Credit Where Credit is Due

Rise Up

If you have been following energy policy developments in the Midwest over the last 5 years, you’ve probably noticed that electric utilities recently switched from fighting against solar energy development to developing solar projects at a record pace. Have energy companies seen the light? Should we shelve our concerns about wealthy, monopoly for-profit utility companies using their privileged market status and political connections to fight against solar energy and energy efficiency? Not so fast.

As you may have guessed, utility companies often support solar projects that they own and that financially benefit their investors (whether the generator uses coal or solar radiation as fuel, if the utility owns it the investors make a protected rate of return). And, they often fight against solar projects that they don’t own, as these projects reduce electricity demand and compete with them as independent generators.

So here we find ourselves; stuck in this strange and often contradictory place where utility representatives will support the value of the solar projects that they are developing while diminishing the value of solar energy on homes, businesses, schools, and city buildings. The arguments exist in the pedantic and dense language of regulatory procedures concerning parallel generation, avoided costs, PURPA, local marginalized prices, net energy metering, and on and on until nap time. Yet, if you care about local jobs, if you care about reducing your electricity bill, if you care about controlling future electricity costs, if you care about grid resiliency, and if you care about climate change, then you should care about how utilities, regulators, states, and the federal government determine the value of solar.

In this podcast episode, we will begin to explore the value of solar energy installed on buildings and vacant lots in communities through the Midwest. And, we’ll start in rural Iowa where local residents have organized a model “Energy District” and the value of solar has proved itself to so many homes and businesses that a groundswell of support turned legislation to nearly ended net metering into bipartisan legislation that established net metering for the entire state.