Canary Media reports on California AB 3121, an electricity affordability package that proposes significant cuts to critical energy programs. The article quotes United's Edson Perez, saying that these cuts would undermine distributed energy resource programs that help both rural and disadvantaged communities. 

A bill introduced in the California legislature proposes to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from programs that help schools replace worn-out HVAC systems, low-income households install batteries, and affordable housing projects deploy solar panels — all for what would amount to a one-time rebate of no more than $50 for customers of the state’s three major utilities.

Lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom’s office have crafted the legislation, which they are calling the ​“affordability project,” in response to fast-rising utility rates at the state’s three large investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric.

But community groups, environmental advocates, and clean energy industry groups say the cuts will cause immediate and severe harms to those relying on them while doing next to nothing to fulfill their purported goal of reining in the state’s sky-high electricity rates.

AB 3121 emerged late Wednesday evening after weeks of backroom negotiations over how best to control rate increases for customers. But the reforms proposed by the bill do little to address the primary drivers of those increases, which come down to the investments utilities are making in their power grids to meet rapidly rising electricity demand, and also to harden them against the risk of sparking deadly wildfires.

A Wednesday letter signed by NRDC and more than two dozen other groups warned Newsom, California Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire, and Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas against cuts to ​“critical programs that advance energy affordability, reliability, and climate resilience for vulnerable communities.”

“Focusing on short-term tactics will not resolve California’s affordability crisis,” the groups wrote. ​“Instead, it will exacerbate it, making our energy system more expensive, polluted, and dangerous — especially for our most vulnerable communities.”

On the chopping block: School HVAC retrofits and solar and batteries for low-income residents 

AB 3121 proposes to provide utility customers with rebates by clawing back unspent and ​“unencumbered” funds from three programs: California Schools Healthy Air, Plumbing, and Efficiency (CalSHAPE); the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP); and Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH).

The CalSHAPE program, administered by the California Energy Commission, was created by a law passed during the Covid pandemic to help schools repair HVAC systems to improve health, and it has disbursed 646 grants totaling $421 million in funding for the ventilation upgrades.

The SGIP program provides incentives for low-income customers to purchase batteries to provide backup power during power outages. In a March decision, the CPUC allocated $280 million to the program’s current grant cycle, and lawmakers pledged in a 2022budget and climate law, AB 209, to provide $350 million to the program over the next several years.

Returning unspent portions of those funds to utilities would provide a minimal one-off rebate to individual customers at the cost of undermining a program that ​“helps both rural and disadvantaged communities” obtain batteries that are increasingly valuable in a state experiencing heat- and wildfire-driven grid emergencies, said Edson Perez, California policy lead for clean energy industry trade group Advanced Energy United.

The SOMAH program has a budget of $100 million and a legislatively mandated goal of installing 300 megawatts of solar by 2032, and is ​“California’s landmark program for multifamily affordable housing access to affordable solar and affordable storage,” said Steve Campbell, western regulatory director for nonprofit Vote Solar.