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We publicly changed our operations from a social enterprise to Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation, a registered 501(c)(3), which is allowing us to broaden our impact!
Our climate policy efforts helped:
Push for a solar-friendly net metering agreement
Provide feedback for the City of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan update and the County of San Diego’s Regional Decarbonization Framework
Launch the Fossil Fuel Free Pledge!
Provide input for San Diego County’s District 3 Environmental Roundtable
The programs and projects we manage continued to make a positive impact in communities across the country:
We helped over 20 nonprofit organizations go solar this year through our Solar Moonshot Program and passed the $1,000,000 per year fundraising goal
We managed $8,387,418.01 in recoverable grants, which helped nonprofits nationwide afford the switch to clean energy and energy storage
We continued managing two e-bike pilot programs and assisted our client BQuest Foundation in supporting an e-bike program for De Anza College in Cupertino, California
We oversaw the installations of an EV charging station at a San Diego-based nonprofits serving communities of concern with two more underway
Four more California Electric Vehicle Incentive Project (CALeVIP) rebates that we had applied for were given the green light to proceed, totalling $52,000
In Q1, we accepted two awards - the first was the San Diego Green Building Council’s Sustainable Organization award, and the second was for our founder and executive director, Tara Hammond, who was one of the San Diego State University Alumni’s Rising Aztec winners
Our team proudly served in leadership roles on a number of boards and committees including:
California Alliance for Community Energy (Steering Committee)
GRID Alternatives (San Diego Board of Directors)
SanDiego350 (SouthBay Eco Justice team)
San Diego Green New Deal Alliance (Steering Committee)
San Diego Community Power (Community Advisory Committee and Executive Ad Hoc Committee)
Climate Defenders Action Fund (Board of Directors)
San Diego Climate Hub (Hub Manager)
As 2022 comes to a close, we wanted to reflect on all we have accomplished this year as well as share what we have in store for 2023. From fighting for the equitable and sustainable expansion of the rooftop solar industry to successfully advocating for comprehensive and legally-binding climate action plans to managing clean energy initiatives, this year has been packed with local, statewide and national climate action alongside many amazing partners. Thank you for supporting our work!
Net Energy Metering
After a two and a half year battle, the California Public Utilities Commission made a final decision on the future of rooftop solar and approved a new net energy metering tariff. Unfortunately, the decision benefits the investor-owned utilities and will slow California’s advancement towards 100 percent clean energy, using fossil fuels for a longer duration, which accelerates the climate crisis and worsens climate injustices. The tariff makes drastic cuts to the credits customers receive for sharing excess energy with neighbors and makes solar more expensive for everyone, including low-income Californians who are currently paying a disproportionate amount of income towards skyrocketing energy costs.
Although we are outraged that the commission has sided with the investor-owned utilities and has disregarded the thousands of letters and public comments from climate organizations, nonprofits, schools, cities, elected officials and climate justice organizations urging them to keep rooftop solar growing, we want to take a step back celebrate what our coalition was able to accomplish throughout the course of the proceeding.
In mid-2020 we were asked by the Solar Rights Alliance to gather San Diego climate leaders to help build a statewide coalition, which became the Save CA Solar coalition, and we are so proud of the coalition’s work. San Diego was a leader in addressing this issue with the most public comments in opposition coming directly from San Diegans. This is undoubtedly due to the amount of work local organizations poured into organizing public comments, giving presentations, meetings with elected officials, organizing rallies and speaking with the media (read more about one of our successful solar rallies here). Although this decision is far from a win, we were able to:
Stop the solar tax
Prevent changes to existing customers
Defeat Assembly Bill 1139, the “anti-solar bill”
Build a diverse statewide coalition of over 600
For now, we will celebrate what we were able to change but this decision serves as a reminder that there is still a lot of work to do to dismantle the fossil fuel industry's influence on politics and to achieve true energy and climate justice. For more background on this topic, check out www.HelpCleanEnergy.org.
Local Policy Highlights
While our team fought endlessly for good policy change at the statewide level, we also helped effectively bring some big changes at our local level in 2022. The City of San Diego passed a comprehensive Climate Action Plan update, which included bold targets for the region to meet in the coming years. More importantly, it came with a promise of an implementation plan and funding plan to be released in early 2023, something the last Climate Action Plan was lacking and resulted in little to no progress on the plan.
At the San Diego County level we helped provide important feedback for the Regional Decarbonization Framework. While the final plan has not been approved, local climate organizations are committed to ensuring this framework is not only comprehensive but provides a path for implementation and includes how we will transition workers from our current gas infrastructure as we decarbonize. We were also invited and participated in the San Diego County District 3 Environmental Roundtable strategy meetings.
Finally, our team was proud to serve as technical stakeholders to help with the development of a number of local programs and climate boards, most notably, the development of the City of San Diego’s new Climate Advisory Boards, which will advise the city on numerous issues ranging from energy and land conservation to building electrification and stormwater issues.
Fossil Fuel Free Pledge
The Fossil Fuel Free Pledge, which was launched by SanDiego350, Surfrider San Diego, BikeSD, San Diego Coastkeeper and Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation, disrupts the fossil fuel industry’s anti-climate agenda by celebrating and providing transparency regarding where nonprofit organizations, elected officials and candidates receive funding. Those who take the pledge commit to not accepting money from fossil fuel companies, demonstrating dedication and seriousness to combatting the climate crisis, dismantling the local fossil fuel industry’s influence and prioritizing a healthy, equitable, ethical, just transition and sustainable world.
Since the pledge’s soft launch during Earth month, there have been nearly 35 pledgees and we plan to expand the pledge categories in the coming months! To read more about the August launch event, click here, and to take the pledge, please fill out an application on the campaign website: www.fossilfuelfreepledge.org.
Solar Moonshot Program
Our Solar Moonshot Program continues to effectively make positive change by assisting nonprofit organizations across the country in adopting clean energy. To date, the Solar Moonshot Program has secured $3,150,000, which so far has assisted over 100 nonprofits, deploying 5,458kW of solar and offsetting 136,049 metric tons of carbon dioxide. These projects are reducing emissions, offering solar and energy storage education to the community, supporting green jobs and allowing nonprofits to save money on utility bills that are reinvested into their missions.
In recent months we have supported over 20 projects across nine states. The projects range from educational facilities to food pantries, affordable housing and more. Collectively, these projects equate to 853.25kW of solar power, have supported countless green jobs and will reduce the use of dirty energy contributing to climate racism and the climate crisis for decades to come.
There are always more solar projects to fund. If you know of a foundation, philanthropist or company interested in supporting the Solar Moonshot Program, further expanding our impact, please reach out to maya@hammondclimatesolutions.com.
New Electric Bike Program
We are excited to be taking part in our fourth electric bike (e-bike) program. This program, in partnership with De Anza College, Cupertino Rotary and BQuest Foundation, will benefit low-income students at De Anza College. The e-bike loaner program will allow students to get to and from the college more easily and provide them with a reliable form of transportation while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint. The college will be launching this loaner program with 23 e-bikes and we look forward to seeing how the student body benefits as well as how many vehicle miles are offset by the e-bikes!
Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
While there are many public funds available for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the process of applying for them and ultimately securing them can be daunting and burdensome for nonprofit organizations with little resources.
We have helped the BQuest Foundation secure rebates from the California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program (CALeVIP), which when paired with the foundation's grants, brings EV charging stations to nonprofit organizations serving communities at zero cost to the nonprofit.
Our efforts this year have helped secure $42,000 in rebates for nonprofits serving communities of concern across the region and EV charging installations for three nonprofits have been installed or are close to being installed.
Looking Forward
In addition to continuing our climate advocacy and policy efforts, climate advising and existing climate programs like the Solar Moonshot Program and our e-bike programs, we plan to expand the Fossil Fuel Free Pledge to other focus areas as well. We’ll be sharing details on other programs for 2023 in the coming weeks, some of which will serve as pilot programs and proof of concept to lay the foundation for bigger programs for cities, community choice programs and legislation.
New bill could restructure traditional incentive programs in California
It is no secret that traditionally, clean energy infrastructure has primarily been accessible to wealthy homeowners in California. More than a million homes and businesses have rooftop solar, but the state’s environmental justice communities, which are in the most polluted areas, have been left out. In order to reach the state’s climate and clean energy goals, it is necessary to provide clean energy access to everyone and a big part of how we get there is programs.
The Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) Program was created by California Assembly Bill (AB) 693 introduced by then Assemblymember Susan Eggman in 2016, which included the largest investment of its kind in the nation - $1 billion over the next decade from five of the state's gas and electric investor-owned utility companies greenhouse gas cap-and-trade auction proceeds to subsidize solar panels on multifamily affordable housing across the state. For tenants, this means reduced utility bills, better housing security and job training opportunities. For housing complex owners, the solar reduces common area electricity costs, reducing overhead expenses. The program had a very successful launch, becoming fully subscribed within the first 24 hours of opening the program with more than 240 applications representing 74MW of solar capacity. However, after the successful launch, the program has experienced a significant decrease in applications in subsequent years, only receiving a total of 20 applications in 2022.
A required third-party evaluation of the program identified a number of barriers to program participation. A major barrier cited from property owners was gap financing. SOMAH Program projects can be lengthy, and the current incentive structure requires the property owner to float the rebate amount, which can be thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes for a year. The program recognized this issue and rolled at progress payments, which paid a portion of the incentive for certain project milestones, but this simply is not enough for some property owners. Recognizing the need for gap financing in order for these projects to participate in the program, Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation and BQuest Foundation began working together to provide no interest bridge loans for SOMAH projects, providing much needed funds for projects that would have otherwise not moved forward. After funding a handful of projects, BQuest realized they could scale this opportunity a lot more quickly and reach many more property owners by creating a loan guarantee instead of financing these projects on a one by one basis. A loan guarantee would allow the property owner to access the rebate on the front end, backed by a loan guarantee from BQuest, without putting ratepayer money at risk and allowing BQuest to scale their impact.
In February 2023, Senator Eggman introduced Senate Bill (SB) 355, which expanded SOMAH Program eligibility to include tribal housing, housing owned by public agencies and increased the income threshold among other things. At this point, Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation and BQuest had already been involved in numerous meetings with the SOMAH Program administrators, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) energy division staff, the Governor’s Office and were actively involved in the SOMAH proceeding at the CPUC and while support for this idea was given by all parties, implementing something like this had proven to be slightly more difficult. Since SB 355 addressed the lack of applications in the SOMAH program and expanded eligibility, we met with Senator Eggman’s staff and proposed an amendment to the bill to include language for a loan guarantee and not only was the language added with no opposition, it was signed by Governor Newsom on October 7!
This is a huge win for California and an opportunity to prove that incentive programs structured in a way that provides the rebate on the front end can work and will eliminate barriers to participation. You can read the full bill text here.
California leads the nation in rooftop solar installations but has fallen short in creating a viable community solar market. Now, that can change.
California leads the nation in rooftop solar installations but has fallen short in creating a viable community solar market. Last year, Assembly Bill 2316 (AB 2316) unlocked the potential for California to lead the nation in community solar over the coming years by finally creating legislation that will tell the utilities to create a program that will credit customer’s accounts for renewable electricity produced elsewhere and set a compensation for the bill credit. Now, the utilities are attempting to derail a new proposed program called the Net Value Billing Tariff (NVBT).
The NVBT would finally allow California renters, nearly 17 million people, and low-income households to take advantage of bill savings while using clean energy. There are a couple of things that make the NVBT different from failed community solar programs in California. The first is that it would require the installation of batteries with community solar projects, to alleviate the strain on the grid during peak hours (currently 4-9 p.m.), once demand is higher and solar energy being exported to the grid is dropping off as the sun sets. The second is that AB 2316 requires that low-and-moderate income households make up a majority of subscribers, ensuring that this program will benefit those who are paying a disproportionate amount of income towards skyrocketing electricity rates. Finally, this program has no caps on capacity, meaning the doors are truly open for developers that want to build these projects.
One of the biggest advantages of community solar is that the solar power systems can be placed on rooftops and in parking lots, and the systems don’t require large plots of land like utility scale solar does. Community solar can also support local clean jobs and stimulate the regional economy. With the state’s target to procure 85 gigawatts of clean energy by 2035, there is already a large amount of projects in the desert trying to connect to the grid, however community solar projects can be a lot closer to the customers they serve, meaning they are able to connect to the lower voltage grid, eliminating the need for more costly and fire-causing transmission and distribution lines.
It is no surprise that the only arguments against a program that could potentially replace dangerous peaker plants comes from the state’s three investor-owned utilities. The main argument coming from the utilities is that community solar should be treated like large-scale generators that have a different set of rules and guidelines than other distributed energy resources like rooftop solar.
The California Public Utilities Commission proceedings tend to move pretty slowly, so there isn’t a definitive date for when we can expect the NVBT to be voted on by the commissioners. California has now passed the September 26 deadline for states to apply to $7 billion in federal funding as part of the Solar For All grants and having a community solar program in place would have made California’s application a lot more competitive.
While the utilities have successfully blocked attempts to make solar more accessible, including the decision to slash the state’s net energy metering program last year, hopefully the state can get it right on this one.
Do you live in San Diego County? How satisfied are you with the current state of roads and public transportation? You may be approached, if you have not been already, with these questions by a friendly volunteer in the next few months as the November 2023 deadline to submit measures for the 2024 ballot quickly approaches.
The County’s transit infrastructure has been in decline for many years now. Local governments in the region have poured millions of taxpayers’ dollars into expanding freeways, but we know from looking at Los Angeles and other regions that more lanes increase the number of cars on the road. More cars on the road means more air pollution, which disproportionately burdens the health and well-being of BIPOC communities and communities of concern.
It’s time for us to come together and create change. Let’s Go! San Diego is a campaign focused on building a better future for local families by delivering essential transportation improvements: reducing congestion, upgrading highway safety, fixing roads and making public transit more reliable and accessible. Some of the other projects that Let’s Go! will fund include:
Purple trolley line extending from South County to Sorrento Valley
Moving Rail Line connecting to San Diego International Airport
So, how will this be funded? The measure proposes a half-cent increase to the County’s sales tax, meaning for every $20 you spend, $0.10 will go towards improving our transit system. Tax increases are not often appealing, however, we wholeheartedly believe that the impact of this measure far outweighs the individual costs. The lack of viable transportation alternatives for County residents limits access to jobs, education, medical offices and recreational facilities. San Diego County needs more and better options, which is why it is crucial that residents bring this measure into next year’s ballot.
The broad coalition supporting this important effort is composed of over 30 nonprofits, unions, environment groups and businesses. Launched by SanDiego350 and the Environmental Health Coalition, this grassroots effort continues to grow in strength. Check out the complete list of endorsements here: Let’s Go! San Diego Endorsements.
If you haven’t signed the petition yet, visit one of the locations here to bring this measure one step closer to becoming a reality. Also, consider joining the campaign to stay up to date on our progress and spread awareness to friends, family and neighbors so that San Diego may deliver long-awaited transit improvements to the County.
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