Our Campaign

California utilities are trying to turn back the clock on solar, calling for drastic and catastrophic changes to Net Energy Metering that, in some instances, would make rooftop solar power 5 times more expensive than it is today. If they are successful, they would essentially eliminate the market in California just like they did in Nevada a few years ago. 

With ongoing blackouts, wildfires, and ever-rising energy bills, utilities are concerned that rooftop solar, especially when coupled with a battery, spells trouble for their 100-year reign as the electricity monopoly as well as their short-term profits. You see, California utilities don’t earn a profit by selling electricity, or even by providing reliable power. Instead, they get a guaranteed 10% rate of return for every pole and wire they build to transmit electricity. The bigger the wires and the greater the distance the electricity has to travel, the more we pay for our electricity and the more they profit.

Rooftop solar and garage batteries generate electricity at the point of use - where we live, work, and play. Local solar reduces the need to build big transmission lines and transport electricity across great distances. These “non-wire alternatives” to generating clean, renewable electricity cut into utility profits. They also save all ratepayers money, but the utilities don’t like to talk about that. Instead, they like to pit neighbor against neighbor, community against community, in their drive to own the sun themselves. 

Net energy metering is an arrangement that provides a bill credit to solar users for the electricity they make on-site and send back onto the grid for use by their neighbors. Net metering is what makes the economics of rooftop solar possible. 

Utilities would like to eliminate net metering and the local solar market. That's because rooftop solar creates competition that cuts into monopoly utility shareholder profits, while challenging them to actually serve the public better. 

The fight isn't limited to California. Monopoly utilities are attacking rooftop solar and net metering throughout the United States, as documented in Jonathan Scott’s new film, Power Trip. 

Everyone benefits when one person invests in solar energy. Today, throughout California, there are over one million solar systems located at schools, farms, businesses, homes, and low-income apartment buildings. Each of these projects represent an exciting new way to build a modern electric grid - a grid that is smarter, more reliable, and clean. 

Rooftop solar saves everyone money because every solar system reduces the need to maintain or build expensive transmission lines and other grid infrastructure. In 2018 alone thanks to rooftop solar and more energy efficiency, state energy officials canceled or modified dozens of massive power line maintenance projects, saving the state $2.6 billion. A new study estimates that U.S. ratepayers could save $385 billion over the next thirty years if we go big on rooftop solar. 

California's rooftop solar systems produce nearly 13 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean energy each year, avoiding 5 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Attached to a growing number of these solar systems are more than 30,000 battery storage systems, adding 1 million kWh of storage capacity. What’s more, rooftop solar helps shut down old, polluting natural gas plants. In 2016, for example, regulators cancelled a contract with an aging gas plant in southern California thanks to the growth of rooftop solar. 

Local solar and energy storage projects are job intensive. Sixty full-time jobs are supported by every megawatt (MW) of local solar energy built, and California built over 1,200 megawatts of local solar in 2019. Investing in rooftop solar not only creates a lot of jobs but it creates good jobs that are inherently local and can’t be outsourced. Furthermore, the majority of solar construction businesses are local companies who live and invest in their communities. Investing in rooftop solar, therefore, is an investment in the economic growth of your local community.

In August 2020, under pressure from the investor-owned utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced its intentions to change California’s net metering program for a second time in four years. A decision is expected in 2021. The CPUC'S so-called “NEM 3” decision could either kill the rooftop solar market in California, as other states like Nevada and Hawaii have done in the recent past. 

Or, it could usher in a new era of growth for not just solar but solar combined with energy storage, or batteries, to bring greater consumer savings and clean energy to California, including millions of middle and lower income Californians.

California’s investor-owned utilities, PG&E, Southern California Edison, and Sempra Gas Company, which owns San Diego Gas & Electric, are working together to put enormous pressure on the CPUC.

The utilities are calling for drastic cuts to net metering that would make solar more expensive, and further out of reach for most Californians. Some of the changes include:

• Reduce the economic value of going solar by 50-75%. 

• Hit every solar user with new monthly fees, just for choosing solar.

• Remove the 20-year grandfathering for existing customers, ruining the investments they initially signed up for.

• Create massive uncertainty for consumers by forcing customers to choose solar without knowing the terms and conditions of net metering in advance. 

Our overarching goal is to keep rooftop solar growing in California. Over one million consumers have gone solar to date and 150,000 households, schools, farmers, renters and businesses are choosing rooftop solar each year. Let's not put new obstacles in the way, instead, let’s encourage more people to go solar.

We are calling on the CA Public Utilities Commission to strengthen net metering in two ways:

• Make it easier and cheaper for everyone, including lower income Californians and renters, to benefit directly from rooftop solar and batteries, too.

• Help those who go solar also get batteries to make the sun shine at night, which increases the community benefits of solar. 

Given the backdrop of wildfires, blackouts, utility bankruptcies, calls for 100% clean energy, Governor Gavin Newsom can and should enhance the rights and abilities for every Californian to go solar, not cut back on our clean energy progress. As mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom put in place a groundbreaking program to grow local solar and create jobs and economic opportunity in the city. He could do the same thing for the entire state but we need his leadership. 

Click here to sign our petition to the governor and take other actions to help us protect solar energy for all.