Carol Murphy

Energy Advocates Push for Expansion of Net Metering

Today in Albany, nearly a dozen energy and environmental organizations will descend on Albany to advocate for one of the more important energy policies the legislature will address this session. The legislation would expand New York’s net metering law, a sensible and intuitive policy that has long been overly restrictive in New York State.

Net metering is simple. At its most intuitive level, it works by allowing your electric meter to “run backwards” when your house, or business, or farm is producing more renewable energy—via solar panels, wind turbines, biomass projects, etc.—than you yourself are pulling from the State energy grid. Net metering then allows ratepayers to receive credit at market rates for the renewable energy they are generating.

Net metering is one of the simplest programs to incentivize the use of renewable energy at the micro level. While larger scale wind farms or solar power plants are critical in the effort to decrease our use of fossil fuel generation, small-scale projects are just as important.

However, the current policy is extremely limited in scope—so limited, in fact, that the Network for New Energy Choices gave New York State a “D” on a Net Metering report card. Current law only requires utilities to provide net metering for biomass projects at farms (400kW or less), residential solar systems of 10kW or less, residential wind turbines of 25kW or smaller, and farm-based wind turbines of 125kW or smaller.

Current policy excludes every other category of energy customer—including small and large businesses, schools, and non-profit organizations. As you might expect, this limitation is severely inhibiting the growth of small-scale renewable energy projects. Businesses, more so than residents, often have the necessary capital to build a renewable energy system on site. Next to farmers, they have the most potential to grow small-scale projects in our State.

Bills to expand net metering to all categories of energy customers would have an enormous impact on the development of renewable energy in our State and our competitiveness in the increasingly important “green” economic sector.

As an example, think about this. As summer approaches, and our schools empty their classrooms and get ready to sit idle until September, wouldn’t it make sense for these schools to use solar panels and wind turbines to offset their heavy energy use during the school year?

There are bills in the legislature currently that could make such an example financially feasible. And I, along with dozens of other leaders in clean energy and environmental advocacy, will be in Albany today urging the legislature to pass them.

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Posted at 7:00 AM, May 06, 2008 in Energy & Environment
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