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It’s time for rooftop solar to compete with other renewables

Nature Energy volume 7, page 298 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 12 May 2022

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Money spent on Californian rooftop solar subsidies can be much better spent supporting more cost-efficient emission reduction measures, argues Severin Borenstein.

Those subsidies are the issue in California’s current NEM proceeding at the California Public Utilities Commission. California residential customers pay among the highest retail electricity rates in the country, about twice the price in any other western state. Over half of California rates go to paying for fixed costs, including system costs and state programs like grid infrastructure and hardening in response to climate change, growing costs of vegetation management, early investments in new renewable energy sources, and subsidies for low income customers, rooftop solar, and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. These costs don’t decline when a solar customer buys less electricity from the grid or gets paid the retail rate for injecting power into the grid.

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  1. University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Severin Borenstein

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  1. Severin Borenstein
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Correspondence to Severin Borenstein.

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Severin Borenstein is on the Board of Governors for the California Independent System Operator.

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Borenstein, S. It’s time for rooftop solar to compete with other renewables. Nat Energy 7, 298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01015-8

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