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A year-long battle to save rooftop solar in California is nearing a final decision. Although going up against the monopoly utility companies and their allies has not been easy, local advocates have been successful in sending a loud and clear message: San Diegans want to protect rooftop solar and expand equitable access to solar and storage. A proposed net energy metering (NEM) decision is expected to be made in December with a final decision expected by February from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which will decide the future rooftop solar agreement in California, known as net energy metering 3.0 (NEM 3.0).
Along with our partners in San Diego, we helped grow a coalition of over 40 local environmental, climate justice and advocacy organizations, five cities, the state’s second largest community choice energy program, schools and local elected officials to weigh in on the net energy metering proceeding to advocate for the continued growth of rooftop solar. Over a year ago we reached out to San Diego-based solar advocates and helped establish and co-lead the Save California Solar coalition with the Solar Rights Alliance, which meets monthly and has many San Diego-based and statewide organizations involved.
The City of Solana Beach led the charge in September, becoming the first city in the region to adopt a net metering 3.0 resolution, which specifically called out the investor-owned utilities’ proposal and its potential to disrupt the market. The vote at Solana Beach’s Climate Action Commission and city council were unanimous after hearing many local organizations speak in support during public comments.
“I am completely in support of the resolution,” said Solana Beach Deputy Mayor Kristi Becker. “Everything we do on the city council, at the Climate Action Commission for the Clean Energy Alliance, we've all been trying to encourage renewable energy so we need to make sure that it remains affordable and we also have to make sure it is affordable for those in our communities of need.”
Following the Solana Beach resolution, the Chula Vista City Council and Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina sent letters to Governor Gavin Newsom, both advocating for the CPUC not to make any drastic changes to the current net energy metering policy, which has been very successful in finally making solar accessible to communities of concern.
In November, the City of San Diego, America’s second-best solar city, became the largest city in the state to weigh in on the proceeding. San Diego Councilmember Raul Campillo, who was one of the first elected officials in the state to issue a letter to Governor Newsom advocating for a solar-friendly net metering 3.0 agreement, called out the importance of this resolution during his remarks. “This {resolution} ensures that the City of San Diego has communicated its priorities to the state on this matter, and we cannot afford any changes to this {net metering} policy that slows down the process or limits accessibility to clean energy. This resolution speaks loudly and clearly that the City of San Diego wants to protect the environment, create good paying, high-skilled jobs, improve our energy resiliency and save ratepayers billions of dollars."
Shortly after San Diego’s resolution was approved, the City of Encinitas weighed in with a letter from the city council and Mayor Catherine Blakespear, which stated “the City of Encinitas was proud to be one of the first cities in the region to join a community choice energy program, San Diego Community Power (SDCP), and we have plans for our program to benefit the community in various ways, and net metering plays a role in our impact. The solar fees that are being proposed by the IOUs are fees that SDCP will not be able to avoid, meaning that rooftop solar for our community choice energy program customers may still be inaccessible despite SDCP’s solar-friendly NEM rate, which is bad for our community members, makes it harder and more expensive for SDCP to reach 100 percent clean energy and takes away from potential program opportunities to benefit the community.”
It is very clear that the organizations, elected officials and San Diego Community Power understand the impacts that a bad NEM 3.0 decision could have on the climate as well as local and statewide clean energy goals. In all of the local advocacy in meetings regarding net energy metering, SDG&E has been the only opposition, citing concerns over equity, which we believe are not only disingenuous, but unfounded. Very credible studies show that rooftop solar reduces rates for everyone because it reduces the cost of maintaining long distance power lines as well as wildfire costs associated with those power lines. A recent study by Vibrant Clean Energy shows rooftop solar can save California ratepayers $120 billion! Rooftop solar threatens the monopoly utilities’ profits, and that is their true motivation for advocating for reform. California’s investor-owned utility companies have not only tried making solar less accessible to all, they have also blocked efforts for community choice energy, community solar, on-bill solar financing and other tools to make solar more accessible.
The battle over the future of rooftop solar in California continues, but we hope that the CPUC commissioners will consider all of San Diego’s advocacy surrounding this issue and that the proposed decision released next month will reject elements of the IOUs’ proposal that would make it harder for communities of concern to go solar, namely high monthly solar fees, decreasing export compensation and instantaneous netting.
None of this work would be possible without the dedication and commitment from local advocates, the majority of which volunteer their time for this cause. Rooftop solar is a key climate solution, and with the devastating effects of the climate crisis already occurring throughout California, now is the time when we should be discussing how to incentivize more people, especially in communities of concern, to adopt solar and storage. A big thank you to the following organizations, schools, elected officials and cities:
San Diego Community Power
City of Encinitas
City of Chula Vista
City of San Diego
City of Solana Beach
Mayor Serge Dedina
Councilmember Raul Campillo
Carlsbad Unified School District
San Diego Democratic Socialists
San Diego Urban Sustainability Coalition
I Am Green
Citizens Climate Lobby San Diego
San Diego Green New Deal Alliance
Unitehere! Local 30
Associated Students of San Diego State University
Center for Sustainable Energy
GRID Alternatives San Diego
Climate Action Campaign
San Diego Climate Hub
San Diego Coastkeeper
Environmental Centers of San Diego
North County Climate Change Alliance
Samuel Lawrence Foundation
Surfrider San Diego
Bike San Diego
Protect Our Communities Foundation
League of Women Voters San Diego
San Diego Green Building Council
SanDiego350
South Bay Sustainable Communities
Climate Reality Project San Diego
BQuest Foundation
Business for Good San Diego
San Diego Energy District Foundation
CleanEarth4Kids.org
Uptown Tavern
San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action
We appreciate all of our partners in this effort and would like to give a special shout out to Climate Action Campaign, SanDiego350 and San Diego Urban Sustainability Coalition, along with the Solar Rights Alliance, which have attended countless meetings and presentations to move all of the aforementioned efforts forward.
The 2023-2024 budget Governor Gavin Newsom released earlier this month makes cuts to some of the state’s most impactful climate programs and initiatives due to a decline in the state’s General Fund.
In 2022, California saw the devastating effects of the climate crisis as wildfires, droughts, floods and record-breaking heat waves impacted our most vulnerable communities across the state. It is clear that California needs to take aggressive measures to accelerate the state’s transition to clean energy, reduce carbon emissions and transform our transportation system. Unfortunately, while it is clear that the state should increase funding for climate initiatives, the 2023-2024 budget Governor Gavin Newsom released earlier this month makes cuts to some of the state’s most impactful climate programs and initiatives due to a decline in the state’s General Fund.
We often say that communities of concern are often hit first and worst with the impacts of the climate crisis, and California is witnessing that now with multi-family affordable housing complexes being flooded, infant mortality rates increasing in areas where there is significant air pollution as a result of fossil fuels and long term health issues like asthma and cancer have higher occurrences in communities of concern.
Transportation
With transportation being responsible for more than half of the state’s carbon emissions, it is clear that climate investments in transportation need to be prioritized not only for the state to meet its climate goals, but also because pollution from transportation is causing long term adverse health outcomes for communities of concern. In 2022, the state budget included $13.8 billion for transportation programs for projects to advance rail and transit connectivity, improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians and incentives for zero emission vehicles. This year, the budget includes a $2.7 million reduction in funding from last year making billion dollar cuts or delays in funding for programs.
Energy
Although the Governor’s budget states that California “prioritizes affordability, reliability and safety as the state encourages efforts to decarbonize the grid and scale deployment of clean energy generation and storage,” programs to transform our energy system are among the programs with the most drastic cuts in funding compared to last year’s budget. The 2023-24 budget proposes a reduction of $897 million in General Fund and an additional $370 million in General Fund in delays to future years.
One of the programs with the most drastic cuts in funding is for Low Income Residential Solar and Storage. The program will suffer a reduction of $270 million for solar and storage incentives in 2023-24, just as the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has finalized a decision to cut rooftop solar benefits for future customers.
Another program to suffer reductions is the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program at the California Energy Commission, which not only includes a delay of $370 million in funds for this year, but also a reduction of $87 million for in the 2025 budget.
Extreme Heat and Community Resilience
In 2022, California experienced record-breaking heat waves that put a massive strain on our energy grid and resulted in deaths across the state. Despite knowledge of the fact that heat waves will continue to get worse as the climate crisis accelerates, funding for programs to address extreme heat and provide relief for communities suffered the most cuts in funding of any of the climate related programs, with a $735 million reduction across programs.
Programs affected include the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program with a $25 million reduction, which is a 43 percent reduction compared to last year as well as programs to develop community resilience centers, which suffered a delay of $85 million to 2024.
With a reduction or delay in funding to nearly every single climate program, some more than others, it does not seem as though the state government, which claims to be a leader in addressing climate change is prioritizing funding for programs but more importantly, not prioritizing the health and safety of the frontline communities who suffer the disproportionate impacts of climate change.
Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation has had the privilege of running its Solar Moonshot Program for three consecutive years now. To date, the Solar Moonshot Program has had a $1,000,000 budget per year, which has made solar and storage projects possible to over 100 nonprofit organizations across 27 states, deploying 5,458kW of solar and offsetting 136,049 metric tons of carbon dioxide. These projects are reducing emissions, offering solar education to the community, supporting green jobs and allowing nonprofits to save money on utility bills that are reinvested into their missions.
In 2022 alone we have supported over 20 solar projects across nine states. The solar and storage projects range from educational facilities, food pantries, affordable housing complexes, schools and more. Collectively, these projects are deploying 853.25kW of solar and offsetting 21,266.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide that otherwise would be accelerating the climate crisis. This is the equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from 24,585 passenger vehicles per year and carbon dioxide emissions from 23,436,242 pounds of coal burned.
The following organizations have received grants this past year and are collectively helping combat the climate crisis:
We are extremely thankful for the generous support of Left Coast Fund, BQuest Foundation and an anonymous donor who have funded these grants and share our passion of combating the climate crisis and prioritizing communities of concern. The Solar Moonshot Program would not be where it is today without their support.
We are happy to announce funding for the 2023 Solar Moonshot Program! If you are part of a nonprofit organization that is interested in applying for a Solar Moonshot Program grant, please find the application here: www.solarmoonshot.org. We encourage you to follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter) to check out our weekly #SolarSaturday posts that highlight grant recipients, the nonprofits’ inspiring missions as well as how solar positively benefits communities and the globe.
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.
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!
Hammond Climate Solutions’ 2022 highlights:
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.
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