by Shailsh Telang, via Wikimedia Commons
While legislatures claim to be working to address the impacts of California’s energy affordability crisis. Assembly Bill 942 is a major step in the wrong direction, according to the Western Tree Net Association (WTNA), California’s farmers and food processors made multi-million-dollar investments by entering into long term contracts and financing to add solar energy to their operations. AB 942 would undermine these good faith estimates and contracts must be defeated. AB 942 is an ill-conceived and counterproductive proposal that will worsen energy affordability in California for millions of customers and further undermine faith in Sacramento politicians, according to WTNA,
Furthermore, according to the LA Times, AB 942 would affect solar credits for people who installed the panels before April of 2023 limiting their current benefits to 10 years half of the 20 years they were promised. The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon is a former executive at the parent company of Southern California Edison, which has long complained about the financial credits to households that generate more solar energy than they can use. Nearly 2 million California rooftop solar owners could lose the energy credits to help them cover what they spent to install the climate friendly systems under a proposed state bill. Calderon, a Democrat from Whittier, says that the credits that the rooftop solar owners receive when they send unused electricity to the grid is raising the bills of customers who don’t own the panels.