Substitution of materials, equipment and low carbon fuels for high carbon fuels is underway and moving forward faster in some countries and economic sectors than others.  Substitution of manufactured equipment for fuels adds “life cycle carbon” to historical and on-going GHG emissions.  To what extent do GHGs emitted in creating low carbon energy economies retard overall decarbonization progress?  Life cycle carbon emissions for the years 2020 through 2029 add up to a minimum of 35 billion metric tons of CO2-eq, or roughly a year’s worth of current global energy related GHG emissions.  Overall life cycle carbon emissions will continue to increase after 2029 at least until direct global GHG emissions are brought under control. 

Just as the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb GHGs without affecting climate is limited, so is the earth’s capacity to supply materials to replace those that are used only once.   In a renewable energy context, there are two basic solutions.  First, there is no technical reason renewable energy equipment cannot be built to last decades longer than it otherwise might.  How can renewable energy markets and policies reward durability and long, low maintenance project and system operation even as major supply chain industries continue to thrive on planned obsolescence?  Second, renewable energy material and component recovery and reuse is feasible but not generally either mandatory or economically rewarding.  Will publicly financed renewable energy waste recovery be necessary, and which governments will take the lead in making it work fairly and efficiently?

California and other states need a way to capture the environmental and economic benefits of community solar. Other states have found a way. California’s CCE industry should ask the California legislature to consider allowing California CCEs to use all or a portion of annual CPUC mandated PCIA charges to put local renewable projects on an equal economic footing with projects that require new high voltage transmission capacity to deliver electricity locally. This will increase CCE capacity and flexibility to address local energy resilience needs and to provide equitable access locally to the environmental and economic benefits of solar electricity.

A proposed CPUC decision sets aside a long-standing bipartisan policy regarding on-site solar energy. The policy should remain in effect because it is foundational to creation of a just and affordable state-wide renewable energy eco-system. Its underlying premises are valid. The underlying premises of the proposed decision are not. Better informed and more robust on-going and future consideration of the benefits of rooftop solar can be a positive outcome of the current policy tug of war between electric utilities and local clean energy advocates.

California has ramped up a seventy-six billion dollar investment in all types of solar generation capacity over the past decade. California’s retail solar industry enabled half of the total investment. Rooftop solar has been a bright spot for California’s renewable energy transition even as state regulators and California utilities continue to make other energy democracy enablers - community choice, community solar, community microgrids - hard or impossible to finance.

Regulators are now considering rule changes that impose punitive “grid access” fees on rooftop solar adoption, plus drastic reductions in compensation for electricity that feeds into the grid from rooftop solar arrays. The future of energy democracy in California hangs in the balance.

[1] The proposed CPUC decision is not accompanied by case studies indicating how it will work out for ratepayers.

The menu of energy related actions that can be identified and prioritized in local climate action plans can be displayed in two main categories. Electricity and gas fuel decarbonization elements are additive, synergistic, and comparably effective in most local cases. They support faster decarbonization progress than renewable electricity alone. They are inter-dependent to the extent energy resilience is best (most cost-effectively and completely) achieved by including gas fueled electricity supply in the local electricity supply mix. Each menu category requires local implementation capacity. Prioritization of the categories should give close consideration to implementation capacity and strategies and actions to upgrade it.

On-site solar is the lowest impact, most economically beneficial renewable supply option available to California legislators, policy makers, utilities and energy users. The best state-wide balance between locally produced solar electricity and the output of large solar power plants depends on the best balance for each California city and county. Striking the right balance should be a local choice. For now, the option to produce solar electricity to meet local needs must be expanded, not curtailed.

A New Opportunity for California Cities and Counties. Property owners in most of northern California now recapture their on-site solar investments in as little as 5-6 years and continue to save money for another 20 years. Their communities benefit as well to the extent local governments act to capture reliability, resilience and equity benefits a thriving local solar industry makes possible. California counties and cities with mature local solar deployment capacity are seeing sustained double digit annual on-site solar expansion. It is as if an exceptionally talented and productive player just began playing for the local team – a player with the ability to lower energy costs, increase energy resilience and enable more equitable access to locally produced zero carbon electricity.

Property owner investments in on-site solar energy deliver significant environmental, economic and resilience benefits to cities and counties. Modest and ever-shrinking differences between unit (per kWh) costs of utility solar electricity supply and unit costs of on-site solar electricity systems point to a growing, beneficial long term role for local systems.