The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is set to vote today to pass a law banning all sales of new internal combustion engines by 2035. Under the law, Californians can continue to drive gas-fueled vehicles and purchase used ones after 2035. The plan also allows for 20% of sales after 2035 to be plug-in hybrids that can run on batteries and gas.
California makes up 10% of the U.S. car market but represents 43% of all plug-in vehicles in the nation, said CARB.
The new law is set to spur demand for infrastructure to support an electric-powered transportation sector, including solar and electric vehicle charging stations. Currently, there are about 80,000 charging stations in California, well short of the goal of 250,000 by 2025.
Massachusetts, Washington and New York are among states that have announced goals to electrify their car markets or have committed to following in the footsteps of California’s rulings.
“The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.
Transportation is responsible for roughly 30% of carbon emissions. However, carbon emissions reduction goals cannot be met if this new era of electric vehicles are charged by a dirty grid characterized by natural gas and other hydrocarbons. As such, environmental groups are calling for Governor Newsom to step in and alter the state’s rooftop solar policy.
Regulators from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a comprehensive report outlining the state’s path to carbon neutrality, and chief among the recommendations was support for solar, specifically rooftop solar. However, regulators from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) have been developing policies that are set to slash the value of rooftop solar in the state.
California’s rooftop solar industry represents over 1.4 million homes, small businesses, and other structures topped with PV. The state accounts for 50% of rooftop solar installations in the United States, and of the 230,000 people employed in the solar industry, as many as 68,000 jobs are supported by the state’s rooftop solar business.
Based on California’s clean energy goals, as much as 28.5 GW of rooftop solar needs to be installed through 2045, according to Environment California. If all this capacity were instead installed on land, 148,000 acres would be needed to support it, an area about half the size of Los Angeles.
However, current policies under development in the state, namely the Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 policy, are set to lower the value of solar in the state. NEM 3.0 slashes the payment made to homeowners for their excess solar energy shared to the grid to a fraction of what it is under today’s net metering program.
The NEM 3.0 proposed decision introduced “non-bypassable charges,” which would add $0.05/kWh to a solar customer’s bill. For context, most Americans pay less than $0.15/kWh for electricity in total. These non-bypassable charges would apply to the electrons generated by the customer’s rooftop solar array and delivered to their own homes. Market conditions and zoning regulations make it very difficult, or even illegal, to disconnect from the grid entirely in many areas in California.
This means that even if the customer completely self-consumes solar energy and doesn’t use utility-generated power, the utility will profit from the homeowner’s system via non-bypassable charges.
“The ambitious plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars is exactly the kind of climate solutions California and the rest of the country should be adopting,” said EWG President and Bay Area resident Ken Cook.
“But it will require the state to dramatically ramp up investments in residential and commercial solar that will be needed to charge the millions of electric vehicles in the coming decade,” said Cook. “I don’t see how Gov. Newsom can achieve what his administration would like to do on clean transportation without the most robust rooftop and community solar programs the state can support.”
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It’s great to see California continuing to lead clean, renewable energy advancement. The fossil-fuel industry must hate them.
If the utility has the name GAS in its name, it is a fossil fuel company. Pacific GAS and Electric and San Diego GAS and Electric both are middlemen for fossil fuels, and they make money by buying natural Gas Futures then buying their own futures and sell them at the current spot price for their natural gas customers, double dipping, and getting rich even selling natural gas to their own owned power plants for a profit then selling the electricity at a marked-up price. All companies that deal in commodities, do this through buying futures and profiting from them. Privately owned utilities or publicly owned utilities are in the business to make money. This is the capitalistic way America Works. The homeowner either pays the price, that is asked of them, or finds a new supplier or buys a different less expensive brand. In California, where rooftop solar is 10 cents per kilo watt hour pro-rated and the utility charges 34 cents to 49 cents per kilo watt hour for delivered electricity, homeowners are buying smart, lower cost rooftop solar electric power from themselves. 1.3 million California’s have made the switch and more will do it as the utilities raise the prices for electricity and solar prices continue to drop or hold steady.
This means that even if the customer completely self-consumes solar energy and doesn’t use utility-generated power, the utility will profit from the homeowner’s system via non-bypassable charges. This would be for grid tied systems. If you self-generate power that does not go through the “Smart Meter” but goes directly to the sub-panel in your home or garage, and charges batteries instead of being metered onto the grid and the batteries provide all the power at night, their “Smart meter” will be left with no knowledge of the self-consumption. This is why they now have a “Smart meter” that has the solar panel output taken directly to the meter and not to the sub panels for many of the new installations and charges $1,200.00 for that “solar ready smart meter” with connection box.
Wow Ed, that sounds like quite the scam they’ve got going for themselves.
Yes, utilities that are privately owned with stockholders are in the energy business to make MONEY. Every customer that goes Off-Grid is one less customer they can make guaranteed money on. Utilities are a monopoly and needed to be regulated and California De-regulated them in 2001 under Republican Governors that Governor Gray Davis inherited and was recalled over after the Enron crisis. Deregulating allowed customers to buy their electrical power from any electrical generator and that includes the homeowners own roof. That is why you have solar leases along with homeowner owned systems under NEM programs. If a NEM system, was in place, that gave the homeowner back 8 kilo watt hour for every 10 produced and put on the grid, utilities and homeowners could profit from rooftop solar. 80% of the power produced and sent to the grid to the homeowner in future power credits, that built and paid for the system, and 20% for the utility they could sell for a profit. Vermont utilities use this NEM system and make money while not killing rooftop solar like the CPUC NEM-3.0 proposals would do.
It may be too early to say this but I think there is a likelihood that there will be (some) people defecting from the grid. If a dwelling occupancy permit requires connection to a municipal electrical system, people will connect a rectifier to a battery to provide a token load and just forget about the bureaucracy involved with feed-in tariffs.
There are Grid tied inverters that have a current coil and a choke to limit the power going back onto the grid so that one can mix utility power with solar power to pay less without back feeding the grid allowing only forward flow from the smart meter. Most are made in China for export to countries that do not allow solar back feeding onto the grid for people who do not want or cannot afford batteries. In America, we are not allowed to back feed without a “NEM agreement” signed by the homeowner and approved by the utility. Most people will just grid connect and forget because NEM agreements were a partnership between the utility and the customer for the customers investment to help feed the grid instead of using Peaker plants. However, if the utilities change the rules, there are off grid systems that will power your house, all day, and part of the night, off of your own batteries. They use a transfer switch that when more power is needed than what is provided by the solar panels or the battery system, they just buy what is lacking from the grid. Just like an Uninterruptable Power supply takes over in a power failure, the opposite is achievable when the battery goes low, and the grid is alive and active. Before I had my grid tied system, I used and still use my off-grid system through Uninterruptable Power Supplies that have a remote-controlled wall switch. The UPS is plugged into the wall switch and #6 copper DC wires go into where the small UPS 12-volt battery was in the back of the UPS. The #6 copper wires have a 40-amp fuse then goes outside to my large battery bank and I can run totally off-grid for the devices plugged into them 24/7 all summer long and during daylight hours in the winter. As long as you do not send power back onto the grid and do not sign a NEM agreement, there is no way they can know how much or how little electricity you use because it is not metered by them when you generate it off-grid and use it off-grid. One can also re-wire their home like an RV and go 12-volt DC all the way for 90% of their home and just keep just a couple of 120- or 240-volt appliances plugged in to get a minimum bill from the utility to prove connection. A refrigerator and an electric dryer would do. With the advent of LED lighting and LED televisions and computer monitors, there are few appliances, outside the kitchen, that use more than just 100 watts so 12 Volt DC systems don’t need to carry a lot of current.