Breaking News: Reimbursement Rate for Solar Decrease Starting Mid-April
As you may have heard, in December 2022 the California Public Utilities Commission sided with utilities and voted to reduce the credit for consumer-generated solar power sent to the grid (Net Metering) by 75% starting mid-April. This change will have serious financial impacts for houses of worship and others considering going solar.
The urgency of climate change is still a very important reason for going solar, and congregations of all sizes and faiths want to do the right thing to care for our environment and cut pollution. But we know that houses of worship and other nonprofits rely on net-metering to make solar affordable, and this change will fall particularly hard on congregations with tight budgets, often located in under-served communities.
Throughout the last two years, people of faith joined with hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of solar advocates to defeat such a proposal. We rallied, marched, planned, organized, wrote letters, made calls and made public comments to the CPUC in many of their meetings. We focused our efforts on Governor Newsom as well, since he had the authority to reign the CPUC in. We received no assistance.
One victory the solar coalition achieved – a monthly solar tax was taken off the table. This was not a small achievement and it showed the strength and the power of the people when we work together. Going forward, we will continue to follow this story and highlight ways in which faith congregations can adopt solar in an affordable manner.
There IS still time to go solar under the current Net Metering structure. California Interfaith Power & Light has partnered with RE-volv to help congregations finance solar for no upfront costs, and this partnership is more important than ever. That’s why we have organized a webinar for February 9th with RE-volv and other partners for congregations to get the scoop and make a plan now to go solar, before the new policy takes effect. We especially welcome congregations located in under-served communities of color.
Details:
-Date/Time: Thursday, Feb. 9, 11:00am
-Speakers:
—Pastor Curtis Robinson, Faith Baptist Church, Oakland
—Rev. Dr. Ambrose Carroll, Founder, Green the Church
—Representatives from RE-volv and CIPL
Click here for more info and to RSVP
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