Grassroots rally highlighted investor-owned utility efforts to increase profits by stopping the growth of solar in working- and middle-class neighborhoods.

Sacramento, CA — Today, hundreds of solar consumers including schools and renters, small businesses, community organizers, and environmental organizations gathered on the grounds and streets around the California Capitol building wearing masks and waiving “No on AB 1139” signs in protest of a bill that would make rooftop solar more expensive in the state, harming consumers. Meanwhile, encircling the Capitol grounds, solar work trucks blew their horns to draw attention to the small solar contracting businesses that would be harmed by the bill.

Assembly Bill 1139, by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, currently under consideration in the state legislature, pushes the profitable investor-owned utility plan to add new fees on all rooftop solar consumers, including schools, non-profit affordable housing, and local governments, and reduce the credit they receive for excess energy sent back to the grid. AB 1139 also threatens to change the rules on existing solar users after the state encouraged their rooftop solar investment. This bill would harm all solar users, particularly 150,000 existing low-income solar homeowners and an estimated 300,000 renters at affordable housing projects with solar. At the same time, utilities are pushing the CA Public Utilities Commission to add similar fees and reduce credits for solar consumers. 

By making solar more expensive for everyone and halting critical clean energy expansion, the utility profit grab is out of step with California’s long-standing environmental and energy goals and especially out of place given the repeated wildfires and grid outage events. It would take California backwards to a time when solar was only affordable for the wealthy, and reverse the rapid growth of solar currently happening in middle and working class neighborhoods across the state. 

“My priority is energy democracy in communities of concern but when I flew up to Sacramento yesterday I saw solar roofs everywhere- on schools, churches, farms - thousands of people who made significant investments in clean energy who will face a tsunami of harm from AB 1139,” said Eddie Price of San Diego Urban Sustainability Coalition. 

The motive is profits. PG&E and other big utilities want to change the rules in their favor so they can profit off the energy created by solar consumers and eliminate a growing competitor in the energy market. 

“The big utilities cannot stand the fact that they do not profit when consumers put solar on their roof,” says Dave Rosenfeld, executive director of the Solar Rights Alliance. “They want to change net metering rules in their favor and add new fees to make solar more expensive, all so they can double-dip and make money off of energy they do not even produce. This threatens to harm early adopters of clean energy and put solar out of reach for middle and working class families going forward.”

Big utilities want their profit grab to stay under the radar. But, consumers are fighting back. Today, solar consumers gathered together for a lively event, including a Capitol rally with over 150 socially distanced participants, a loud solar work truck caravan around the Capitol grounds, oversized banners and a 30 foot tall inflatable “utility profit grab monopoly man”.  

"The real benefit to all ratepayers is not having to build 25 large natural gas power plants because of the 10 gigawatts produced by rooftop solar,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Kate Harrison. “Early adoption of rooftop solar also brought down the cost of solar for everyone and helped make this industry a reality. Equity for ratepayers is critical; that equity can be achieved by the utilities and the state by expanding eligibility programs for low-income customers not by making solar more expensive."

“AB 1139 would effectively end school solar energy projects that allow schools to continue to educate students through disruptions caused by rolling blackouts and public safety power shutoffs,” said Nancy Chaires Espinoza of Schools Energy Coalition. “These projects are also essential to our ability to continue to operate the meal programs on which our most vulnerable children rely.”

"California is in a drought emergency and wildfires are already burning in Los Angeles,” warned Laura Deehan, state director of Environment California. “It couldn’t be more clear: The devastating effects of global warming are here now. To face down this danger, we have to get to 100% renewable energy as fast as possible, and rooftop solar is one of the best tools to get us there. With so much at stake, AB 1139 is the wrong answer. It would reverse California's momentum as a leader in solving global warming at the worst possible time." 

Additional solar consumers and advocates shared how rooftop solar makes clean energy accessible and react to big utilities’ profit grab: 

"At a time when many of California's 18 million tenants are just fighting to remain housed, investor-owned utilities are trying to drive up their rates if their building includes rooftop solar," said Monica Madrid, Board Member of the California Democratic Party Renters Council. "AB 1139 is a bad deal for all Californians - and especially for renters." 

"In my working class Sacramento neighborhood, we empower our hard working neighbors to have more control over their destiny, to create self-sufficiency, and pass it on to future generations," said Fatima Malik of the Del Paso Heights Growers' Alliance, "The government's job is to help foster more community self-reliance, not carry out the monopoly utilities' bidding and crush community empowerment solutions like rooftop solar. Lawmakers that truly care about equity for working people must defeat AB 1139."

“Small solar businesses are struggling through the Covid-19 pandemic and this bill would cause further hardship leading to massive layoffs and business shutdowns,” said Brad Heavner, policy director of the California Solar & Storage Association. “Over 65,000  jobs are threatened so that PG&E can make more money while causing more wildfires and blackouts.”  

Today’s event was hosted by the Solar Rights Alliance and the California Solar & Storage Association, as part of the Save California Solar coalition. For more information about the fight to save rooftop solar in California click here. For more information on AB 1139 click here. A recording from today’s live-streamed event is available at CALSSA’s Facebook page.

About the Solar Rights Alliance 
Solar Rights Alliance is the nonprofit association of California solar users. We believe everyone has the right to make energy from the sun without unreasonable interference by the utilities. We keep track of what politicians, regulators and utilities are up to, and alert the public when there is a threat to rooftop solar, or an opportunity to help more Californians access rooftop solar. Learn more at www.solarrights.org.

About CALSSA 
The California Solar & Storage Association (CALSSA) has advanced the common interest of the solar and storage industry for over 40 years, making California the most robust market in the U.S. The association is the state’s largest clean energy business group with over 600 member companies, primarily small businesses based in communities throughout the state, that manufacture, design, install, finance and provide other resources to the growing local solar and storage market in California. Learn more at calssa.org.