California lawmakers are hastening consideration of a bill that could further quash the state’s popular rooftop solar program – before the state Supreme Court rules in a case that could determine whether changes already implemented for the “net metering program” must be reassessed.
The state Assembly scrambled in early June to advance Assembly Bill 942 quickly, suspending rules that would have slowed a vote on the controversial measure. The bill now awaits consideration by the Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee.
If enacted, AB 942 would break contract terms for solar at homes, apartments and businesses that signed up for rooftop solar under the net metering program.
It would make California the first state to alter these contracts retroactively. And it would upend property values for homes with rooftop solar, affecting over 1 million households, many low-income.
The bill is authored by Assemblymember Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), a former Southern California Edison executive.
A broad coalition opposes AB 942. The group includes EWG, Western Center on Law & Poverty, CALPIRG, the California Association of Realtors, the California Building Industry Association and over 200 consumer, environmental and community organizations.
AB 942 would be a gift to the state’s three monopoly investor-owned utilities, whose profits are threatened by rooftop solar. Under net metering, rooftop solar owners can send surplus solar energy back to the grid in exchange for a bill credit.
Power companies have long tried to undermine the program. They’ve already enjoyed success with an overly compliant California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC. The commissioners have greenlighted a number of utility-sought decisions that have hurt the program, largely benefiting the companies’ profits.
Awaiting high court ruling
But critics, including EWG, are fighting back. They say those decisions are anti-clean energy and anti-consumer and fly in the face of state law designed to grow rooftop solar. They have taken their case all the way to the state Supreme Court. In light of this important legal case, they say, it doesn’t make sense for the Legislature to advance AB 942 before the court rules.
For reasons that are unclear, lawmakers are in a hurry to ram the bill through and get it to the governor’s desk, without waiting to see how the Supreme Court rules in this crucial solar case.
Depending on what the justices decide, their pending ruling might dramatically shift the policy landscape for the popular clean energy source.
In that case, the justices are weighing a challenge filed by EWG and other groups that asks whether the CPUC should be allowed to make sweeping energy policy decisions without fully considering the benefits of rooftop solar to all Californians and to the state as a whole. The groups also argue that CPUC decisions should be subject to more rigorous judicial review.
The case directly challenges the commission’s 2022 decision that slashed the credit rooftop solar owners receive from sharing the excess power generated from their panels with their neighbors. Taking effect in April 2023, the decision replaced net metering with a far less effective incentive program called “net billing.”
Since then, solar installations have dropped sharply across the state, slowing California’s progress toward clean energy goals and harming the industry and ratepayers.
The CPUC focused solely on how net metering affects California’s powerful investor-owned utilities, the groups claim. At the same time, the commission ignored a state law that mandates they consider all of the benefits of rooftop solar to all ratepayers, to the grid and to the state’s energy and environmental goals.
Critics of the decision are looking to the justices to reject the CPUC claim that its decisions are above the law and exempt from judicial review. They also want the court to find the commission acted illegally by not weighing the broad benefits of rooftop solar when it made its decision.
Legislature should slow down
The court’s ruling could set important new precedents for the future of rooftop solar policies in California. Now – before the justices offer their vital insight – is not the time for lawmakers to ram through a measure that could create fresh complications.
The Legislature has no pressing reason to rush passage of AB 942, despite claims the bill’s supporters make about its supposed benefits.
Utilities and Calderon argue the bill would bring equity to residents of homes without rooftop solar. This repeats a myth that non-solar homeowners end up paying higher electricity bills because of the very existence of the clean energy source. The reality is rooftop solar has shown it lowers costs for everyone, which explains the once-soaring demand for it.
If the state Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling helps to lay the groundwork to force the CPUC to reconsider its anti-solar decisions and consider the broad societal benefits of the program, the ideal outcome would be a reversal of those problematic policies.
This in turn could help revive interest in rooftop solar, repair the bruised industry, lower overall grid costs, and bring further monthly electricity bill relief for people throughout the state.
The last thing the Legislature should do right when the program awaits a potential lifeline is to add an extra hurdle for ratepayers to clear if they want rooftop solar.
Nothing justifies rushing AB 942 through before the state’s high court gets its chance to weigh in. Wait-and-see is the right approach to this important issue affecting millions of people.
