Solar Power, War Overlap in Rotary Speaker’s Message

Disruptions to fossil fuel supplies caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine should remind us that we need to end our dependence, say advocates for solar power and other renewable energy.

Igor Tregub, a senior policy advisor with the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA), brought that message to the Castro Valley Rotary yesterday. The Forum spoke with Tregub just before that meeting.

“War is a terrible reminder that it’s a bad idea to keep sending our money to prop up petrostates to buy fossil fuels,” Tregub said. “We’re getting very upset about losing the one percent or so of our oil we get from Russia, but a better idea would be working toward us not needing to use oil at all.”

He added that understanding the connection is crucially necessary for reducing the harm from climate change that we are already seeing, but also makes economic sense as time goes on.

Tregub said he sees our state, and country, transitioning to a democratic, renewable energy supply, such as distributed solar. That would involve lots of smaller solar facilities on rooftops of homes and smaller commercial and government buildings. These would replace the large, centralized power plants, often burning fossil fuels, that we have now.

“We have the technology now, what’s lacking is the political will,” said Tregub, paraphrasing Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson, who has written several books calling for such a transition. 

Homes and communities need to be electrified in an energy-efficient way, he said. Communities are often insisting on this in new construction, but existing homeowners can make a big dent as they replace appliances and heating and cooling systems. 

Rebates are often available to help pay for conventional furnaces being replaced with electric heat pumps, and for electric induction stoves replacing conventional ones, whether gas or electric, he said.

California now has over one million homes with solar panels, encouraged by state tax rebates and the ability to sell excess power back to utilities, according to CALSSA. The most recent figures show that a majority of new solar installations are in zip codes with median incomes of $40,000 to $70,000 per year, they said, so it’s not just for the well-off.

These pro-solar incentives provisions are under attack by the state’s big utilities, including PG&E, Tregub said. The state is now discussing an estimated $57 a month tax on solar panels to pay for the costs of running the electric grid, and there are proposals to sharply cut the rate homeowners receive for selling electricity back to the grid.

Taken together, this would considerably lengthen the time it takes for solar installations to pay back their cost to the homeowner in reduced energy bills, Tregub said. Currently, it’s around five to nine years but could rise to 20 or more under the proposals. 

He called for people to write legislators and the governor to maintain California’s commitment to renewable energy. “We shouldn’t let all that pollution-free sunshine go to waste,” he said, quoting from the CALSSA website.