Rooftop solar has gone off a cliff in California because of a string of reckless decisions made by the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) at the behest of the utilities.
These decisions were opposed by the general public and hundreds of nonprofit organizations, cities, and schools. Regulators justified their actions with a utility-sponsored lie that blamed rooftop solar for high electricity rates.
The good news is that a new generation of state legislators has emerged who are willing to stand up to the utilities and defend rooftop solar. However, there are still too many lawmakers who have fallen for the utilities’ lie. It is clearer than ever that in order to defend our investments from the utilities’ greedy fingers, we must rip apart the utility lie, root and branch. And your voice is necessary to succeed!
Rooftop solar users are heroes who should be celebrated, not slandered
Most of California’s two million rooftop solar users invested in rooftop solar to protect their household from skyrocketing utility bills.
And in the process, they have also reduced the strain on the electricity grid. This has helped the state avoid billions of dollars in expensive poles and wires, while also preventing mass blackouts on many occasions.
These benefits are on top of helping the state meet its ambitious clean energy goals, which it simply cannot do with solar and wind farms alone.
Rooftop solar has gone off a cliff, hurting everyone, but especially working and middle class people
The CPUC’s “NEM3 decision” made rooftop solar more expensive, causing solar adoptions to plummet. An estimated 17,000 rooftop solar jobs have been lost.
60% of all rooftop solar users are working or middle class. As a result, the decline of rooftop solar has had the biggest impact on everyday people—it’s now harder for the ones who need the most help with electricity bills to get relief through rooftop solar.
The attack on rooftop solar is based on a utility-invented lie. The lie is intended to hide what's really driving up rates—out of control utility spending
The CPUC justified their decisions with a lie—that rooftop solar is to blame for high electricity rates. But here’s the truth:
- 92% of rate hikes since 2014 are a direct result of increased utility spending on poles and wires.
- Spending on poles and wires has skyrocketed, increasing by more than 300% since 2002 even though peak electricity demand has been flat.
- Utilities are incentivized to overspend for one big reason: the government guarantees them an 8-10% profit on every dollar they spend on new power lines.
- The utilities are in turn reporting record profits, and rates keep rising to match.
The utilities' lie about rooftop solar is absurd. Rooftop solar actually saves all ratepayers money!
The lie makes no sense. Do you raise rates when you turn off the lights or the AC? No. You simply use less energy.
In turn, when you make your own energy from solar panels, do you raise rates? No. You simply use less energy.
Rooftop solar doesn’t contribute to rising rates any more than growing your own vegetables contributes to rising food prices. To say otherwise is to believe that we are obligated to pay the utility whether we use their service or not.
But in fact, when people use less energy, they reduce the need for utilities to spend so much on new poles and wires, which lowers the cost of the grid for everyone. One estimate is that more rooftop solar and batteries could reduce grid costs by $120 billion, or $300 per ratepayer per year.
The lie is based on fraudulent math created by a utility consulting firm
Proponents of the utility lie about rooftop solar often use numbers provided by the CPUC to justify their claim. But that math was calculated by a utility consulting firm whose major clients include the utilities themselves.
The utilities have spent heavily to make their lie stick in Sacramento. They also have an echo chamber of allies who spread the lie for them, making the lie seem "respectable"
The utilities have showered California politicians with $190 million in campaign donations since 2000, helping to make the lie stick. This has also given them outsized influence over the CPUC and the Public Advocates Office, both of which are led by appointees of the Governor.
The utilities have also gotten a small group of seemingly independent utility allies to spread the lie for them. These include organizations who should know better, but for one reason or another have chosen to align with the utilities: the Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and The Utility Reform Network (TURN).
Each of the organizations listed above simply regurgitate the same biased, utility-influenced math that the CPUC uses, in many cases referring to each other in a circular pattern.
All of this has created a smokescreen that too many lawmakers have bought hook, line and sinker.
Read more about the utility echo chamber
Some lawmakers aren't buying the lie, and are working to defend rooftop solar. That's great!
In 2024, a growing number of state lawmakers started pushing back, introducing legislation to help reverse the damage that has been done to rooftop solar.
Only one of those bills passed (SB 1374). Our legislative allies found that the utilities’ lie about rooftop solar had taken hold among many of their colleagues, and sometimes even in the news media.
The good news is that a new generation of state legislators has emerged who are willing to stand up to the utilities and defend rooftop solar. Many of them publicly questioned the utility lies, growing better-versed as the year went on.
What’s especially encouraging is that many of these legislators used to believe the utility lie, but changed their minds after listening to constituents like you! (SB 1374)
Watch legislators defend rooftop solar
We need to educate and win over more Sacramento lawmakers.
It is a hard fact that the root of the problem is the utilities’ out of control spending on poles and wires. Getting that spending under control is the only way out of this mess.
One of the best ways to make that happen is to encourage more people to make their own energy with rooftop solar panels, and store that energy in batteries.
We need to connect the dots for these legislators. And have them understand that if they don’t connect the dots, then their constituents will pay higher bills with no end in sight.
Our work is urgent, because the utility attacks keep coming.
Not content with the damage that has already been done, the utilities and their allies appear to be preparing a new attack on rooftop solar. We need to work quickly to ensure their new attack does not stick.
This new attack, led by the CPUC’s political arm, is aimed at households who went solar prior to April 2023—people on “NEM2” or “NEM1”. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office is proposing to renege on the state’s promise that these solar users will be protected from changes for 20 years from the date they installed their solar panels. This would not only undermine nearly two million solar investments, but also undermine consumer trust in going solar in California.
