All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Randolph Kinney]

UK solar panel subsidy cuts branded 'huge and misguided'

The government has decided to cut subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by 65% just days after agreeing to move swiftly to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris.

An impact assessment study by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) admits the move could wipe out up to 18,700 of the industry’s 32,000 jobs.

A second subsidy scheme known as the renewables obligation has also been cut for small-scale and large projects angering both the solar industry and environmentalists, who dismissed the moves as “huge and misguided”.

The government argues it needs to protect wider energy bills from the rising impact of renewable energy subsidies and that this justifies paying rooftop solar installers 4.39p per kilowatt hour from February instead of the existing 12.47p.

The new figure means Amber Rudd, the energy and climate change secretary, has rowed back from an original proposal to slash subsidies by 87% to 1.63p after a storm of criticism.

“My priority is to ensure energy bills for hardworking families and businesses are kept as low as possible whilst ensuring there is a sensible level of support for low carbon technologies that represent value for money,” she said.

“We have to get the balance right and I am clear that subsidies should be temporary, not part of a permanent business model. When the cost of technologies come down, so should the consumer-funded support.”

Friends of the Earth said it was disappointing that less than a week after the UK government agreed a deal in Paris to keep global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees, the government had shown its true colours – “and they’re certainly not green”.

Greenpeace said the government was moving in the wrong direction. “Bowing to pressure from the public and businesses, the government has swapped a blunt axe for a sharp scalpel, but it’s still cutting in the wrong place,” said Barbara Stoll.

“If the government is as committed as it claims to be to the Paris climate deal, then solar is one of the cheapest and safest ways for the UK to deliver on it.”

Paul Barwell, chief executive of the Solar Trade Association, said he was particularly concerned the government was cutting the “grandfathering” commitment from the renewables Obligation, which ensures that any subsidy levels are protected for the lifetime of a project.

“Removing the grandfathering guarantee makes no sense for solar – it’s the thin end of the wedge. If you invest £1m of capital into a solar project today, in 20 years’ time you have still invested £1m – it is a sunk cost. You cannot have the level of support changing over the lifetime of a project as investors won’t take the risk.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business...-panel-subsidies-slashed-paris-climate-change

Promise the suckers anything but give them the axe once they made their investment into solar. People really believed the Paris agreement was a gravy train for solar investment. Really, didn't the UK sign the voluntary pledge to reduce its carbon emission in Paris? So any backtracking should have been expected since there is no enforcement.

Listen to the suckers squeal - they have been swindled by their green energy investment to save the planet.

 

[Meandering]

The panels are a sunk cost.

Unless you find a market for used panels.

Toxic waste too.

Batteries. The world needs more batteries.

Meanwhile back on the mountain, rain and fog all day, nobody was making any solar power today.

But on the plus side, I sold a house. Yippee, right before Christmas. Hard to do when there is snow on the ground.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

California regulators propose new rooftop solar fees


Rooftop solar panel owners could face new fees under a proposal issued Tuesday, but state regulators rejected several recommendations by utility companies that threatened the expansion of residential and commercial solar efforts.

Southern California Edison and the state's other big investor-owned utilities had pushed to charge more for homes and businesses with rooftop solar panels to connect to the electric grid and use power from utilities when needed. The companies also advocated paying lower rates to panel owners who sold them their extra electricity.

Despite the utilities' campaign, the California Public Utilities Commission largely backed the solar industry, which had said the power companies' proposals could have devastated its business.

Under the PUC plan, new solar customers would face a one-time fee for connection to the electric grid. The commission estimates that the fee would range from $75 to $150 per solar customer.

In addition, rooftop solar customers would pay a fee of 2 cents to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity used from the utility companies, no matter how much power their solar systems generate. This fee would amount to about $5 a month for the average solar user.

Utilities also would place new solar customers on time-of-use rates, which rise during periods of high electricity demand.

Existing owners are exempted from all the changes for 20 years from when they installed their solar systems and connected to the grid.

Sara Kamins, supervisor of the PUC's customer generation program, said the proposed changes are designed to get rooftop solar owners to pay their fair share for maintaining the electric system while ensuring that the added fees don't harm solar-panel owners.

The 2-cent to 3-cent fee, Kamins said, helps to pay for programs such as energy-efficiency efforts that benefit disadvantaged communities.

“We're still figuring out what a solar customer's fair share is,” Kamins said.

As for the connection charge — previously borne by all utility customers — “We think they can pay that fee without jeopardizing the economics of the installation,” she said.

The PUC will accept public comment on the proposed fees through mid-January and is expected to make a final decision at its Jan. 28 meeting.

At issue is the practice of net metering, in which utilities credit solar users for surplus power their systems create; that electricity gets fed back into the grid for use by other customers. Solar users are credited at the same rate they would pay the utility for electricity.

Kamins said the proposed decision leaves the current net metering policy largely intact. (except time of use rates)

The PUC's overhaul of the old solar rules was mandated by the state Legislature, which wanted to encourage the continued growth of rooftop solar installations while spreading costs fairly to all electricity users. The new rules would take effect by July 2017.

Utility proposals called for changes such as crediting solar users at about half the current rates. Utilities also wanted to charge monthly fees based on the size of a homeowner's solar system, which would have been higher than what the commission is proposing.

Southern California Edison decried the proposed decision as insufficient and unfair to non-solar customers.

“SCE wants rooftop solar to expand in California, and there is a more balanced way to get this done,” said Ron Nichols, Edison's senior vice president of regulatory affairs. “A much more fair approach would maintain some level of subsidy, but at far lower levels, while rooftop solar continues to grow.”

San Diego Gas & Electric expressed disappointment “that today's proposed decision on the rooftop solar subsidy does not address the growing cost burden among our customers. Workable solutions must be developed to create a future where all customers can receive benefits.”

“We will continue to engage the CPUC with the hope of finding a better solution than what is in today's proposed decision,” the utility said in a statement

Pacific Gas & Electric said the proposed decision “falls well short of what is needed to ensure sustainable growth of solar.”

“Consumer advocates and environmentalists alike agree that change in solar rates is needed,” Steve Malnight, PG&E's senior vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

“Some solar company executives will say that the sky is falling if we make any changes, but the truth is that solar's bright future will only be assured by moving forward with smart energy reform. Solar is too important to our state's energy future not to get it right,” Malnight said.

The debate over California solar costs could shape solar policies throughout the nation as utilities seek ways to tinker with the costs and benefits of solar. Other states look to California as an innovator on solar policy. The state by far leads the nation in deployment of rooftop and utility-scale solar technology, followed by Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina and Nevada.

Onerous fees could make solar-power systems unaffordable, industry representatives said.

Solar proponents praised the commission's proposed decision and said they looked forward to an even stronger final version for consumers.

“We support the PUC's proposed decision to continue the state's successful net metering policy,” said Lyndon Rive, chief executive of rooftop solar giant SolarCity. Rive said the proposed decision “recognizes the important role of rooftop solar in accelerating our transition to a clean energy economy and providing customer choice.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rooftop-solar-subsidy-20151215-story.html

Contrast this story with the one from UK. It should be clear that solar cannot be sustained with subsidies. California by law, now, cannot count rooftop solar in meeting the 50% renewable energy standard set by law. With commercial scale solar coming online at very high 30 year contract prices for solar power, that cost must be born by all utility customers. Electricity prices are going up. Rooftop solar panels are for the rich. Renters (over 60% of California's population) do not benefit from rooftop solar.

However, the contrast is clear on the COP21 Paris agreement versus California law on green energy; one is voluntary, one is backed by the force of law and a timetable.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change

To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not prejudice. Alongside renewables, Nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them

by James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley

All four of us have dedicated our scientific careers to understand the processes and impacts of climate change, variously studying ocean systems, tropical cyclones, ice sheets and ecosystems as well as impacts on human societies. We have used both climate models and geological records of past climates to better understand lessons from warmer periods in the Earth’s history and investigate future scenarios.

We have become so concerned about humanity’s slow response to this challenge that we have decided we must clearly set out what we see as the only viable path forward. As scientists we do not take advocacy positions lightly, but we believe the magnitude of climate change now presents an unprecedented moral challenge that compels us to speak out.

Everyone agrees that the most urgent component of decarbonisation is a move towards clean energy, and clean electricity in particular. We need affordable, abundant clean energy, but there is no particular reason why we should favour renewable energy over other forms of abundant energy. Indeed, cutting down forests for bioenergy and damming rivers for hydropower – both commonly counted as renewable energy sources – can have terrible environmental consequences.

Nuclear power, particularly next-generation nuclear power with a closed fuel cycle (where spent fuel is reprocessed), is uniquely scalable, and environmentally advantageous. Over the past 50 years, nuclear power stations – by offsetting fossil fuel combustion – have avoided the emission of an estimated 60bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Nuclear energy can power whole civilisations, and produce waste streams that are trivial compared to the waste produced by fossil fuel combustion. There are technical means to dispose of this small amount of waste safely. However, nuclear does pose unique safety and proliferation concerns that must be addressed with strong and binding international standards and safeguards. Most importantly for climate, nuclear produces no CO2 during power generation.

To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not on prejudice. The climate system cares about greenhouse gas emissions – not about whether energy comes from renewable power or abundant nuclear power. Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.

The climate issue is too important for us to delude ourselves with wishful thinking. Throwing tools such as nuclear out of the box constrains humanity’s options and makes climate mitigation more likely to fail. We urge an all-of-the-above approach that includes increased investment in renewables combined with an accelerated deployment of new nuclear reactors.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...he-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change

I love the word "affordable" when used with renewable (aka green) energy. Also note reliability or the intermittency issue of green energy.

What the truth is, renewable energy is not cheap and not reliable as these 4 climate scientists admit. Renewable energy cannot supply 100% of electric power needs. Yet, these 4 climate scientists are telling me the world is doomed unless we have 100% green energy. That admission creates a huge paradox.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers

Windmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs

Two highly qualified Google engineers who have spent years studying and trying to improve renewable energy technology have stated quite bluntly that renewables will never permit the human race to cut CO2 emissions to the levels demanded by climate activists. Whatever the future holds, it is not a renewables-powered civilisation: such a thing is impossible.

Both men are Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein having trained in aerospace engineering and David Fork in applied physics. These aren't guys who fiddle about with websites or data analytics or "technology" of that sort: they are real engineers who understand difficult maths and physics, and top-bracket even among that distinguished company. The duo were employed at Google on the RE<C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal.

RE<C was a failure, and Google closed it down after four years. Now, Koningstein and Fork have explained the conclusions they came to after a lengthy period of applying their considerable technological expertise to renewables, in an article posted at IEEE Spectrum.

The two men write:

At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope ...

Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

One should note that RE<C didn't restrict itself to conventional renewable ideas like solar PV, windfarms, tidal, hydro etc. It also looked extensively into more radical notions such as solar-thermal, geothermal, "self-assembling" wind towers and so on and so forth. There's no get-out clause for renewables believers here.

Koningstein and Fork aren't alone. Whenever somebody with a decent grasp of maths and physics looks into the idea of a fully renewables-powered civilised future for the human race with a reasonably open mind, they normally come to the conclusion that it simply isn't feasible. Merely generating the relatively small proportion of our energy that we consume today in the form of electricity is already an insuperably difficult task for renewables: generating huge amounts more on top to carry out the tasks we do today using fossil-fuelled heat isn't even vaguely plausible.

Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.

In reality, well before any such stage was reached, energy would become horrifyingly expensive - which means that everything would become horrifyingly expensive (even the present well-under-one-per-cent renewables level in the UK has pushed up utility bills very considerably). This in turn means that everyone would become miserably poor and economic growth would cease (the more honest hardline greens admit this openly). That, however, means that such expensive luxuries as welfare states and pensioners, proper healthcare (watch out for that pandemic), reasonable public services, affordable manufactured goods and transport, decent personal hygiene, space programmes (watch out for the meteor!) etc etc would all have to go - none of those things are sustainable without economic growth.

So nobody's up for that. And yet, stalwart environmentalists like Koningstein and Fork - and many others - remain convinced that the dangers of carbon-driven warming are real and massive. Indeed the pair reference the famous NASA boffin Dr James Hansen, who is more or less the daddy of modern global warming fears, and say like him that we must move rapidly not just to lessened but to zero carbon emissions (and on top of that, suck a whole lot of CO2 out of the air by such means as planting forests).

So, how is this to be done?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/1...simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/

Once the investments are in place, there is no turning back no matter how high the price of energy goes. One can already see that in California, the grand experiment that will prove itself, one way or the other, for renewable energy. As "they" say, the handwriting is on the wall.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Paris Climate Change Agreement - A Boom For LNG, A Bust For The Poor

Summary

• Investment in gas turbines will increase as the Paris accord is implemented, significantly increasing long term demand for LNG.
• The Paris agreement is not legally binding, and does not provide a solution for the shortfalls of current technology.
• Poor countries and people of the world will bear the cost of subsidies.

Investors may be wondering how the agreement at the Paris Climate Change Conference will affect markets. 195 Nations have signed on to the treaty to limit a rise in global temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. After the deal had been adopted, delegates from each country rose to their feet in applause. Although the agreement was a difficult process for those involved, and at a minimum is a great political success, it does not provide the necessary provisions for real change. This agreement will cost the world economy trillions of dollars, and provide little benefit in exchange.

The chief executive of the climate diplomacy organization E3G said, "The transition to a low-carbon economy is now unstoppable, ensuring the end of the fossil fuel age." An exaggeration to be sure, with the real unstoppable force - ensuring a slower rise out of poverty for the poorest countries of the world- becoming a certainty. Using deficit spending to subsidize uneconomic technologies will expand government balance sheets at a time of already ballooning budgets and debt that will affect all markets and industries in the future.

Agreement Outline
The key points for execution in the agreement are as follows provided by the BBC.

• To peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century
• To keep global temperature increase "well below" 2C (3.6F) and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C
• To review progress every five years
• $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future.

Here is a visual showing the predicted climate impacts projected out to 2100 for various scenarios following the agreement.

Gas and LNG
The most likely energy source many developed countries will turn to is the installation of cheap, cleaner, gas fuelled turbines. I highlighted the economics and opportunities for gas and LNG in my article LNG By The Numbers Part 1: Why Your Portfolio Must Be Exposed To LNG. Countries with abundant gas reserves and existing infrastructure will find it both easy, and cheap, to move towards a significant amount of gas turbine powered production. And, while great for gas and LNG exposed stocks, it only reduces the carbon footprint by 50% compared to coal - far from a long term solution.

The majority of energy consumers do not care about the source of energy. People and economies, want, and need, cheap energy. This will be generated from carbon-intensive sources until technology manages to surpass it. Natural gas, as the greatest balance between economics, engineering, politics, and the environment, will be the biggest beneficiary of the Paris agreement.

Car Industry
Other government subsidy programs will target EV vehicles. Unfortunately, politicians will find it impossible to legislate the middle class into buying them on mass until economics change behavior. Elon Musk knew when he started Tesla that the only way to get people to buy electric would be to make better cars than the competitors for a similar price. He has done this with the Tesla Roadster, and we can see that when we compared the sales for Tesla with in-class competitors. However, the cost of the lithium battery packs will make it difficult to become cost competitive with cheaper, mass produced gas-powered vehicles using current technology. If we can find a method of storing large amounts of energy in an energy dense way using nanotechnology, the cost of energy storage could plummet, making EV vehicles (and frankly renewable energy as a whole) become economic overnight. Hence the need for research spending.

The car industry will find itself under immense pressure. It is easy for a government to slap a carbon emission requirement onto this industry, and it is very difficult for that industry to pass that cost onto suppliers. With such a copious number of used cars and competitors, the car industry simply can not increase costs for fear of market share loss. Increased costs for car manufacturers will drag down earnings and revenue, which will cause even more pain for a cyclical industry already under immense pressure. Perhaps the rising middle class in China will provide enough lift to revenues to make up for the increased cost of regulation around the world.

We will see a variety of carbon capping schemes for vehicles over the next few decades causing even more, pain for an industry that has to deal with varying safety regulations across the world. A company such as Toyota will no longer have to deal with variations in just safety across the world (and some existing emission standards). They will also struggle with increased pressure from each government's "action plan". This will result in large car manufacturers having to tinker with their vastly complex supply chains, bringing increased short-term risk as they adjust to the changes.

Conclusion
The Paris agreement provides the greatest benefit to the gas and LNG industry. Gas turbines have the benefit of being extremely economical for its investors, and would reduce emissions by up to 50% for each coal/heavy oil plant converted. The ease with which carbon emissions can be reduced by converting to gas-fired turbines and the positive economics of these investments will all but ensure its rise as the predominant energy source for 2020. Companies like Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), Woodside Petroleum (OTCPK:WOPEY,OTCPK:WOPEF), Shell (RDS.A,RDS.B) will benefit from this agreement.

The best summary came from the New Yorker "Rather than reaching a binding agreement, with economic incentives for good behavior and sanctions for scofflaws, the delegates settled for a what a skeptic might describe as a common expression of good intention". I would add that it damages the hopes of rising from poverty for many of the worlds poor, while creating a tailwind for the gas industry for the next few decades. There may be a good reason we are seeing so many oil and, more specifically, gas companies standing behind a greener future - it ensures the survivability of their growing gas businesses.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/376...ment-a-boom-for-lng-a-bust-for-the-poor?ifp=0

The oil companies are the big beneficiaries of the Paris climate agreement.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Media Statement: Rooftop Solar Subsidy
Dec 15, 2015
Category:
Renewable Energy, Rates


MEDIA STATEMENT

On Dec. 15, 2015, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a draft proposed decision about how future rooftop solar customers will contribute to the electric grid. In response, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) issued the following media statement:

“We are disappointed that today’s proposed decision on the rooftop solar subsidy does not address the growing cost burden among our customers. Workable solutions must be developed to create a future where all customers can receive benefits.

Today’s decision fails to recognize what consumer advocates and the utilities have already confirmed: we need to continue to support the growth of solar energy AND new rooftop solar rules that don’t require non-solar customers to pay over $160 million additional per year – $100 per family on their electricity bill. People shouldn’t be penalized with higher electric bills just because they are unable to afford or accommodate solar on their rooftops.

Californians deserve better. They deserve a program that balances the interests and needs of all utility customers while supporting and fueling the increased adoption of clean energy technologies such as solar to help improve air quality and our environment. Most importantly, the CPUC and SDG&E share the same obligation of acting in the best interest of ALL customers.

We are doing our part to advance California’s clean energy goals by working aggressively to increase the amount of renewable energy used by San Diego and southern Orange County homes and businesses. Today, SDG&E is the only utility in California to deliver 33 percent of its energy primarily from wind and solar.

We are proud that our customers have led the country in the adoption of solar rooftop technology and we look forward to a future where we continue to help aspiring rooftop solar customers interconnect their solar arrays to the most reliable electric grid in the West.

We will continue to engage the CPUC with the hope of finding a better solution than what is in today’s proposed decision.”

http://www.sdge.com/newsroom/press-...3720657&goal=0_c2357fd0a3-d3104ffa50-83720657

 

[Randolph Kinney]

How Is A Solar Lease Like A Second Mortgage And SolarCity Like A Subprime Lender?

A Financial Lease Is Quasi-Debt

First of all, a long-term financial lease - like a solar lease - is intrinsically quasi-debt. It puts the lessee into a binding contract with mandatory payments, from which the lessee cannot remove himself without paying back the lease.

The lessee also cannot dispose of the asset (in this case, it doesn't even own it) or any other assets upon which a lien is put to give safety to the lease. It's common for these solar leases to include liens on one's property (home) - hence the home cannot be sold without the lessee getting agreement from its lessor (the solar company), and this agreement generally comes with the requirement that the lessee buy out the lease.

It's also not uncommon to capitalize leases and treat them as debt when analyzing companies. Like debt, you cannot get out of a lease just because you want to - so a lease is not a rent (where, although constrained by conditions, you can get out of the contract).

Given this, we can basically consider a solar lease a mortgage - debt with a lien on one's property (home), which cannot be done away without being paid in full or through default. If you want to sell your mortgaged home, you need to pay the mortgage. If you want to sell your home with a solar lease on it, you have to buy out the lease - the lease clearly behaves like a mortgage.

Second In Line To Collect, First In Line For Losses

Like a second mortgage, the lease is second in line to collect and first in line for losses. That is, if you have an existing mortgage on your property and you default, the mortgage collects from the proceeds first, and then the solar lease comes second.

Here, too, the solar lease behaves like a second mortgage.

The Lease Needs To Be Paid Before Being Able To Sell

As already explained, once you have a solar lease you cannot dispose of your property without buying it out. The same applies to a second (or first) mortgage. Here, too, the solar lease is like a second mortgage.

A Difference With No Substance

The solar lease also is a type of secured loan in the sense that SolarCity keeps ownership of the panels. However, it's doubtful that this is the main characteristic of lease security, because:

• Panels keep increasing in efficiency and decreasing in price, hence old panels are much less valuable and efficient.
• The cost of installing or dismantling the panels can compete with the cost of the panels themselves. Hence it might make no sense (or little sense) to dismantle panels in the event of a default, thus rendering the collateral near worthless. For instance when it comes to installation, SunRun (NASDAQ:RUN) puts the cost of installation at 35% versus 47% for the cost of the equipment (which includes some you wouldn't usefully reclaim from a dismantled system).

While solar might be sexy, lenders usually trade at very low price/book levels hovering not much above 1. Be it banks, subprime lenders or something like mortgage REITs, this characteristic is common. For instance:

• Citigroup trades at 0.8x book, JPMorgan trades at 1.1x book, American Capital Agency trades at 0.8x book, Annaly Capital Management trades at 0.8x book, Capital One Financial trades at 0.9x book, etc.

This casts SolarCity under an unfavorable light, as it goes for 6.8x book.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/376...mortgage-and-solarcity-like-a-subprime-lender


More than 80% of all solar panel installs in California this year have been solar leases. People buying solar panels are rapidly declining.

Solar leases and PPAs almost seem too good to be true. The solar provider is the owner of the solar system if you choose a lease or PPA, and have the right to all incentives, rebates, refunds and cash credits (including SRECs).

Solar leasing is big business and they command the politicians to keep rebates, incentives and net metering alive and well. In effect, they are a power generation business that competes with the utility company.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/baby-it...patterns-shake-up-u-s-temperatures-1450303233

Sorry, it's not climate change and it is not related to human CO2 emissions.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Customers of clean energy programs hit with fee increase

The California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to allow a nearly 100 percent price increase on exit fees for customers leaving Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for green energy programs like CleanPowerSF and Marin Clean Energy, which will make those and similar programs more expensive.

Many of the programs — where local governments buy green electricity for their residents, while private utilities own and operate the electrical grid — will be undermined financially by the uptick in the charge, called the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment, their officials say.

“We are not surprised that the increase was approved,” said Marin Clean Energy spokeswoman Alexandra McCroskey. “We are disappointed. Our primary frustrations come from the fact that we are becoming almost liable for the market fluctuations for both ourselves and PG&E. If PG&E isn’t planning appropriately for people leaving for community choice aggregation programs, the PCIA will continue to increase. It’s poor planning.”

Under the increase, which is effective Jan. 1, customers making the switch to local green energy programs will face a heftier exit fee. Marin Clean Energy customers are projected to pay more than $36 million, up from $19.3 million in 2015. The cost for each residential customer would nearly double from about $6.70 each month to $13.

In San Francisco, the proposed exit fee for residents moving to CleanPowerSF would jump by 100.26 percent. Because the city energy program is designed to absorb costs for its customers, it would decrease the program’s revenue by $8.4 million.

Hundreds of protesters came from as far as San Diego to oppose the fee increase at Thursday’s meeting in San Francisco. They carried homemade signs reading “Stand Up to Natural Gas!” and “CPUC: Consumers Pay Again?!” Public comment on the change stretched for more than two hours.

“We’ve achieved a great deal, but there is this overhang of costs that were necessary to kick-start the industry,” said CPUC Commissioner Mike Florio. “The reason the PCIA is so high is because of high-cost renewable contracts that PG&E was required by law to enter into, and that this commission approved. I don’t think it’s fair to let one group of customers escape from paying those historic costs and simply load those on the remaining customers. That’s what the PCIA is all about.”

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Customers-of-clean-energy-programs-hit-with-fee-6705978.php

California continues to talk the talk on “green” energy – but as the true cost of their green adventure hits home, the Californian government appears to be slowly ratcheting up the costs, and slashing the benefits, for ordinary consumers who join Governor Jerry Brown’s environmental crusade.

The laughable part is switching from the utility that is mandated by law to supply green energy to a local green power purchased for residents causes an increase of $13 each month to their electric bill. Why? Stranded cost.

As these schemes for green power eat away at the utilities' revenue, costs have to go up and they will be passed on to the customers connected to the grid.