Solar Net Metering Under Threat as Shadowy Group Demands Intervention in State Policies

A fast-tracked FERC petition during a pandemic could “end net metering as we know it,” one legal expert warns.

A nonprofit group, New England Ratepayers Association (NERA), that’s spent years fighting clean-energy legislation in New England is pressing federal regulators to approve a legal argument that could lay the groundwork for challenges to the solar net metering policies now in place in 41 states.

Slocum said he believes that NERA’s efforts are not on behalf of the New England ratepayers it claims to represent but rather for a much smaller group of undisclosed member-donors. “We don’t know yet who they are,” Slocum said, but based on information Public Citizen has gathered, NERA “appears to be a corporate group.”