Posted on May 30, 2018 by Kenneth Berlin
A clean energy revolution is underway in this country, buoyed by market forces making renewable energy sources increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal and natural gas in much of the country, and their costs will continue to drop. This stunning decrease in the price of wind and solar generation has created a new paradigm in the energy industry.
Similarly, the cost of energy storage is falling fast, and batteries will soon eliminate – at fully competitive prices – the intermittency issues around wind and solar. Meanwhile, electric vehicles are projected to become both cheaper to purchase and cheaper to runthan gasoline cars by 2025.
Despite these extremely favorable economic trends, legal and regulatory barriers that protect fossil fuels continue to slow the transition to a clean energy economy. Removing these obstacles is a critical step toward securing a clean, safe and prosperous future.
At the outset, new clean energy projects face potential challenges around siting and transmission, including permitting restrictions, utilities’ unwillingness to enter into the necessary contracts, and a lack of support from public officials.
Once a project has cleared those hurdles, additional legal, regulatory and policy barriers may remain. Some of the primary impediments include:
o Non-existing, limited, or even preventative legal frameworks for independent power producers – like homeowners – to sell energy to utilities or third parties. These power purchase agreements are currently allowed in only 26 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
o Utility interconnection, or connection of home or commercial renewable energy systems to the regional grid, that may be limited or severely restricted by regulation or laws.
o Lack of or insufficiently priced net metering policies that make renewable investments much less attractive. In 2016, for example, Nevada’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) sought to triple fees for solar customers while at the same time reducing credit for net excess generation by approximately three-quarters. After pushback from solar manufacturers and installers, as well as the prospect of hundreds of solar jobs leaving the state, the PUC approved new rules, partially restoring the net metering rate.
o Tariffs on components of renewable energy systems like those recently announced by the Trump Administration on solar panel imports.
These obstacles don’t even touch on the fact that fossil fuel companies are not held financially responsible for the global warming pollution they dump into our shared atmosphere, leaving everyday Americans to foot the bill for these extraordinary health and economic costs. They also don’t factor in the uneven playing field that well-funded lobbyists tilt in favor of the fossil fuel industry, including enormous government subsidies.
The good news is that many individuals and organizations are working to build the political support needed to remove these barriers, including my organization, The Climate Reality Project, and our Founder and Chairman, former US Vice President Al Gore.
With enough voices working together across many sectors, we can eliminate these challenges and allow market forces and popular support to usher in a new clean energy economy.