Last year, the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) put forward an astonishing number: if all of the net energy billing projects with current agreements become operational and the owners of those projects receive their credits, utility companies in Maine could lose $160 million or more a year in revenue. Those costs, said the PUC, would be passed on to consumers, resulting in increases of more than 20 percent for ratepayers, many of whom are already struggling to keep up with bills that already go up each year.
It was a staggering figure, and critics of net energy billing (also called net metering) quickly seized on it, arguing, via slick PR campaigns and highly-paid lobbyists, that such policies don’t “get Maine climate right.”
But that argument completely ignores more than a hundred years of tax policy and incentives that have subsidized utility companies and the fossil fuel industry to the tune of trillions of dollars. In its most recent report, the International Monetary Fund estimated that annual global subsidies for fossil fuels were expected to increase from $4.7 trillion in 2015 to $5.2 trillion in 2017. The United States was expected to be the second largest subsidizer of the industry, after China, offering an estimated $649 billion to companies. As of 2019, the “underpricing of fossil fuels,” as the authors pointed out, “remains pervasive and substantial.”
Several bills passed by Maine lawmakers in the past two years have been aimed at correcting this imbalance. And they’re working: in 2019, LD 91 reinstated net metering and made it possible for homeowners and small businesses to be paid for the energy their solar panels send into the grid, while LD 1711 removed barriers, expanding the metering cap on community solar participation and allowing more Mainers to opt for solar. These and other laws have resulted in an unprecedented expansion of the solar industry here, bringing jobs and clean energy into Maine.
Thanks largely to those changes, solar panels are popping up everywhere - on roofs, in fields, on old landfills. As Phil Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, told Maine Public earlier this year: “I think this program has been wildly successful.” So it shouldn’t be a surprise that those whose profits are threatened are pushing back.
Net metering policies have also promoted an industry that has saved us money: a study published by Synapse Energy Economics in December 2020 found that “behind-the-meter” (BTM) solar created $1.1 billion in energy cost savings in the six New England states from 2014-2019. “Electricity produced from BTM solar reduces the need to run other power plants, which reduces the amount of electricity that electric utilities need to buy, and that saves customers money,” wrote the authors of the Synapse paper.
Perhaps most importantly, the increase in solar (prompted in large part by more favorable net metering policies) has reduced the amount of pollution generated in our communities. As Synapse analysts demonstrated, between 2014-2019, BTM solar reduced CO2 emissions in New England by 4.6 million metric tons (equivalent to taking one million cars off of the road), contributed $87 million in public health benefits and provided $515 million dollars in climate benefits. It also created jobs and made energy systems more reliable.
When considering changes to Maine’s net metering policies, regulators and lawmakers should proceed with caution. Any methodology used to assess and quantify the full range of benefits and costs of net metering must be transparent and rigorous, accounting for the significant economic, societal, and environmental benefits that result from solar proliferation incentivized by net metering, as well as the potential effects on the state’s economy and jobs were it to be reversed.
The truth is that solar saves money and has the potential to benefit all Maine residents, bolstering the state’s economy while meeting our climate goals. For the last century, utilities, fossil fuel companies and regulators captive to their interests have stacked the cards against us, keeping effective energy solutions from winning out. Maine’s net metering policies are a step toward a cleaner, more reliable, more affordable energy system. Let’s not let it slip away.
Gary Friedmann is a Sierra Club Maine Executive Committee Member and a Bar Harbor Town Councilor who’s been working to solarize Mount Desert Island since 2013.