CPUC – Enviro Updates

SuzanneMarch 9, 2025March 14, 2025Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, electric transition, electric utilities, electricity rates, fossil fuels industry, rooftop solar

Op-Ed: California must act on cheaper, cleaner energy

Sammy Roth, PRESS DEMOCRAT

In the age of climate change and Donald Trump, California must find ways to produce renewable energy at affordable rates.

Californians pay some of the nation’s highest electricity rates. They’re also being devastated by the consequences of fossil fueled climate change, including more deadly and expensive wildfires, droughts and heat waves.

Politicians need to stop promising they’ll confront these challenges and start doing it.

The recent fires in Los Angeles County should serve as a political rallying cry to accelerate the phaseout of oil and gas. Instead, they’re threatening to derail Sacramento’s long-promised focus on more affordable energy.

Before the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out, lawmakers were gathering ideas to slow fast-rising electric rates. Now, though, wildfire response — and President Donald Trump — are taking up most of the oxygen in Sacramento.

“The Legislature has only so much bandwidth,” said Matt Freedman, an attorney for the Utility Reform Network.

SuzanneJanuary 29, 2025February 25, 2025Climate Change & Energybattery fire, battery storage, CPUC

California PUC proposes energy storage safety, emergency response requirements

Brian Martucci, UTILITY DIVE

Published 10 days after a fire at Vistra’s 300-MW battery installation near Santa Cruz, the California Public Utilities Commission’s proposal would set new standards for energy storage facilities.

The Jan. 16 fire was the most destructive of three safety incidents to occur at the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility since 2020. A fourth incident occurred in September 2022 at an adjacent 182.5-MW battery installation owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric.

No injuries or deaths were reported in the Jan. 16 incident. Federal air quality monitoring concluded Jan. 20 after finding no risk to public health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said.

But local elected officials nonetheless raised alarms about the facility and the broader safety profile of battery energy storage facilities, with Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church calling the fire a “worst-case scenario” and California Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D, vowing to “[explore] all options for preventing future battery energy storage fires from ever occurring again on the Central Coast.”

SuzanneNovember 16, 2023November 19, 2023Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, net metering, PG&E, renewable energy, rooftop solar

California reduces payments for rooftop solar power — for second time in a year

Ben Christopher and Julie Cart, CALMATTERS

The utilities commission reduced payments to apartments, schools and businesses selling solar power to the grid despite a barrage of criticism. Commissioners say it reverses unfair subsidies.

After months of debate and two postponed votes, California’s utility regulator unanimously voted today to overhaul incentives for owners of apartment buildings, schools and businesses that install solar panels.

The new regulations are the second major step that the California Public Utilities Commission has taken in the past year to reduce power companies’ financial support for rooftop solar. In December, the commission reduced payments to homeowners who sell excess power from newly installed solar panels on single-family homes.

Still, for solar advocates, it could have been worse.

Thanks to a last-minute regulatory tweak, the new rules today stop short of a previous proposal that solar industry groups and housing-related interests warned would result in the “evisceration” of the multifamily solar market.

SuzanneJune 15, 2022July 18, 2022Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, net metering, rooftop solar, solar

Utilities, solar industry square off as California reopens record in net energy metering process

Kavya Balaraman, UTILITY DIVE

California utilities and solar advocates presented widely different views on the approach the state should take to change its net energy metering framework in comments filed with the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday.

The parties’ comments came in response to a May ruling from a CPUC administrative law judge, which asked them to weigh in on multiple issues, including how to transition from one net energy metering tariff to the other and how to collect public purpose charges under the new framework.

The ruling essentially reopened the record in the commission’s net energy metering proceeding, so that regulators can accept new information to evaluate the best course of action, according to Seth Hilton, partner at Stoel Rives. After this, “we’re likely to see a revised proposed decision come out which will respond to the proposed changes in the comments in some fashion — either adopt those changes, or [it] won’t,” he said.

SuzanneJanuary 31, 2022February 9, 2022Climate Change & Energy, Sustainable LivingCPUC, electric utilities, net metering, rooftop solar

Is there hope of finding middle ground on California’s rooftop solar policy?

Jeff St. John, CANARY MEDIA

Utility regulators are under heavy pressure to change their net-metering proposal — but there’s little agreement on what should result.

The Sierra Club’s new compromise proposal also addresses the issue of the roughly 1.3 million customers who already have rooftop solar. Current policy allows these customers to remain on their preexisting net-metering rates — both the original net-metering regime and the “NEM 2.0” regime put in place in 2016 — for 20 years after they installed their systems.

The battle over how to update the policies on compensation for rooftop solar systems in California has only grown more heated in recent weeks. A few groups have proposed new compromises, but the two camps are still far from agreement. Meanwhile, California regulators have postponed their decision on the issue, so the debate will rage on for the time being.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s proposal last month to slash the value of energy exported to the power grid from future rooftop solar systems and impose monthly fees on customers who install them has sparked a massive public and political backlash.

Thousands of people have joined protests organized by the solar industry to demonstrate against the proposal over the past month, and polling indicates a hefty majority of California residents oppose it. Major political figures including U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) have publicly blasted the plan, painting it as a threat to the state’s push to decarbonize its electricity supply. Actors Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo have joined the fray on Twitter.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) said earlier this month that “changes need to be made” to the current CPUC proposal, but he didn’t offer specific fixes and said he won’t interfere in the commission’s decision-making process. Since December, two of the commission’s five members have departed and been replaced by Newsom appointees, including new commission President Alice Reynolds, a former senior adviser to Newsom’s administration.

SuzanneDecember 13, 2021Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, net metering, PG&E, rooftop solar

California proposes big changes to rooftop solar incentives

Sammy Roth, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Walker Wright, vice president of public policy at San Francisco-based Sunrun, the nation’s largest rooftop solar installer, said in a written statement that Guzman Aceves’ decision would “impose the highest discriminatory charges on solar and energy storage customers in the U.S., putting rooftop solar and batteries out of reach for countless families in California just as more households are demanding that the state do more to combat climate change and provide them with reliable, sustainable energy.”

California officials want to slash payments for rooftop solar power while adding incentives for homes and businesses to install batteries, saying the changes will help the state achieve 100% clean energy in a way that keeps the lights on, prevents electricity rates from spiraling out of control and also encourages people to drive electric cars.

The proposal from Martha Guzman Aceves, one of five members of the California Public Utilities Commission, would revamp an incentive program called net energy metering that has helped the state become a national solar power leader, with more than 1.3 million rooftop and other small-scale systems installed. The solar industry and climate change advocacy groups have lobbied Gov. Gavin Newsom and his appointees on the utilities commission to keep the program’s basic tenets unchanged.

But in an interview, Guzman Aceves said net metering needs to evolve to reflect California’s changing energy needs. The Golden State’s power grid is increasingly flooded by solar energy during the afternoon but strained on hot summer evenings, when millions of people throttle up their air conditioners to cope with high temperatures made worse by the climate crisis.

SuzanneSeptember 6, 2021September 18, 2021Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, net metering, renewable energy, rooftop solar, utilities

California organisations warn of ‘ill-informed changes’ to net metering policy

Jules Scully, PV-TECH

A coalition of 347 organisations has warned that potential changes to California’s policy support for rooftop solar could set back climate change progress and harm low-income residents’ access to solar energy.

An open later sent by campaign group Save California Solar to state Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) calls on policymakers to keep solar affordable as the Newsom Administration considers changes to net energy metering (NEM), a policy that defines how solar users send energy back to and interact with the grid.

NEM allows customers with rooftop PV systems to receive a financial credit on their electric bills for any surplus energy fed back to their utility.

According to the coalition, proposals by California utilities “would drastically reduce the credit solar consumers receive for the excess energy they produce”. The group said: “We are concerned that ill-informed changes to net metering, such as slashing solar bill savings or imposing new fees on solar users, will set back California’s climate change and environmental justice goals.”

SuzanneAugust 23, 2021October 29, 2021Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, energy regulation, fire damage, PG&E

Governor Gavin Newsom’s office ‘micromanaged’ PG&E’s independent state regulators

Brandon Rittiman, ABC10

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office exerted control over a powerful state agency that is supposed to operate independently, “micromanaging” decisions big and small at the California Public Utilities Commission according to its former executive director.

“We do whatever the governor tells us to do, period,” former CPUC executive director Alice Stebbins said. “You don’t do anything without [Gov. Newsom’s] staff reviewing it or talking to you or approving it. And that’s the way it was.”

Internal CPUC documents obtained by ABC10 reveal the agency took direction from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and even submitted its work to the governor’s staff for multiple levels of “approval.”

The records show that on at least one occasion, the need to secure approval from Newsom’s office delayed CPUC business for a matter of days, frustrating the agency’s employees.

The documents were obtained as part of ABC10’s FIRE – POWER – MONEY investigation, which will examine how the state government under Gov. Newsom responded to PG&E’s crimes by offering the company financial protection.

SuzanneJune 24, 2021July 4, 2021Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, rooftop solar, utility-scale solar

CPUC votes in favor of utility-developed solar despite rooftop market’s opposition

Billy Ludt, SOLAR POWER WORLD

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted unanimously to approve major modifications to the “Avoided Cost Calculator” (ACC) that deeply undercuts the value of rooftop solar on Thursday. The vote came after over 7,000 public comments were submitted to the commissioners protesting the modifications and after dozens of members of the public called to testify at the commission meeting.

The ACC is a model developed by E3, a consulting firm regularly used by utilities to put out research products biased against distributed energy generation, that is also under contract with the CPUC. The ACC measures utility avoided costs from customer solar — how much utility costs go down for every solar roof built in California. It is the state’s official “value of solar” calculator.

This year E3 and CPUC included major revisions that cut the value of rooftop solar in the 2021 calculator by about one-third the value in the 2020 version. The calculator has an additional 30 GW of utility-scale solar and storage going online by 2025.

“Rooftop solar is essentially crowded out by these new resources and its value is measured to be lower,” industry advocacy group Save California Solar stated in a press release. “The idea of 30 GW of utility-scale solar and storage being installed over the next four years is wildly out of step with reality.”
Continue reading “CPUC votes in favor of utility-developed solar despite rooftop market’s opposition”

SuzanneApril 15, 2016Climate Change & EnergyCPUC, PG&E, renewable energy, Sonoma Clean Power

Op-Ed: Kryptonite needed for Community Choice super fee

Erica Etelson, CALIFORNIA CURRENT
Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission kicked off what is expected to be a long and arduous process of reforming the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment. The PCIA is an ongoing fee that California investor-owned utilities impose on departing ratepayers. That is, those of us who switch to a Community Choice energy program or procure electricity from a Direct Access retailer must pony up money every month to compensate the private utilities for losses associated with stranded contracts they’ve entered (or claim to have entered) on our behalf.
Much to the surprise of community choice customers, the PCIA seems to have achieved immortality. Whereas the operating assumption was that this charge, approved last December, would ramp down and eventually disappear as stranded contracts expire, the opposite has occurred. Pacific Gas & Electric now projects that it will levy this charge on Marin Clean Energy customers until 2043.
The California Alliance for Community Energy is calling for the sun setting of the PCIA within three years of the launch of a community choice program and for the immediate cessation of the PCIA for low-income CARE customers. In our view, no amount of technocratic tinkering under the auspices of an agency as partial to the monopoly utilities as the CPUC will render the PCIA tolerable to community choice programs and their customers.
PG&E will collect an estimated $119 million in PCIA charges from community choice and direct access customers this year, nearly twice as much as last year thanks to the CPUC’s rubber-stamping of PG&E’s calculus. For community choice customers, this amounts to a line item on their monthly bill ranging from $1.00 to $29.00. To stay competitive with the incumbent monopoly utility, community choice agencies must offset their electricity rates by roughly the amount of the PCIA.
This means that community choice programs are losing millions a year in revenue that could otherwise be used for demand reduction and the development of renewable electricity projects.
Read more at: GUEST JUICE: Kryptonite Needed for Community Choice Super Fee | CA Current

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Tag: CPUC