California Public Utilities Commission exempts all solar energy from exit fees

Today the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-2 to defeat the solar exit fees and support President Peevey’s proposal to exempt all solar energy from these fees as well as 3000 megawatts of distributed generation capacity.

This is a tremendous victory which clears the way for the continued rapid growth of solar energy in California and beyond. Thank you to those of you who responded by emailing your views to the PUC. The 7000 emails that were sent in to the PUC on behalf of protecting solar energy were critical to this success.

Special thanks to Greenpeace, Environment California, Powershift, CC Energy, Next Generation, California Solar Center, Solar Buzz, the Solar Energy Industry Association, PV Now, Moveon.org and our other partners in this effort.

With policy makers, we should work just as hard to reward good decisions as to discourage bad ones. Please take a moment to email the Commissioners and thank them for encouraging the growth of solar energy by exempting solar from exit fees.

Emails can be sent to [email protected]

THE GOOD NEWS

Last week, we spent three days at a solar energy technology conference in Denver sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories. The good news from all the solar manufacturers and researchers is that the evidence suggests that the price of solar energy will continue to fall rapidly in the coming years as the industry develops economies of scale in manufacturing and solar efficiencies improve.

THE BAD NEWS

The United States remains woefully behind where we should be. This year, the federal government will spend just $64 million on solar energy research and development. By comparison, Japan will spend $600 million. Why is a country with just 65% of the annual sunlight and a third of the US population spending ten times as much money?

The Japanese are reaping the benefits – two of the three largest solar manufacturers in the world are Japanese. We congratulate Japan for this achievement. Clearly, the United States can do much better.

Onwards,

David Hochschild, Adam Browning and Charlene Garland
The Vote Solar Initiative