A host of utilities across the United States have worked with anti-solar groups to undermine pro-solar policies, with varying degrees of success.
In light of these efforts, state legislators, utility oversight boards, and others should resist efforts by utilities and their special interest supporters aimed at limiting the spread of rooftop solar. So asserts a new report released by Environment America, the Frontier Group, and the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.
According to the report, many of the nation’s electric utilities as well as affiliated lobbying groups perceive solar power–and distributed generation more broadly–as a threat to their business models and profits.
This explains in part why so many state-level battles are fought over issues such as net metering, fixed charges, demand charges, and rate changes, even in areas served by utilities that have publicly committed to procuring and installing utility-scale solar. Objections include arguments that distributed assets are not owned by the utility, do not factor into their profit models, and enable customers to consume large portions of their energy need without buying it from the grid while also earning compensation from the utility for excess generation.
As a part of the anti-solar offensive, the report said that a national network of well-funded, largely pro-fossil-fuel lobbying groups have worked with utilities to limit the potential of non-utility-owned renewable generation. Here are highlights of what the report found.
EEI
The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) has worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to create model legislation to attack net metering at the state level. As the trade group that represents U.S. investor-owned electric utilities, EEI has trained utility executives in how to run advocacy campaigns and has consistently been a major donor to national Congressional candidates and parties, according to the report.
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EEI has long been a solar energy opponent, the report said. That opposition began with EEI’s 2013 “Disruptive Challenges” report, which warned of solar’s potential to threaten the utility business model, and net metering’s potential to adversely impact utility investors.
In December 2019, EEI held a weeklong political “bootcamp” for utility executives and government affairs representatives. The report said that during the session, case studies of successful anti clean-energy campaigns were used to train attendees on how to run their campaigns, while also repeatedly pressing on how net metering, renewable energy standards, and other pro-solar policies represented ongoing threats.
The group maintains a Political Action Committee which has spent over $700,000 in each national election cycle since 2010 to advance organizational issue priorities, the report said.
CEA
Houston-based Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a group which purports to be the “leading voice for sensible energy and environmental policies for consumers,” seems to be anything but that, according to the report. The group’s members (besides state and local Chambers of Commerce and other business groups) include utility and fossil fuel companies, like Ameren Missouri, the American Gas Association, Dominion Energy, the Edison Electric Institute, Florida Power & Light, Georgia Power, the Indiana Energy Association, British Petroleum, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell Oil.
In the past, CEA has supported anti-solar legislation, like Florida’s failed Amendment 1 in 2016. The group has been referred to by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse as a “fake consumer group” created by fossil fuel lobbyists.
The group has also been accused of misrepresenting petition signatures it has collected, and for generating template emails supposedly from citizens pressing for specific legislative initiatives.
ALEC
Described by the report’s authors as a “corporate bill mill,” the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nationwide organization that gives fossil fuel and utility industry lobbyists direct access to state lawmakers. The report said that98% of the organization’s budget comes from outside donors, corporations, and corporate foundations.
ALEC has been used in the past as a vehicle for utilities and corporations to collaborate on anti-renewable legislation templates, which are then sent to ALEC-member state-level legislators, who introduce the legislation in their respective lawmaking body. The report asserts that the ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force has authored and introduced model bills intended to get rid of or heavily compromise net metering programs.
Recently, a number of the group’s high-profile corporate members, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Wal Mart – all companies that have invested in solar and renewable energy at large – have cut ties with ALEC, citing the group’s effort to work against measures that would combat climate change.
Koch Industries
Koch Industries began as an oil extraction and refining company, and has been consistent in pursuing cuts to environmental regulation. One of the company’s associated groups, Americans for Prosperity, has been used, according to the report, to funnel money to attack solar power, along with other environmental and energy initiatives. The group is active in 38 states and has fought against solar in Arizona, New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, South Carolina, and Washington.
A separate Koch-backed group donated at least $1 million to promote Florida’s Amendment 1, according to the report. That amendment failed to pass in 2016. Amendment 1 would have given utilities free rein to charge solar customers more in fees and taxes to offset an alleged cost-shift to non-solar customers. The campaign for Amendment 1 raised more than $20 million in donations. The measure ultimately failed to reach the 60% of the vote that it needed to pass.
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Stay tuned for the next installment in this series, where we’ll be taking a look at some of the state-specific campaigns that have attempted to limit rooftop solar’s potential and gut net metering programs.
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I’m all for rooftop solar but how are electric utilities going to pay their expenses maintaining the grid if a large fraction of customers eventually go solar?
Dan, take a close look at your utility bill. Public Utilities charge every customer solar or no solar transmission charges. What solar customers don’t pay for is the generation of electricity from fossil fuels. The less electricity utilities have to generate from fossil fuel, the less fossil fuel they have to purchase. The transmission fees are substantial enough to cover the maintenance of the grid.
Dan, How are newspapers going to pay their expenses after a large fraction of customers eventually go digital?
Julie,
What I was getting at is that some are trying to have rules set up so they can generate enough energy that it will pay for their entire electric bill, including base fee, generation, transmission, and all other fees. It’s already set up this way in some areas according to Energysage and other sources.
I believe that utilities can absorb a certain number of these customers because the utilities still have plenty of other customers to sell that energy to. But at some point, as panels, inverters, and batteries continue to drop in price, and enough customers go solar and pay zero to the utilities, then obviously, maintenance of the infrastructure would bankrupt the utilities. Therefore, it seems that net metering has to be set up so that each customer can pay zero for generation but will still pay for a share of grid maintenance. But it seems that some people think it’s unfair if they have solar and still have to pay something.
I’m going to put solar on my home but I’ll still be connected to the grid to use as a “battery” that I feed into during the day and draw from at night. Therefore, I feel it’s fair to pay for maintenance of that service. If later on I decide to buy batteries and go totally off grid and have my meter removed, that’s a different story. I’d expect to pay nothing in that case. Of course, that becomes another dilemma for the utilities because they have to have a certain customer density or the cost to those remaining would become untenable.
Spot on! Everyone still has to support what they use.
Fred, newspapers are selling digital subscriptions. How is that related to electric utilities?
Nowhere in this discussion has there been a mention of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the government created monopoly that provides electric power to Tennessee and seven surrounding states. They refuse to even discuss net metering, and do everything in their power to prevent solar installations, except their own, of course. And they have started charging a grid access fee to be sure to have a mechanism in place to self compensate for any revenue lost to distributed generation. They force their local power distribution companies to agree by contract to only buy power from TVA and never consider installing any competing technology, like Solar, on their own. All the while, spending millions on public education campaigns intended to make folks think they are the greenest power providers around.