An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.
Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action. ...Guardian
What we're seeing here is a push, on behalf of old energy, to kill off its rival new energy sources. The weapon: the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-driven group with considerable means and power, that creates model, conservative legislation and lobbies for its passage state by state. That may include legislation on what our children learn in schools to gun legislation. Nothing is beyond their reach. In this case, they are going after, attempting to penalize, and trying to eliminate the use of new forms of energy.
Gabe Elsner, director of the Energy and Policy Institute, said the attack on small-scale solar was part of the larger Alec project to block clean energy. "They are trying to eliminate pro-solar policies in the states to protect utility industry profits," he said.
The group sponsored at least 77 energy bills in 34 states last year. The measures were aimed at opposing renewable energy standards, pushing through the Keystone XL pipeline project, and barring oversight on fracking, according to an analysis by the Centre for Media and Democracy. ...Guardian
ALEC's efforts to change the laws across the states focuses for the most part on manufacturing uniform, "model" bills. Whole groups of states will pass the identical bills. ALEC is largely driven by -- and includes -- corporate America, its money and its power, in the process of designing conservative legislation mainly intended to shift power from the voter to a cabal of corporate interests and their conservative political supporters. Legislators in ALEC are no longer the representatives of the people. They have become corporate lobbyists.
For 2014, Alec plans to promote a suite of model bills and resolutions aimed at blocking Barack Obama from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and state governments from promoting the expansion of wind and solar power through regulations known as Renewable Portfolio Standards. ...Guardian
Here's the kind of legislation we can look forward to:
In November, Arizona became the first state to charge customers for installing solar panels. The fee, which works out to about $5 a month for the average homeowner, was far lower than that sought by the main electricity company, which was seeking to add up to $100 a month to customers' bills. ...Guardian
