Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
AWAITING THE FOLLOW-UP: California’s hardy solar industry is on “pins and needles” in anticipation of action to reform the state’s net energy metering rules after a vote on the Public Utility Commission’s “NEM 3.0” proposed decision was delayed indefinitely in February.
NEM 3.0, first introduced in December, would update state regulations that provide for public utilities to purchase excess electricity generated by at-home solar panels, reducing the payoff for households.
The fight over reforms has the industry and its backers like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, facing off against a mix of utility interests, which want solar customers to foot a higher share of grid costs, and environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.
NRDC’s Mohit Chhabra has argued that current policy “overpays solar customers and shifts fixed grid and societal charges that solar customers should pay onto other customers.”
The PUC’s NEM 3.0 proposal sought to make amends and envisioned a “grid participation charge” of $8 per kilowatt of installed solar per month. The PUC said the change was designed “to capture residential adopters’ fair share of costs to maintain the grid and fund public purpose programs.”
Other changes included a lowering of compensation rates to solar customers.
Where the industry stands: NEM 3.0 opponents Elon Musk, whose Tesla is in the solar business, and Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, say the reforms as proposed would destroy the incentive structure that has helped to establish California as the country’s overwhelming leader of deployed solar energy.
Her group focuses exclusively on at-home, or “distributed,” solar, which accounts for around half of California’s total solar market and is the focus of reform efforts.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom should not be taxing solar panels. I don’t care if it’s 10 cents. It’s just the principle of it,” Del Chiaro told Jeremy. “The taxes go nowhere but up, camel’s nose under the tent, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use — no tax, and there’s no justification for it.”
Ideological tug-of-war: At the heart of the argument over these reforms is whether lower-income utility customers are being stuck with funding the solar energy exploits of more well-off customers.
That interpretation, Del Chiaro said, has put the “progressive, environmentally-minded state government” on a “destructive path” that could smother solar at a time when California and the U.S. government, under leadership of President Joe Biden, is trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“We have this interesting dynamic with this narrative that they’ve cooked up, you know, [it] kind of has people confused, especially on the political left,” Del Chiaro said. “‘Well, I’m not for hurting poor people.’ So now, solar versus poor people, which one do I choose?”
Del Chiaro emphasized her view that arguments underpinning the proposed reforms have more pull among “political people” than the average voter.
The average voter, she said, understands solar is “not just for the rich, it’s for me, you know, it’s in the aisles of Costco. It’s in my neighborhood.”
The broader solar story: Countering California’s net metering reforms is one among a series of policy issues keeping trade groups like CALSSA busy.
The federal policy-focused Solar Energy Industries Association and the American Clean Power Association have been lobbying hard against a request for new duties on solar cell and module imports from Asia.
SEIA’s and ACP’s approach has been much the same as CALSSA’s in putting the Biden administration on notice that new duties, or even their consideration, pose tremendous threats to the industry and to Biden’s green energy goals.
Del Chiaro said the tariff issue is at some level a secondary to what the PUC is contemplating.
“We literally have no market if net metering goes over a cliff,” she said. “Trade doesn’t matter anymore.”
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
GREEN LAW GROUP ACCUSES CEQ OF INTERFERING IN LEASING REPORT: Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit against the Council on Environmental Quality today, asking a federal court to compel CEQ to release documents on suspicion that the White House engaged in an “inappropriate weakening” of the Interior Department’s review of the oil and gas leasing program.
FOE’s complaint said the group suspects that the end report “may have been modified significantly in response to political pressure from the White House and CEQ, acting at the behest of oil-and-gas industry interests and oil-producing states.”
Green groups and some lawmakers took issue with Interior’s final report, released in November, saying it was too weak in its recommendations for reforming the leasing program.
Friends of the Earth has been a leading critic of the Biden administration’s energy and environmental policies, which it argues are inadequate to mitigate climate change.
TWITTER TO CRACK DOWN ON CLIMATE ADS: Twitter announced on Friday it will ban ads promoting ideas that contradict authorities on climate change, the Washington Examiner’s Nihal Krishan reports.
The company said it believes “climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter” and said that it would ban advertisements that contradict the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other unspecified bodies.
Twitter also said in its Earth Day announcement it will invest more carbon-removal technology, switch to renewable electricity at its offices, and use carbon-neutral power sources at its data centers by the end of 2022.
HOUSE GOP REVIVES LOOK INTO KREMLIN-BACKED ANTI-FRACKERS: House Oversight Republicans want Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney to call environmental NGO leaders before the committee and probe them about any ties they might have to the Kremlin which, as U.S. government and other Western officials have testified, were involved in opposition to the shale revolution.
“This is a real issue, now more than ever, with what Russia is doing to Ukraine, which is genocide,” Rep. Ralph Norman, ranking member of Oversight’s Subcommittee on Environment, told Jeremy.
“We just want to see, particularly with the president blaming Putin for the highest price in the history of the country for gasoline, why we basically support them with NGOs,” he said.
Interest in ties between Russia and NGOs opposing fracking stretches back at least a decade. Norman and other committee Republicans, in a letter to Maloney requesting the probe last month, bring testimony former White House official Fiona Hill made in 2011 about Vladimir Putin’s adamant opposition to fracking, as well that of as former Secretary-General of NATO Anders Rasmussen, who said in 2014 Russia was “engaged actively” with Western NGOs.
The letter also implicates the Sea Change Foundation for ties to the Kremlin, as alleged by then-Rep. Lamar Smith and Rep. Randy Weber in 2017.
Where the consensus lies: Whatever the merits of the probe, environmentalists in general have moved on from specifically advocating against anti-fracking in recent years, according to Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution.
“The focus on fracking individually has switched over into more, ‘We don’t want fossils,’ which, honestly, given their goals, makes more sense,” Gross told Jeremy.
EU STILL DIVIDED ON RUSSIAN ENERGY EMBARGO: Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said the bloc lacks sufficient support to pass a complete embargo on Russian oil and gas imports, at least in the short-term, telling German newspaper Die Welt this morning that, “At the moment, we in the EU do not have a unified position on this question.”
“A final proposal for an embargo on oil and gas is not yet on the table,” Borrell told Die Welt, adding that leaders plan to discuss the topic at the next EU summit, slated to be held before the end of May.
His remarks come as the EU plans to present proposals for a sixth round of sanctions against Russia this week. Earlier reports had suggested these might include a ban on Russian oil imports.
In the meantime, Borrell said, individual EU members are working individually to reduce dependency on Russian supplies.
He maintained that the bloc will eventually reach consensus on an embargo, telling the newspaper, “At some point it will happen and then Russia will feel painfully that the revenues from the oil and gas business are being lost.
SCHRODER UNDER PRESSURE FOR RUSSIA ENERGY TIES: Social Democrats are pushing for Gerhard Schröder to be booted from the party over his ties to Russia, which include his senior positions on the boards of several state-owned Russian oil and gas companies.
Schröder, who served as chancellor 1998 to 2005, currently heads the shareholder committee of the Gazprom-controlled Nord Stream pipeline, and leads the board of Russian oil company Rosneft. (Gazprom also nominated Schröder to join its board of directors in February, shortly before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, though it is unclear whether he accepted the role.)
His refusal to cut ties with Russia prompted his entire staff to quit in protest last month. Demands have since grown louder for Schröder to be stripped of all ex-chancellor benefits, including a large monthly pension payment.
SPD co-leader Saskia Eskensaud said in a radio interview today that she is favor of Schröder’s expulsion from the party, adding that there are “several motions” underway to facilitate such a departure.
Schröder “has been acting merely as a businessman for many years, and we should stop perceiving him as an elder statesman and former chancellor,” she said.
VON DER LEYEN PUSHES SOLAR IN INDIA: Meanwhile, European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen traveled to India, where she will meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of her push for him to expand India’s solar industry.
During the first of her two-day visit, von der Leyen also delivered remarks at the International Solar Alliance conference, where she stressed that Russia’s war in Ukraine underscored the importance for countries to invest in their own homegrown clean energy sources.
“How can you do business with someone who openly threatens Europe and wages war against one of your closest neighbors? So our transition to homegrown renewable energy is not only good for the environment but also becomes a strategic investment in security,” she said.
BIDEN’S VISION FOR A GREENER MILITARY: Biden looked ahead to a greener future for the U.S. military on Friday, especially through the acquisition of more electric vehicles for the force, the Washington Examiner’s Haisten Willis reports.
“We’re going to start the process for every vehicle in the United States military, every vehicle is going to be climate-friendly,” Biden said. “Every vehicle. I mean it. We’re spending billions of dollars to do it.”
Biden’s December executive order looks to greenify the federal government by directing federal agencies to reduce their emissions footprint and to procure products with low or no emissions in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The U.S. Army rolled out a strategy in February to that end.
The branch intends to reduce emissions by optimizing vehicle fuel efficiency and electrification, operational power generation, and land management, and has set objectives to achieve an all-electric light-duty non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027 as Biden’s EO directs.
For its non-tactical fleet, the branch hopes to be all-electric by 2035.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal Higher oil prices have yet to lure back secondary buyers
Bloomberg Russia’s war is turbocharging the world’s addiction to coal
E&E News Smell gas? Getting it fixed may depend on race and income
Calendar
THURSDAY | APRIL 28
10:00 a.m. House Energy and Commerce’s Energy Subcommittee will hold a hearing with Secretary Jennifer Granholm on the fiscal year 2023 budget request for the Energy Department.
10:00 a.m. 2318 Rayburn The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on climate change mitigation.
