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California strikes another blow against rooftop solar (www.latimes.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by lntl@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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But critics insist the costs of those solar panels are beginning to outweigh the benefits.

Incentive payments to homes with solar, they say, have led to higher electricity rates for everyone else — including families that can’t afford rooftop panels. If so, that’s not only unfair, it’s damaging to the state’s climate progress. Higher electricity rates make it less likely that people will drive electric cars and install electric heat pumps in their homes — crucial climate solutions.

The solar industry disputes the argument that solar incentive payments are driving up rates, as do many environmental activists. But Newsom’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission are convinced, as they made clear Thursday.

“We need to reach our [climate] goals as fast as we can,” said Alice Reynolds, the commission’s president. “But we also need to be extremely thoughtful about how we reach our climate change goals in the most cost-effective manner.”

When I am having a stroke, I don't stop and calculate of the most cost effective treatment options. I go to the emergency room. We could have done this calculation in 1970 and acted, but that ship has sailed.

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[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The article doesn't explain this, so I will. Anyone with solar panels who is still tied to the grid is still reliant on the grid. Any time they are not actively generating, they are pulling from the grid. Electricity costs are only partially generation; much of the cost is distribution infrastructure. People with enough solar to run their electric meter at a net negative are not paying their share of that infrastructure, and that cost goes to anyone else. People with solar panels are wealthier than those without due to the fact that you have to own a home to take advantage. Essentially, home solar subsidies are a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. There are more equitable ways to make climate goals. It's the same problem with subsidizing electric cars.