By Lindsay Beebe
My story is a familiar one. I moved to Utah nine years ago with the intention of staying for just one ski season. The mountains called me here, but the desert and the quality of life have kept me here. Since then I've built a community, and a vision for how we can do our part to confront the current challenges, from climate change, sprawl, and pollution levels that are increasingly more evident across our beautiful state.
That vision is simple: an energy-efficient house, a dog, a garden, solar panels for clean energy, and an electric vehicle to clean up our air. But part of that vision is under threat as Rocky Mountain Power seeks to squash the Utah rooftop solar industry and make it financially impossible for people like me to afford solar.
After graduating college during the Great Recession, I waited tables for years, working up to three jobs when I took a significant pay cut in 2013 to start my career. By 2016, my partner and I were able to save a few thousand dollars to put a down payment on a house in Salt Lake City, just before housing prices skyrocketed. We feel blessed to be in a home and, as we finish paying off student loans, we have hopes to start saving enough to make the investment to update our hundred year-old home with solar panels and energy efficiency.
Most folks who install solar on their homes can sell that power back to Rocky Mountain Power, thus reducing their energy bills, allowing them to financially justify the solar investment. This method of buying back power is known as net-metering, and the price of that power sold back is called an export credit.
This year, Rocky Mountain Power proposed making the export credit so low that people would never be able to recoup their investment by installing solar, putting it out of reach for everyone but the super wealthy. Solar installers around the state would lose much of their business.
Rocky Mountain Power wants to block out the sun and keep us stuck paying for dirty coal and gas plants, which contribute to its massive profits.
Your comment to the Public Service Commission could help save Utah's rooftop solar industry, which Rocky Mountain Power is trying to crush.
You can learn more about the issues facing Utah’s solar by visiting the by visiting the Chapter’s Instagram to watch a webinar and a live stream about the issue (instagram.com/sierraclubutah). To send your letter to the Public Service Commission visit sc.org/utahsolar.