Two weeks until California slashes rooftop solar incentives

This story originally published in Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment. It’s been nearly a decade since California lawmakers ordered the state’s Public Utilities Commission to revamp a rooftop solar incentive program called net metering. Gavin Newsom’s appointees on the Public Utilities Commission, who said one of their goals in lowering incentive payments for standalone solar systems was to encourage homes and businesses to add batteries. The reduced solar payments won’t affect homes that already have rooftop systems in place, or customers of government-run electric utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The groups argued that commission officials hadn’t complied with the 2013 law requiring them to reevaluate net metering, in part because they’d failed to take into account all the benefits of rooftop solar — such as protecting homes from blackouts and utility power shutoffs, slashing air pollution from fossil fueled power plants in low-income communities, reducing the need for expensive long-distance transmission lines and potentially limiting the environmental damage from large solar farms.