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What a planet we're now on. Whether it's days (the two hottest ever recorded, back to back), months (the 13 hottest in a row), or years (2023, the hottest ever by far), we're now eternally setting new heat records. Oh, and in case that isn't enough, we seem unable to ensure that ever more grim records won't follow by cutting back radically on the flow of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels we're sending into the atmosphere in a distinctly overheated fashion. The latest example: emissions from methane (responsible for "half of the global heating already experienced") which are still rising remarkably rapidly across the planet.
And whether it's floods or fires, the result of such emissions and a significantly hotter planet is weather that's all too literally from hell. If, in fact, you happen to be living in certain parts of California, for years now you've been experiencing both devastating fires (2021, typically, was the driest in that state in at least a century) and devastating atmospheric rivers in a record fashion. The latest of that state's horrific blazes, which are getting worse thanks to climate change, is the Park Fire. While I was writing this, it had already burned through 389,791 acres (609 square miles) and was still only 18% contained, which already made it the fifth-largest fire in the state's history and, mind you, it was just one of 100 fires burning across the West.
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom (unlike governors in states like Florida and Louisiana who have functionally denied the very existence of climate change), has gained a reputation for working to rein in global warming and transition to a 100% clean energy grid, including a state ban on the sales of fossil-fuel powered cars by 2035. And yet it tells us something about the all-American world we now live in that even Newsom, as TomDispatch regular Joshua Frank reports today, is all too ready to take his eye off the prize when local politics makes such an approach seem useful, if not enticing, to him. How truly sad! Tom
"Where California Goes, There Goes the Nation"
Gavin Newsom's War on Rooftop Solar Is a Bad Omen for the Country
By Joshua Frank
California Governor Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he's in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He's been called a "climate-change crusader" and a leader of America's clean energy revolution.
"[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs," Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. "We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us."
These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet's becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil-fuel legislation. It's also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Governor Newsom might say, he's also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.
Consider California's residential solar program (its "net-metering"), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state's utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They've called this alleged problem a "cost-shift" from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.
It's true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state's electricity rates up just isn't true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California's utility companies to turn a profit.
Here's an example of how those rates work and why they've gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it's those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.
In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn't rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.
A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that's the only way they turn a profit).
"What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions," said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. "Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation."
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