Over the next three weeks, Colorado voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution in a way that could allow a single industry to largely shield itself and its pollution from regulation. Amendment 82 would establish a constitutional “right” for the natural gas industry to sell its products. Colorado is one of the states where voters can amend the constitution directly through ballot measures, so the final word on this change belongs to those who cast ballots.

If approved, it would be the only industry in any U.S. state with a right specifically assigned to it in a state constitution. The amendment’s opponents argue that pollution controls designed to protect air and water, if they reduced gas consumption, could violate that right. Local efforts to limit or ban gas wells or pipelines could face the same challenge. Even during a dry-fire period, they say, attempts to prohibit gas-powered camp stoves, outdoor grills, or lights could be treated as violations.

The measure is being promoted by Advance Colorado, a so-called dark-money group whose original donors have not been disclosed. The article argues that, if the amendment passes, similar amendments and laws could appear in states across the country.

The author contrasts that proposal with a broader expansion of solar power and other forms of electrification. The article argues that Americans should be helped to access energy from the Sun—described as a giant reactor 93 million miles away—instead of expanding the fossil-fuel industry’s role and encouraging additional consumption of fossil fuels.

The author says that, in Oregon, the household began buying electricity from the local grid again for the first time since April. Three years earlier, the household had installed solar panels and batteries. During the summer, the system provides electricity at no additional cost, including power for an Ioniq5 electric car. In winter, the household uses only a small fraction of the electricity it previously purchased.

After the author told Louise that they had bought $6 worth of electricity during the week—their first grid purchase in months—she asked why every home in every American city, particularly those south of the Mason-Dixon line, the historic dividing line between North and South, had not done the same.

The article identifies the initial cost of solar installations as the main obstacle for most households. It then outlines a proposal intended to solarize large numbers of homes in a community or state without requiring homeowners to pay upfront, while providing them with solar electricity from panels expected to last 20 to 40 years.

The proposal is based on a program associated with Hermann Scheer, a German Member of Parliament and longtime advocate for renewable energy. The author says the concept became clear in September 2009, when the author was invited to join Scheer as a keynote speaker at a conference in Barcelona, Spain. Nearly a decade earlier, Scheer had guided his “100,000 Rooftops” solar program through the German Parliament and wanted to discuss how it worked and how a similar approach might work in Spain.

Under the proposed U.S. version, a city, county, or state would first pass a law requiring the local or state government to guarantee or backstop 10-year loans from banks or credit unions. The loans, up to $40,000 per home, would finance solar power and battery installations.

If a homeowner defaulted, the government would assume the loan. Because that guarantee would eliminate the lender’s risk, the law could require loans to carry an interest rate of approximately 1.5 percent—enough to cover processing costs and provide banks with a small, dependable profit.

The second part of the proposal would require utilities to purchase surplus electricity generated by the systems at a multiple of the prevailing retail rate during the first 10 years, while the loans were being repaid. The objective would be for each home to generate enough revenue each month, or on an annual average, to cover all or nearly all of its loan payments.

The appropriate rate would depend on local electricity prices, the availability of solar power, and other factors. The article says it could range from 1.5 times the retail rate to several times the retail rate. Under the model, utility payments would cover the loans, homeowners would incur little or no cost, and banks would earn a modest profit.

The article acknowledges that utilities could object because they would be paying a premium for the electricity during the first decade. It argues, however, that each home brought online would reduce the need for a power plant, transformer distribution station, or high-tension system that the utility would otherwise have to build or maintain. The article also says Germany used a similar expansion of distributed power to generate enough electricity to decommission several nuclear power plants, an approach built on feed-in tariffs that required utilities to buy renewable power at above-market rates.

After 10 years, the systems would continue providing electricity for many more decades. Utilities could then sell that power to businesses, data centers, apartment buildings, and other customers not eligible for the proposed program.

The article says the arrangement could be particularly beneficial for and community-owned utilities. Those utilities could use the additional distributed power to serve customers when the sun was not shining, upgrade existing infrastructure into a smart grid, and develop other revenue sources, including electric-vehicle charging stations and data centers.

The benefits for for-profit utilities would be less certain, the article says, although a slower rollout could still reduce the need to build new power plants and limit exposure to rising fuel costs. The author cites Portland General Electric, a for-profit utility, as an example, saying it still buys electricity from the author because doing so reduces the amount the company must produce itself.

For-profit utilities account for only 5 percent of the companies selling electricity in the United States, according to the article. Because those companies are concentrated in heavily populated areas, however, they serve about two-thirds of Americans.

A national program could also require electric utilities to be owned and operated by nonprofit cooperatives or local governments, as the other 95 percent of U.S. electricity companies are today, the article says. Implementing such a policy would require substantial political commitment to withstand utility lobbying, but the article points to Nebraska as an example: the state has not had a for-profit utility company anywhere within its borders for more than 80 years.

The article also cites President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which reorganized the industry on a regional basis and ultimately led to the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Dam, now investor-owned. The Bonneville system supplies much of the electricity in the author’s region.

Reviving the 30 percent federal tax credit for residential solar and batteries, which the author says was used by the author and Louise before being eliminated by Donald Trump and the Republican Party through the “Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill,” would make such a program easier to implement. State tax credits, including those recently adopted in Oregon and other states, could provide additional support.

The article argues that a nationwide program could also stimulate manufacturing and construction by creating demand for solar panels, batteries, and control systems, while supporting a large-scale installation and construction expansion that could employ millions of people for decades.

The author acknowledges that the proposal would require further changes, including decisions about the rate utilities would pay during the 10-year period intended to repay the solar-installation loans. The article nevertheless asks what the effect would be if cities such as Phoenix, Atlanta, Mobile, and Los Angeles, along with hundreds of others, could operate without burning fossil fuels.

The article says electrification is expanding worldwide. It states that most cars sold in China and Europe are electric, and that both regions have large-scale wind and solar installations as well as hundreds of millions of rooftop solar systems. It attributes the United States’ slower progress largely to the political influence of the fossil-fuel industry and alleges that five Republican members of the Supreme Court legalized the bribery and purchase of judges and politicians.

Source: Alternet

Further reading: Common Dreams, Hartmann Report, National Geographic, and Inside Climate News.