Category Archives: Solar

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2014 legislative session ends with modest progress on solar, not much else to brag about

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photo credit: Amadeus

photo credit: Amadeus

The 2014 Virginia legislative session wrapped up this weekend, sort of. Legislators still have to return to work out a budget deal, and in six weeks they will be back again to consider any bills vetoed or amended by the governor. But it’s still a good time to survey the battlefield.

Advocates of enlightened energy policy march into session every January bright-eyed and optimistic, only to become mired in the slough of despond. We watch the best bills die, while bills we thought too backward to survive the light of day flourish like an invasive species. Yet even in Virginia, the past few years have produced glimmers of hope that suggest a slowly shifting mindset among legislators.

There is, for example, a growing movement in favor of solar energy that is as strong on the Republican right as it is on the Democratic left. They haven’t quite formed a Solar Caucus yet, but you might say we are beginning to see a Solar Consensus.

Last year, after a long battle, this consensus produced a law specifically allowing some third-party-owned solar and wind projects, a critical step for nonprofits to install solar economically. This year, the legislature removed the second major hurdle to these projects, local “machinery and tools” taxes on solar equipment that would have made third-party-owned projects impossible in most Virginia jurisdictions.  Assuming the Governor signs, SB 418 and HB 1239 take effect January 1, 2015.

In a near-rerun of two years ago, Senator Chap Petersen’s SB 222, nullifying homeowner bans on solar, passed the House and Senate. Back then Governor McDonnell surprised us all by vetoing similar legislation, an action not expected from Governor McAuliffe.

This year, too, the legislature voted to establish a grant program to help fund renewable energy projects. Originally conceived as an ambitious, $100 million tax credit, the legislation was quickly scaled back to $10 million and turned into a grant, causing it to run into trouble when money couldn’t be found in the budget to fund it. (Sorry, we spent it all on coal.) So SB 653 won’t take effect until fiscal year 2015-2016, and even for that to happen the bill must be reenacted in 2015. Too many contingencies, you say? Well, yes. But passing the bill at all is a remarkable milestone for this legislature. Let’s appreciate this moment.

Solar advocates also tried for a second year to pass a bill that would require the State Corporation Commission to set up a registration system for Virginia renewable energy certificates. While the bill did not pass, the SCC has agreed to examine whether it can do the job administratively, and if legislation is required, to suggest the necessary language for the 2015 session. Again, it’s a small victory, but it reflects an increasing acceptance of solar energy as an inevitable part of our energy mix.

Okay, sure, the defeats were far more numerous. Reforms to our farcical Renewable Portfolio Standard were whittled down to why-bother status before passage (SB 498 and HB 822). Efforts to ensure that both utilities and regulators take account of the long-term costs of fossil fuels (HB 808) and their climate change impacts (HB 363) never made it out of House subcommittee. Every effort to expand residents’ access to solar energy by opening up net-metering failed (SB 350, HB 879, HB 1158, HB 906 and SB 350).

One of the net-metering champions, Senator John Edwards, put in a resolution in the final days of the session to organize a study of the value that distributed solar generation provides to utilities and the grid. The bill was introduced on March 3d and scuttled on the 6th (surely some kind of record), but advocates expect the study to go forward administratively. The study will make use of the Small Solar Working Group that formed last year, facilitated by the Department of Environmental Quality and consisting of solar advocates, utilities, local governments and others.

This value-of-solar issue is at the heart of the national battle over the expansion of distributed solar and the effort by utilities to nip it in the bud to preserve their monopolies. We expect Virginia utilities to continue their push for a very low valuation, one that would justify the barriers currently in place and add new ones like standby charges.

There were other disappointments, too, like the failure of HB 766, a bill that would have allowed localities to form service districts for energy projects, just as they do for things like trash collection, and HB 1001, which would have required electric utilities to offer on-bill financing of energy efficiency improvements.

But as I wrote in my last post, the worst news for consumers this year was the passage of SB 459, a bill allowing Dominion to write off hundreds of millions of dollars it has spent developing plans for a third nuclear reactor at Lake Anna. Last week we spoke with lawyers at the Attorney General’s office about this boondoggle, which they also oppose, and received confirmation that our reading of the bill is correct. In spite of the propaganda coming from Dominion about “no ratepayer impact,” customers of the utility will indeed pay these costs.

Worse, while we know Dominion has spent $570 million so far, the company has not disclosed how much more it intends to spend—and charge us for—in the future. The AG’s office told us Dominion has this estimate but won’t disclose it publicly, insisting the figure is confidential. Apparently it is not for the likes of us customers to know such things.

Legislators not only signed us up for this open-ended boondoggle, they specifically rejected an amendment offered by Delegate Ware that would have ensured we got our money back if Dominion doesn’t build the nuclear plant.

Given the lopsided vote tally, the Governor is not likely to veto the bill. Knowing this, the AG’s office is recommending amendments that would allow the State Corporation Commission to review the money spent (the bill as written jettisons even that minor consumer protection), but isn’t suggesting a wholesale rewrite.

Looking for a silver lining? There are two. First, Dominion may have pursued this legislation not because it wants to build North Anna 3, but because it intends to abandon the project and figures it might as well get ratepayers to cover the sunk costs while it’s still possible to pretend everything is full-speed-ahead. That would actually come as a relief; not building a financially uncompetitive nuclear plant on an earthquake fault line is way better than building it.

Second, the bitter pill of this legislation comes with a little chaser of sugar in the form of a second bill, SB 643, that provides the same treatment for the costs of developing an offshore wind farm. So far these costs have been tiny in comparison to what’s been spent on North Anna 3, but putting them into the rate base will lower the cost of building turbines offshore.

Some people have suggested it’s inconsistent to like the wind bill while hating the nuclear bill, but surely it’s only reasonable to fish a pearl out of a dung heap. There are good reasons to distinguish the bills, beyond the dangers of nuclear and the planet-friendly qualities of wind power. Most obvious is that there is real doubt whether the federal government will approve a nuclear plant with the serious siting issues confronting Lake Anna, while it has already approved the site of the offshore wind farm and given Dominion a lease.

Since my last update, a few other bills have seen action. Senator Stuart’s bill to control fracking in the Tidewater area, SB 48, died in the killing fields of House Commerce and Labor.  SJ3 and HJ16, Virginia’s first bills to deal with the effects of climate change, had to go to conference on the question of who would be part of the subcommittee studying “recurrent flooding” and how much power they would have. The compromise calls for three senators and five delegates to be part of the 11-member subcommittee. Absurdly, it gives the majority of either the senators or the delegates veto power over any recommendation. Senators Locke, McWaters and Watkins, and Delegates Stolle, Knight and Hester have already been appointed.

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Energy and climate bills get hearings in Richmond

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photo credit: Amadeus

photo credit: Amadeus

This week Virginia’s General Assembly took action on a good many of the bills we are following. For a fuller description of the bills and information on how to access the bill language, refer to my previous posts. At the end I’ve also added comments on a few additional bills you may have read about.

Solar panels on their way to being redefined as pollution control equipment. SB 418 (Hanger) passed the Senate. HB 1239 (Hugo) passed a House Finance Subcommittee Thursday and is expected to pass the full committee next week. Following the subcommittee hearing, proponents agreed to add a 20-megawatt limitation on the size of projects that can qualify for the tax-free treatment. Obviously, this project size won’t stop any projects in Virginia, but the amendment satisfied the only opposition the bill had encountered, from the Virginia Municipal League.

HOA bans on solar may soon be a thing of the past. SB 222 (Petersen) passed the Senate unanimously and now moves the House. Petersen added an amendment sought by HOA interests that would preserve solar bans if they were included in the underlying deeds, as opposed to in HOA contracts. As no one knows of any deeds prohibiting solar, this seems to have removed the only opposition to the bill without actually limiting its effectiveness.

Investment tax credit/grant facing headwinds. HB 910 (Villanueva) was heard Friday morning in a 5-member subcommittee of House Finance, which voted to table the bill.  Usually this is fatal to a bill, but advocates who were there say in this case they do expect the bill to come before the full committee on Wednesday, and the tabling is a temporary measure while $10 million is found in the budget to cover the cost. The Senate companion bill, SB 653 (Norment) remains in Senate Finance and has not been heard yet. It has been converted to a $10 million grant in accordance with the committee’s policy to reject most new tax credits but consider grants instead.

Two RPS bills rendered almost meaningless (but they pass!), one killed unceremoniously. Both SB 498 (McEachin) and HB 822 (Lopez) originally would have made modest improvements to Virginia’s sad, toothless, voluntary, RPS. Facing utility opposition, the bills were made even more modest, amended down to consist of nothing more than 5-year “banking” limits on the length of time utilities can hold onto RECs. States with real RPS laws generally have 2-year limits. Virginia currently has no limit at all, which not-just-theoretically allows utilities to stock up on enough pre-world-war II, out-of-state hydro RECs to last through 2025. So any limit at all is an improvement. And the bills seem set to pass both chambers, so you should thank Dominion for its generosity in allowing this to happen.

Meanwhile, HB 1061, Delegate Surovell’s “Made in Virginia” bill, was killed in Thursday’s House energy subcommittee.

Efforts to expand net metering fail in the House, will be heard in Senate Monday. Solar advocates and industry members successfully beat back Dominion Power’s bid to hijack the multi-family net metering provisions of HB 879 (Yost) and HB 906 (Krupicka). Alas, Dominion got its revenge Thursday in the House Commerce & Labor energy subcommittee, where the Republican majority had clearly come prepared to kill the bills. The two bills, plus Delegate Surovell’s solar gardens bill, HB 1158, were tabled with little debate, though with dissenting votes from the subcommittee’s three Democrats.

(We interrupt this blogpost for an observation about the workings of the General Assembly, which you can skip if your interest extends only to the sausage and not the sausage-making. Sitting in the audience of the House energy subcommittee on Thursday, I couldn’t help noticing the three Democrats appeared to be entirely irrelevant. They were seated way off to one side by themselves, and took no part in any of the discussions during the three hours that I was there. Even their dissenting votes were cast by silent little waves of their hands. It is tough to be a Democrat in the House.)

Meanwhile over in the Senate, SB 350 (Edwards) is scheduled to be heard in Commerce & Labor on Monday afternoon. Like the House bills, the Senate bill as drafted addresses both multi-family and municipal net metering.

House energy subcommittee kills effort to add price stability to factors to be considered in new generation. HB 808 (Lopez) was tabled Thursday in the House energy subcommittee.

And don’t go considering the environment, either. HB 363 (Kory) was also killed in the House energy subcommittee Thursday.

On-bill financing effort fails for the year. HB 1001 (Yancey) was continued to 2015 at the request of the patron, a face-saving way to withdraw your bill when you find it really isn’t ready for prime time. The bill faced utility opposition, but also had flaws that the delegate wants to work on. “Continuing” it rather than withdrawing it signals that we can expect another effort next year.

Adding energy and water conservation projects to the powers of local service districts fails. HB 766 (Bulova) was tabled in a subcommittee of the House Counties, Cities and Towns committee.

Crowdfunding bills fail. Both HB 880 and SB 351 failed in committee.

All right, time for some good news.

Bill to impose a new gas plant on AEP fails. My understanding of HB 1224 turned out to be mistaken; AEP did not seek this legislation. Instead the proponent of a new gas plant in AEP territory is the would-be developer, which resorted to legislation when its efforts to sell the utility on its proposal failed. Following a far more spirited and extensive debate than was afforded to far better bills, HB 1224 failed to get a vote to move it out of the House energy subcommittee.

Hampton Roads “recurrent flooding” study passes Senate, moving through House. SJ3 passed the Senate, while HJ16 was reported from House Rules subcommittee with an amendment shrinking the size of the commission doing the study. Still no mention of why recurrent flooding is happening.

Some protections from fracking pass Senate Ag. SB 48 (Stuart) passed the Senate Agriculture committee unanimously. The bill provides some protections for drinking water from impacts related to oil or gas operations proposed in Tidewater Virginia. I haven’t analyzed this bill; for more information, contact the Southern Environmental Law Center, which supports the bill.

Attempts to nullify federal law (said to) fail. I’m told Bob Marshall’s HB 140 and HB 155 both died in a subcommittee of House Privileges and Elections, although the website still shows them in committee. Possibly they simply failed to gain a vote, which is one way bills die.

Saner heads prevail (mostly) on anti-EPA bills. SB 615 (Carrico), the “Carbon Dioxide Emission Control Plan” designed to ensure the continuation of carbon dioxide emissions, was in trouble even before Democrats took control of the Senate. The senator changed the bill to conform it to HB 1261 (Chafin), which called for a study with the same purpose. Under pressure from the governor’s office, the bill was amended to study not just the costs to industry and ratepayers of complying with EPA regulations, but also the benefits. In Senate Ag Thursday, still facing heavy opposition to the bill from the environmental community, Carrico accepted an amendment from Chap Petersen that took out the worst remaining provision, one that would have restricted the state from proposing any standards more stringent than the EPA required. The bill then passed unanimously. Later in the afternoon, HB 1261 was conformed to the amended language of SB 615 and passed handily. The bill remains weighted towards findings favorable to the fossil fuel industry, but it is hugely better than it was.

But lest we feel progress is being made in Virginia . . .

Dominion’s rate boondoggle shows excellent prospects. Really, you have to admire the way Dominion Power pushes through bills it wants and kills the ones it doesn’t. Dominion is the single biggest contributor to Virginia’s politicians, after the Republican and Democratic parties, and the company gets its money’s worth. But it’s not just the way it kills smart energy policies that impresses.

Take HB 1059 (Kilgore), which would allow—nay, require!—Dominion to begin charging customers for $570 million it has spent towards a new nuclear plant, plus a couple million towards offshore wind, money it would ordinarily recover only when the projects are built.

Stephen Haner, a lobbyist for Newport News Shipbuilding, delivered a valiant and spirited defense of ratepayers in opposing the bill during the meeting of Thursday’s House subcommittee on energy. The real reason for the bill, he explained, is to prevent Dominion from having to give its customers hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates as a result of having earned too much money these past two years. Two years of over-earning would also lead to a reduction in rates for consumers going forward, threatening the bottom line still further. Dominion has figured out it can avoid that result by adding the money spent on nuclear to the balance sheet, thereby canceling out that pesky excess revenue and avoiding a rate decrease. For more on this, see the article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Separate bills in the Senate–one for nuclear, one for wind—also empower the boondoggle. SB 643, the offshore wind bill, remains in Senate Commerce and Labor and is not on the docket yet. But the nuclear bill, SB 459, has already passed the Senate unanimously, a testament to Dominion’s charm if there ever was one. In addition to requiring our utility monopoly to charge us for its costs in planning and developing a new nuclear facility, it states as a matter of law that this development is in the public interest. Really, guys? How do you think the public would vote?

Science “education.” Last, I bring you a dispatch from guest blogger Seth Heald, who has been following Delegate Dickie Bell’s anti-science bill. Seth attended the House education subcommittee on Thursday. He reports:

HB 207 science education bill referred to Courts Committee. The bill purports to encourage open discussion and “critical thinking” as to purported “scientific controversies.” Last week the Hampton Daily Press and Washington Post nicely described the anti-science creationist and climate-denial history of the bill’s statutory language here and here. More detail is on the National Center for Science Education website. The bill came before the House Subcommittee on Elementary and Secondary Education on January 30, where Rita Dunaway of the Virginia Christian Alliance was the sole member of the public speaking in favor of it. Ten or so people spoke in opposition to the bill, including representatives of teacher and education groups, the Sierra Club, and the Jewish Community Relations Council. At week’s end WRIC TV in Richmond reported that the bill’s sponsor, Delegate Dickie Bell, said he introduced HB 207 after being “approached by” the Virginia Christian Alliance. The subcommittee approved Delegate Peter Farrell’s motion to refer the bill to the Courts of Justice Committee to consider its constitutionality.  Delegate Bell’s hometown newspaper, The Staunton News Leader, opined in a Feb 1 editorial titled “Bell introduces an unnecessary bill” that HB 207 is “unworthy of legislative attention.” The paper noted that Bell “has been down this road before, sponsoring other controversial bills drafted by ultraconservatives.”

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Dominion’s plan to hijack community net metering

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Want to quadruple the potential market for solar in Virginia? The answer is to open up the benefits of solar ownership to renters, people with shaded roofs, and others who can’t install solar panels on their own property. Several legislators have been working with the solar industry to take a step in that direction this year. Senator Edwards (SB 350) and Delegates Krupicka (HB 906) and Yost (HB 879) introduced bills that would allow residents of multi-family housing communities like condominiums to band together to purchase a solar system, with all the participants able to claim a credit on their utility bills for their share of the energy generated.

Virginia’s utilities don’t want to see this happen. When people install solar systems, they buy less power from their utility, which otherwise has a monopoly on the generation and sale of electricity.

Now Dominion Virginia Power thinks it has figured out a way to hijack the bills. It proposes to scrap the community net metering language that’s in there now and substitute language that would give the utility the exclusive right to build and own community systems and sell the power to the customers.

Is this still progress? Regrettably, no, and for three reasons:

monopolistIt’s anticompetitive and anti-free market. With a monopoly on the systems, Dominion will also control price. Customers won’t be able to go elsewhere to get a better deal. If Dominion sets the price unacceptably high or imposes terms that turn off customers, we may see no community systems installed at all.

The original proposal for multi-family net metering provides customer choice and allows market forces to determine prices. It’s a better deal for customers.

Virginia solar companies will be left out in the cold. Virginia solar companies tell me the utility hired out-of-state companies for the few solar projects it has installed so far under its Solar Partnership Program. (This is hard to verify because Dominion won’t share the information.)

The original bill language would create new opportunities for Virginia solar companies. It’s a better deal for business.

The changes suggested by Dominion would allow it to engage in self-dealing at the expense of Green Power Program customers. Dominion could set the price of solar at whatever it wants, but that wouldn’t be its only income stream. It would also generate renewable energy certificates (RECs), which it would own and could sell for additional revenue. (The customers would just be buying electricity from Dominion, not the “attributes” that allow them to say they are using solar energy. For that, they would have to also buy the RECs.)

Dominion could sell these RECs to a utility in a state like Pennsylvania, which has a mandatory renewable portfolio system that creates a market for RECs. But that market has been pretty weak lately. So more likely, Dominion’s plan is to sell the RECs to the chumps over at the voluntary Green Power Program, at a higher-than-market price. After all, Dominion operates the Green Power Program, and the State Corporation Commission has already blessed this self-dealing once.

By contrast, under the original bill language, the customers would be the owners of their solar system and thus the owners of the RECs. They could sell the RECs to reduce their costs, or retire (keep) them so they are truly running their homes on solar power.

To protect both the system owners and the Green Power customers, any bill allowing Dominion to own a community solar system would have to require the RECs to be applied to the utility’s goals under Virginia’s RPS, and not sold on the voluntary market. Yet I predict this protection would provoke howls of protest from Dominion.

Is there anything to be done? Well, legislators shouldn’t let Dominion hijack community net metering. But that doesn’t mean there’s no role in this market for the utility, if it’s willing to play fair. That means competing with Virginia solar companies, not shutting them out.

Heck, customers have been clamoring for years for Dominion to sell us solar power. It could do that so easily by building a utility-scale project on a brownfield somewhere and offering customers a straightforward solar tariff. When we see that happen, we will know the company is serious about solar. Its attempt to hijack these net metering bills just proves it’s not.

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More bills to watch

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photo credit: Amadeus

photo credit: Amadeus

The bills keep coming. Again, this is hardly a comprehensive list, just the ones I’ve had a chance to think about. By the way, renewable energy fans may want to head to Richmond on January 30, when many of the House bills will be taken up in a long afternoon session of the House subcommittee on energy. Members of the public are usually permitted to testify.

Another renewable energy tax credit bill. Senator Norment has now filed SB 653, a companion bill to HB 910. This caps the overall total of tax credits that can be claimed at $10 million annually. As previously noted, it’s encouraging to have powerful Republicans supporting this bill. One complication, however, is that Senate Finance, which will hear Norment’s bill, has adopted a policy that makes it very difficult to pass new tax credit legislation, preferring grants instead. Tax breaks for renewable energy have proven extremely effective in other states and at the federal level in building the industry and creating jobs, but I wouldn’t object to grants. With Norment one of the leading senators on the Finance committee, we will hope he navigates this wisely.

Crowdfunding. Currently securities laws prevent private companies from accepting investments from people who are not “accredited” investors, otherwise known as rich folks. The purpose is to protect unsophisticated investors from hucksters, but it has the effect of preventing companies from engaging in creative crowdsourced financing for things like solar projects. An “invest in Virginia” bill, HB 880 (Yost) and SB 351 (Edwards), would loosen the rules for Virginia citizens investing in Virginia companies.

Ending HOA bans on solar. Since 2008, homeowner associations haven’t been able to impose new bans on solar panels, though they can impose restrictions on size and placement. However, HOA rules that were adopted prior to 2008 can still include total bans. SB 222 (Petersen) would nullify these bans. A similar bill passed the General Assembly two years ago, only to be vetoed by Governor McDonnell in the belief that it interfered with existing contracts. But many other states have overridden HOA solar bans as a matter of public policy; Virginia should do likewise. So far, Senate Commerce and Labor agrees, as the bill was passed out of committee today on a unanimous vote. (One caveat: what passed was a substitute, and I haven’t seen the changed language.)

Solar gardens. HB 1158 (Surovell) would allow “virtual” net metering of solar energy, making it possible for someone to subscribe to part of the output of a solar project and get credit on their utility bill for that amount. This approach would support huge growth in the solar market and has tremendous grassroots appeal; not surprisingly, the utilities are completely opposed to it.

Advantaging natural gas. Appalachian Power seems to want to build a new natural gas plant in Virginia at customer expense, and doesn’t want the State Corporation Commission to scrutinize the plan too carefully. HB 1224 (O’Quinn) makes an end run around the SCC’s standard operating procedures by declaring such a plant in the public interest and telling the SCC to “liberally construe” the provisions of the law to approve it. You have to wonder: if a natural gas plant is such a great idea, why does the SCC have to be coerced into approving it? And why shouldn’t a wind farm get the same treatment?

Fracking public lands. HB 915 provides that no permit or lease for oil and gas exploration or drilling on public lands can prohibit the use of fracturing. Really? Why would you prevent a state agency and the Governor from determining the scope of a permit? If the agencies are doing their job protecting public lands (I know, a big if), surely this prohibition ought to make it less likely, not more likely, that permits would be issued. That makes this bill a bad idea no matter whose side you’re on.

Attempts to nullify federal law. Two bills from Bob Marshall, HB 140 (multi-state coal compact) and HB 155 (interstate offshore energy compact) would replace existing federal laws and regulations with state control. Only the first bill is blatantly unconstitutional. The second, an attempt to supplant federal authority over waters beyond three miles out from shore, wouldn’t take effect without “consent” of Congress, so it might be merely a total waste of everyone’s time and an affront to our good sense. Delegate Marshall evidently regards the Constitution as a mistake. The rest of us can only be embarrassed for his constituents.

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Energy bills to watch in 2014

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photo credit: Amadeust

photo credit: Amadeust

Every year, hundreds of energy bills are fed into Virginia’s sausage-making machine, but little of interest to clean energy advocates makes it out the other end. Utilities and coal companies largely control the outcome, thanks to their generosity in funding legislators’ campaigns, and they do not share our desire for change.

Yet the start of each new Session, like the new year itself, always produces hope and excitement about the possibilities at hand. 2014 is no exception. There are a lot of bills here worth watching, and even rooting for. The list below is not comprehensive, and new bills keep coming in while existing ones get amended faster than I can keep up with, so take this summary only for what it’s worth today.

One point worth noting is that many of the most promising bills come from Republicans. Renewable energy and energy efficiency, once identified with progressives, seem to have gone mainstream in Virginia. Well, why not? In addition to lowering our carbon footprint and helping residents save money, they make business sense and create jobs.

How to look up a bill: The links in this article will take you to the summary page for a bill on the website of Virginia’s Legislative Information Service. The bill summary is not guaranteed accurate and does not change even if the bill language changes substantially, so always follow the links to the latest version of the bill to read the text. The summary page also shows what committee the bill has been assigned to; following the links will show you who is on the committee, when it meets, and what other bills have been assigned.

Investment tax credit. The bill with the potential to do most for renewable energy in Virginia is HB 910 (Villanueva), which would provide tax credits for renewable energy projects. The top priority this year for the solar industry, the bill would go a long way towards helping renewable energy compete in a state that still shells out millions of dollars every year in coal subsidies. A companion bill from a Senate Republican is also expected but has not been filed as of the time of this posting. The combination would be a powerful statement of support from a party that has not always been a friend to renewable energy.

In a bid to create broad support, HB 910 is not limited to emission-free projects like wind and solar. It would be hugely unfortunate if a few large biomass projects were to gobble up the credits, so we hope the patrons will commit to making any necessary fixes in future years if that happens.

Expanding net metering. Three-quarters of utility customers can’t take advantage of solar energy because their property isn’t suitable for solar panels. HB 879 (Yost), HB 906 (Krupicka) and SB 350 (Edwards) would allow customers in multifamily housing to participate in shared renewable energy systems, a limited form of community net metering. The bills would also allow something called “municipal net metering,” under which local governments could build a single renewable energy facility and attribute the energy from it to multiple meters on property owned by the locality. In addition to solar, these projects could include wind, landfill gas or gas from aerobic or anaerobic digesters.

Although these three bills look to be the same right now, I’m told they may be changed so that one House bill deals with multifamily housing and the other with municipal net metering.

Defining solar panels as pollution control equipment. SB 418 (Hangar) is primarily a useful workaround to address a tax problem that is holding back solar power purchase agreements. Odd as this sounds, currently third-party-owned solar systems are subject to local tax as manufacturing equipment. In many jurisdictions where solar PPAs have the most potential to help churches, schools, and other non-profits go solar, the tax is so high as to make the projects impossible to finance. Many localities want to help solar but are paralyzed by fear of opening a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences. To solve the problem, SB 418 would extend to solar panels a tax exemption currently available to landfill gas projects and wood mulching equipment. Beyond helping PPAs, the legislation would also exempt solar equipment from state sales tax, which would make solar systems more affordable to all solar customers.

RPS bills. Several bills seek to improve Virginia’s pathetic voluntary renewable portfolio standard law by restricting the kinds of energy or credits that can be used to meet it. None of them would make the RPS mandatory, so they can’t deliver the kind of robust market in renewable energy credits (RECs) that supports the wind and solar industries in other states. For the most part, they aim for small fixes that could cue up stronger bills in future years, and reduce the consumer rip-off that characterizes the current RPS.

Of these, HB 1061 (Surovell) is the solar industry favorite. It would create the beginnings of a solar REC market here even within the framework of the voluntary RPS. This “Made in Virginia” bill would require Dominion Virginia Power to meet a portion of its voluntary target with renewable energy certificates representing distributed generation produced in Virginia, or by contributions to the state’s voluntary solar resource fund, which provides loans for solar projects. The State Corporation Commission would be tasked with the job of creating a system for registering and trading Virginia-based renewable energy certificates (RECs).

HB 881 (Yost) similarly sets up a system of renewable energy certificate registration and tracking at the SCC. It also eliminates the double and triple credits that the RPS currently gives to certain types of energy, only grandfathering in some wind RECs that Appalachian Power had already contracted for.

SB 498 (McEachin) makes a number of changes to the voluntary RPS to put it on a stronger footing going forward. It limits a utility’s ability to satisfy the goals with purchases of low-quality RECs like those from old hydroelectric dams and landfill gas, and ensures that most future purchases of energy and RECs will represent high-quality resources like wind and solar. It does not, however, include a carve-out for Virginia distributed generation. A similar bill last year received the blessing of Dominion but died in the face of opposition from the Virginia Alternative and Renewable Energy Association, arguing for the interests of the producers of crappy RECs.

Delegate Alfonso Lopez spent much time and effort over the past year trying to broker a deal between the utilities, environmental groups and renewable energy companies to produce a modest consensus bill. The result, HB 822, would seem to be a testament to how little consensus there is; it includes only a two-year limit on banking RECs for use in future years and the elimination of double credit for energy from animal waste. (I’m guessing the animal waste people weren’t at the table.) It also strengthens existing wording about the RPS serving the public interest, which may help utilities get SCC approval for expenditures to meet the targets.

On-bill financing for energy efficiency. Advocates of clean energy say the best way to get homeowners and businesses to weatherize buildings and install efficiency upgrades is to let customers pay the cost through their utility bills, often out of the energy savings they reap.  HB 1001 (Yancey) would require electric utilities to offer on-bill financing for energy efficiency measures. The bill would be stronger if it included gas utilities and did not insist on a five-year payback period, which is too short a time for many weatherization measures, but it’s still a great start.

Service districts. HB 766 (Bulova) adds energy and water conservation management services to the list of items that can be owned and maintained by local service districts. This adds a new tool for local governments to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, allowing payments to be made via local property tax bills.

Virginia Commission on Energy and the Environment. The Virginia Energy Plan is due to be updated in 2014, and boy, does it need it. Anyone who has ever tried to make sense of the plan has probably given it up as a hopeless hodgepodge of contradictory ideas. Anything you like, it’s in there. Anything you don’t like is in there, too, and none of it means anything because the provisions for the most part have no teeth. HB 818 (Lopez) hopes to turn this mishmash into a coherent plan for Virginia’s energy future by creating a new legislative commission to perform a comprehensive review of the energy landscape.

Price stability. HB 808 (Lopez) adds consideration of long-term price stability to the factors that utilities and the State Corporation Commission must look at when evaluating a proposed new electric generating facility. This would help to level the field for renewable energy, since fuel prices for fossil fuels are highly volatile and largely unpredictable over the full 30-year design life of a facility, whereas wind and solar are famously price stable.

Consideration of the environment. In a case decided last summer (PUE-2012-00128), the State Corporation Commission essentially interpreted the Virginia code to eliminate its own role in protecting the environment when it approves electric generating facilities. HB 363 (Kory) beefs up the code just enough to make it clear the SCC still has a job to do even when state agencies have issued all the relevant permits. The bill requires the SCC to consider matters not covered by permits, such as carbon emissions and the overall effect of electric generation facilities on the health and welfare of residents.

Dealing with climate change. Hampton Roads is facing a crisis as sea level rise combines with sinking land to swamp low-lying coastal areas with every major storm, a problem predicted to get steadily worse over the course of the century. SJ 3 (Locke) and HJ 16 (Stolle) establish a Recurrent Flooding Planning Committee to examine ways to respond. It’s a good bill, but really, it’s weird to address recurrent flooding with no mention of what’s causing it. Dealing with recurrent flooding in Hampton Roads without talking about climate change is like addressing the obesity epidemic without mentioning diet and exercise. Why kid ourselves?

Carbon Dioxide Emission Control Plan. Speaking of kidding ourselves, SB 615 (Carrico) would establish a commission with the job of limiting carbon emissions without limiting the sources of those emissions. Indeed, the bill would be more accurately titled the Carbon Pollution Continuance Plan. It’s too bad to see legislators fighting to keep coal plants running full-tilt when we have better, cleaner, and cheaper options—ones that don’t put us on a course to make “recurrent flooding” a daily occurrence.

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Why standby charges are bogus

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Utilities want solar owners to pay for grid access. Photo credit: NREL.

Utilities want solar owners to pay for grid access. Photo credit: NREL.

Rooftop solar energy makes up a tiny fraction of the total electricity produced in America, but already utilities worry about a day when large numbers of their customers won’t need them any more. As renewable energy costs continue to tumble and the technology of battery storage improves, many residents and businesses may abandon their power utility to go it alone or form microgrids within their communities to control their own power.

Some utilities understand that this is the future and are looking for ways to turn these trends to their advantage. Others are doing everything they can to protect their turf, and progress (and the environment) be damned. They figure they can’t wind up on the wrong side of history if they stop history from happening.

Hence the attempt to throttle solar while it’s still little. Caps on system sizes, caps on total amounts of distributed generation, prohibitions against third-party power purchase agreements, restrictions on net metering: all of these are efforts to keep solar too small to matter, and too small to achieve the economies of scale that could lead to an upending of the central utility model.

The latest effort to squelch solar is through standby charges: fees imposed on net metering customers that compensate the utility for “standing by,” ready to sell grid-produced energy at night and on cloudy days. In 2012 in Virginia, Dominion Virginia Power won the right to charge customers with large residential systems (10-20 kilowatts) up to $60 per month—a charge that destroyed this market segment. This summer Dominion pressed its advantage, indicating in a submission to regulators that it will likely seek more standby charges on a broader class of solar customers.

Note that Virginia has less than 15 megawatts (MW) of solar installed across the state. Dominion Power alone has around 19,000 MW of coal, gas and nuclear. So the notion that net metering by solar customers has any perceptible effect on the grid or other customers is silly. The point of Dominion’s stand-by charges is to stifle the solar market, not cover costs.

This same debate played out this year in Arizona, which saw its solar industry install 719 MW in 2012—still a tiny percentage of that state’s total energy supply, but one that is growing fast enough to warrant the discussion. Last week the public utilities commission agreed to allow Arizona Public Service Company (APS) to charge its residential solar customers an average of $5 per month. The utility treated the ruling as a win, and indeed the charges might eventually add up to enough to cover APS’s attorney fees in the case. That’s more than can be said about Dominion’s standby charges.

Meanwhile the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has gotten into the act, drafting a model resolution insisting that net metering customers should have to pay their “fair share” of utility costs through measures like standby charges. Not incidentally, Dominion Power is a member of ALEC and sits on the energy and environment task force next to the fossil fuel shills from Heartland Institute.

But the “fair share” argument is bogus. Utilities weren’t set up to ensure Americans all paid their “fair share” of the costs of the electric grid. If they were, there would still be mountain communities without power today. Residents of cities and towns subsidized the cost of running power lines to far-flung rural homes inhabited by people who could never have afforded their “fair share” of this infrastructure.

Even today, city dwellers pay more than their “fair share” of transmission costs to subsidize people like me who live in leafy, sprawling suburbs and less-populated parts of the state. Anybody voting for an ALEC-style resolution about “fair shares” had better be willing to stick it to suburban and rural consumers.

There are other ways electricity rates aren’t “fair.” Dominion’s residential rates are structured so people who use less electricity pay more per kilowatt hour than those who use more—again, making it roughly a transfer of wealth from urban apartment dwellers to those with larger or less efficient homes elsewhere. The utility’s goal is to encourage the use of electricity, and compete more effectively with the gas company for heating. People paying their “fair share” just doesn’t enter into it.

And while we’re at it, if we were serious about subsidies we’d slap a tax on electricity made from fossil fuels to reflect the costs they impose on society. Asthma, heart disease, mercury poisoning, groundwater contamination, and of course, the dumping of carbon into the atmosphere—these are all costs of fossil fuel that ought to be included in power bills to make sure everyone is paying their “fair share.” People who install solar panels deserve a thank-you for their service to society, not standby charges based on bogus “fair share” claims.

The argument for standby charges is, pure and simple, an attempt by entrenched monopolies to block competition. The “fair share” argument is a red herring from utilities that don’t want a fair fight. And with good reason: they’re going to lose.