Utilities are lobbying against the expansion of rooftop
solar, and that's no good for anyone.
In order for solar power to
compete with other forms of energy, the conventional thinking goes, it needs to become way cheaper.
Installing rooftop solar panels
can be prohibitively expensive, after all, and it takes years before the
resulting energy savings pay off. For the individual, it doesn’t matter whether
solar panels will save you money in the long run if you can’t afford them in
the short run.
For those of us who are renters,
the decision of whether to go solar is even more irrelevant. We don’t have the
option to install panels ourselves. And unless your apartment comes with
utilities included, your landlord has no incentive to install solar panels,
because you would get all the savings.
But while the average family may be unable to make a costly investment in solar, the government has much deeper pockets — and an entire Department of Energy to work with.
There are already some state incentives to help bring down the cost of solar panels
for homeowners. But the federal government can do more — starting with powering
its own buildings with solar power, yielding savings every year that could make
a big difference to taxpayers and help expand the industry, potentially
lowering prices for the rest of us.
The same can be said for
corporations, only their savings would result in bigger long-term profits to
shareholders.
Yet while the solar industry is
growing rapidly, it still remains a small part of our overall energy grid. One
reason it’s not growing quicker is that energy companies and utilities are lobbying against its expansion, especially when it comes to
privately owned panels.
Solar power allows individual
home or business owners to produce their own energy and cease to be customers
of the local electric companies — and the fossil fuel and nuclear industries
that supply them.
When utility providers use coal,
natural gas, or nuclear, in other words, they remain the centralized provider
of energy and they get the profits. When you put a solar panel on your house,
they don’t.
So maybe the reason solar hasn’t
taken off more isn’t because it isn’t a viable technology, or because it’s more
costly for consumers. Maybe it’s because it threatens corporate profits.
We didn’t forestall the switch
to cars because we wanted to save jobs and profits in the horse and carriage
industry. If we choose to give up on solar power because it’s expensive, rather
than finding ways to make it cheaper, we’re basically choosing to continue
burning fossil fuels.
Do we really want to protect
dirty energy jobs and profits while the planet cooks?
Instead of lobbying to continue
polluting the planet, the energy and utility sectors could expand their
repertoire to include selling and installing solar panels. That would be a win-win
for everyone.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.