GameChange Solar
This week, SEIA sent a letter to Chairman Richard Neal of the House Committee on Ways and Means outlining the solar industry’s priorities in the infrastructure package.
SEIA outlined six key priorities for solar growth in the letter.
- Lengthen and strengthen the Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) to fill as much of the 10-year budget window as possible and increase the credit back to at least 30%.
- Institute 100% direct pay to ensure ongoing financing, keep the industry growing and deploy solar rapidly.
- Add standalone energy storage to the ITC.
- Provide significant support to help grow American solar manufacturing.
- Address grid resilience and necessary upgrades to accommodate all the new renewable energy coming online, including transmission and interconnection.
- Support equitable workforce policies that meet the needs of the growing renewable industry.
Read the full letter below.
Copied from the letter: “Those monopolistic entities, which in most cases are owned by investors and not the
public, have tremendous tax and financing advantages available to no one else in the tax code.”
Not sure in All States of the Union, but I understand these utilities also get to depreciate their “assets” which were originally paid for by the property owner up front or when the developer sells the property the new land owner pays for all of the utilities installed as a ‘developed’ lot. So, the IOU utility gets to depreciate assets, file rate cases for electricity increases when they (don’t) sell enough electricity or the rate case for “lost revenues”, then get to file a rate case when an old asset still has debt but does not make a profit, so it becomes a “stranded asset”. There seems to also be no set “rule” of how much money is to be set aside for O&M, grid hardening projects. It seems PG&E in California has gotten away with dividends over O&M for decades. It is time to stop coddling utilities and make them work for their money with a better business model than is in place now.