Eclipsing California’s Solar Potential
After approving SMUD’s anti-rooftop solar program, California Energy Commission should honor state’s landmark mandate
By Shiva Patel and Dave Rosenfeld
The bright future of rooftop and community solar in a California just got a little dimmer.
On Feb. 20 the California Energy Commission approved a controversial proposal from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). The proposal, called SolarShares, generated wide vocal opposition from residents and environmentalists who worried that it would undermine California’s landmark building standard requiring solar on all new homes.
If this standard is going to work, the commission should reconsider the SMUD application and carefully scrutinize all future applications. It’s painfully clear that SMUD’s SolarShares program undermines the commission’s own landmark solar mandate, which sought to deploy rooftop solar and enhance distributed energy ownership.
One of the key flaws in SMUD’s SolarShares program is that it will allow the utility to lock customers into 20-year contracts for power from their own off-site solar farms and effectively prohibit them from adding solar and battery storage to their homes. We predict that instead of solar being built on most new homes in Sacramento, the vast majority of new homes will be enrolled in the SolarShares program by default.
And so, just one month after California’s building standard requiring solar on new homes was scheduled to take effect, SMUD’s policies will make rooftop solar less economically viable for many residents for the next 20 years. With SolarShares, SMUD has successfully removed many community benefits — including lower electricity bills from rooftop solar — for Sacramento residents and eliminated the threat of competition that would arise with rooftop solar and true community solar programs.
Furthermore, SolarShares will discourage builders and residents from investing in home batteries. This is a big deal. Whether it’s during the evening, a power outage, or at times when utility-generated electricity is particularly dirty and expensive, batteries allow households to tap into clean energy when they need it most. If residents can’t invest in batteries, utilities will look to other sources of flexible power, like dirty gas, to make up the difference.
Indeed, SMUD’s current plans keeps its five fossil fuel power plants open indefinitely and will still emit over 1 million metric tons of global warming pollution by 2040. Slowing down the adoption of rooftop solar and batteries is counter to the state’s climate goals and will prolong the harmful impacts of fossil fuels, which disproportionately affect low income and communities of color.
At its Feb. 20 meeting, SMUD’s board members defended SolarShares, claiming it doesn’t matter where solar gets built. Maybe it doesn’t matter to a monopoly utility, but it does to Sacramento residents. It matters for families who want to lower their energy bills. It matters for the future of our youth, who are demanding that we stop burning fossil fuels and rapidly transition to clean energy. This monopoly utility perspective also ignores the vital question at the core of the debate over SMUD’s proposal: Who gets to have control over our energy system? Under SMUD’s SolarShares program, the answer is clearly SMUD and not individuals or communities.
California’s new building standards were a landmark moment in climate policy, in part because they provided a bold new answer to the question of who gets to have control over our energy system.
In a fiery speech earlier this year, Governor Newsom called for the end of California’s largest utility, declaring that Pacific Gas & Electric “no longer exists” and that the power outages that left millions without power are unacceptable. In its place, Newsom called for a future with local control, “not just with rooftop solar required on all new homes but with battery-storage systems.”
The energy future outlined by Newsom in his speech, where every home is empowered to generate and store their own clean energy, is a fundamental shift in power that tips the scales toward everyday citizens and the communities where they live. While utilities may see that shift in power as a particularly unwelcome development, rampant power outages and our climate emergency are making it increasingly clear: we simply cannot accept the alternative — and the California Energy Commission shouldn’t either.
