year contract, providing the stability that secures the financing.

This security has helped hundreds of solar and wind projects plug into the grid. PURPA helped usher in the mini wind power boom in the early 1980s and, over the past decade, it has helped bring thousands of megawatts of wind online all across the West. Lately, solar is lining up in the queue to plug into PURPA contracts.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has gone so far as to call PURPA “the most effective single measure in promoting renewable energy” and a UBS Securities report recently called PURPA, “The Backdoor Solar Answer Out West.”

Look no further than Utah: a state that is dominated by coal-fired generation and that has no renewable portfolio standard. And a state where one company alone, SunEdison, has quickly built more than 700 megawatts of solar in a few short years.

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/26/u-s-blocks-india-solar-plan-trade-rules/

India has been told that it cannot go ahead as planned with its ambitious plan for a huge expansion of its renewable energy sector, because it seeks to provide work for Indian people. The case against India was brought by the U.S.

The ruling, by the World Trade Organization, says India’s National Solar Mission—which would create local jobs, while bringing electricity to millions of people—must be changed because it includes a domestic content clause requiring part of the solar cells to be produced nationally.

Sun-tracking discs at a vast solar thermal power plant in Rajasthan, India. Photo credit: Brahma Kumaris / Flickr

What a difference two months make. On Dec. 12 last year, U.S. President Barack Obama praised the Paris agreement on tackling climate change, just hours after it was finally concluded. “We’ve shown what’s possible when the world stands as one,” he said, adding that the agreement “represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got.”

Clear-Cut Victory

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http://ecowatch.com/2016/01/29/rooftop-solar-wars/ CPUC supports

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Koch Brothers + 11 Other Special Interest Groups Wage War on Solar

ecowatch.com/2015/10/09/koch-brothers-wage-war-solar/

The Koch brothers, Duke Energy and Arizona Public Service are among 12 special interest groups waging aggressive anti-solar campaigns across the country, often coordinated and behind the scenes, a new Environment America Research and Policy Center report said today.

While American solar power has increased four-fold since 2010, state by state, utilities and powerful industry front groups have begun chipping away at key policies that helped spur this solar boom, according to the analysis, “Blocking the Sun: 12 Utilities and Fossil Fuel Interests That Are Undermining American Solar Power.”

“Fossil-fuel interests and their allies have been using the same playbook to undermine solar power across the country,” said Bret Fanshaw, the solar program coordinator for Environment America. “And they’ve largely been operating in the shadows.”

The playbook: a national network of utility interest groups and fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks provides funding, model legislation and political cover for anti-solar campaigns. The report examines five of these major national players—Edison Electric Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Koch brothers and their front group Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute and Consumer Energy Alliance.

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Then, in state after state, electric utilities use the support provided by these national anti-solar interests, supplemented by their own ample resources, to attack key solar energy policies. The report features seven utilities—Arizona Public Service, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Berkshire Hathaway Industries, Salt River Project, FirstEnergy and We Energies.

“We found that most attacks on solar energy happen behind closed doors in utility agencies or in dense regulatory filings—away from public view,” said Gideon Weissman of the Frontier Group and co-author of the report. “That’s probably because they’re aimed at very popular policies that give regular consumers the chance to go solar.”

Charles and David Koch have an enormous financial stake in the fossil fuel industry through their company Koch Industries and its many subsidiaries. Koch Industries alone operates around 4,000 miles of pipeline, along with oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota and Texas.

Through its front group Americans for Prosperity and funding to other like-minded entities, the Koch brothers have attacked solar laws in several states including Florida, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington.

Utilities like Arizona Public Service augment resources from interests like the Kochs to forward an anti-solar agenda. Arizona Public Service admitted to funding anti-solar ads by 60 plus, a national Koch-backed front group that purports to represent seniors and it has been accused of improper influence with the Arizona Corporation Commission.

“I’ve seen first-hand how some energy monopolies have used money in campaigns to intimidate and manipulate policy makers and elected officials,” said Rep. Ken Clark, a state representative from Arizona who has pushed Arizona Public Service to disclose its political spending. “Aside from the question of renewable energy, this activity has become a threat to our electoral system.”

Arizona Public Service’s latest stealth move against solar has been to withdraw its request to raise fees on solar owners until the commission completes a study that would only examine costs and not benefits, of the resource.

In Florida, where solar capacity is far beneath its potential, Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and Duke Energy, the largest utility in the U.S., have teamed up to block pro-solar policies. Duke Energy spent heavily to help re-elect Gov. Rick Scott, who campaigned against a state renewable electricity standard. Americans for Prosperity has mobilized its members and waged an aggressive ad campaign against a ballot initiative to expand rooftop solar by allowing third-party sales of panels. Duke Energy has also contributed to that effort.

The anti-solar coalition Consumers for Smart Solar, backed by Americans for Prosperity, Duke Energy and others, has now put forward a competing ballot measure in Florida to undermine the rooftop solar amendment.

“By wide margins, Americans support pro-solar policies,” said Fanshaw. “That’s why fossil fuel interests and their front groups have resorted to shady and deceptive tactics to undermine them. Ultimately it will be up to state leaders to reject these attacks and support a clean energy future.”

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