In 2007, California began a $3.3 billion dollar campaign called “Go Solar California.” Its message was simple – please install solar, and California will help you do it. Almost twenty years later, two million households did exactly what they asked. Now California says solar customers are the problem. 

Newsom recently asked his hand-picked CPUC Commissioners for ways to lower electricity bills. The CPUC returned with recommendations, and canceling solar customer contracts was one solution that has moved faster toward a legislative vote than any other. 

This is not the first time Newsom’s CPUC appointees have done his bidding. In 2023, his Commissioners received more than 100,000 public comments in opposition to reducing solar credits – the most on any topic in CPUC’s history. They still voted to change the rules to benefit utilities. 

They now propose an even greater boon for electricity providers. 

Why? Electricity utilities have given over $200 million to Newsom, state legislators, and toward lobbying officials and law makers throughout the state. 

To gut rooftop solar, they’ve paid the right people. 

The state’s recently introduced bill AB942 aims to cancel and cut in half existing solar customers’ guaranteed 20 year contracts, and reduce the amount solar customers can save and sell back to the grid by 75%. AB942 will destroy any past calculations customers made in determining whether solar was worth it. 

It will cost me thousands per year. 

Unsurprisingly, AB942 was introduced by a utility insider, Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, who for 25 years worked for Edison International – one of the nation’s largest electric utility holding companies. 

CPUC’s conjured math forwards a “cost-shift” theory, that solar customers have shifted billions of dollars of costs onto the bills of non-solar customers. Their goal is to redistribute solar customer savings across every other electricity bill in the state.

What’s the genesis of the “cost-shift” theory? According to leaked internal utility documents – they created it themselves 15 years ago as a political strategy to combat rooftop solar, and have spent millions since perpetuating its lies. 

Solar is perceived as only in reach of the rich. In reality, the majority of solar is installed by middle-class California residents with household incomes of less than $100,000/year, with 10% under $50,000/year. Since 2020, California’s Solar Mandate has also required solar on all newly built houses.

More rules to install solar that we followed. 

Importantly, the CPUC’s math ignores rooftop solar’s benefits in offsetting peak demand and reducing the need for additional utility generation infrastructure. 

But, they may be ignoring it for a reason. 

Utilities make their money by adding new infrastructure, so reducing future rooftop solar will create the need for additional generation to be built, creating more profits for utilities. 

After the CPUC’s 2023 decision to reduce solar’s efficacy, rooftop installations fell by 45% in 2024. AB942 will add to this decline, while doing nothing to reduce utility spending or profits. 

PG&E posted record profits in 2024 of $2.47 billion.

If government can unilaterally cancel individuals’ guaranteed contracts, what’s next? If gas becomes more expensive, will California limit electric vehicle battery size, or limit your time at charging stations? That might sound preposterous, but that is essentially what Newsom’s CPUC is doing to solar customers. 

We’ve all heard the saying – as California goes, so goes the nation. I wonder how much longer that phrase will be viewed with pride by Californians. 

We’ve entered a new era where individual rights are being trampled, and the minority is vilified under the guise of populism. I’ve voted for Newsom many times. He will inevitably run for President and will try to draw a contrast between himself and the current administration. With his betrayal of solar customers and refusal to take responsibility for the very problems California government has itself created, I see more similarities than differences.