A church in southern Indiana decided against installing solar panels for its childcare facility, concerned about recouping its costs. And an Indiana farmer put in only half the solar power he had intended, knowing that measures imposed by the state to protect power companies would only add to his expenses.
Solar energy has the potential to comprise up to 40% of the nation’s energy supply by 2035, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, but pushback from utilities and lawmakers could limit how much Hoosiers can contribute to the solarization effort.
In 2005, Indiana legislators approved a billing mechanism that allows residents and businesses to sell some of their solar power back to the grid. That led to a boom in solar installations and clean energy jobs around the state.
But utility companies, stung by the drop in revenue from solar customers, pressured the Indiana Legislature to drop the mechanism, known as net metering, by 2022. Since that legislation was implemented in 2017, the result has been an ongoing tussle involving consumers, independent solar power companies, legislators and Indiana’s powerful energy utilities.
And it has led to what one clean energy company president calls a “chilling effect” on solar sales in Indiana.
Grid mixes and energy flows in 2020, 2035, and 2050 under the decarbonization scenarios illustrated in the DoE Solar Futures Study.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently released the Solar Futures Study, a report detailing the role of solar power in decarbonizing the electrical grid to meet the Biden administration’s goal to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030.
According to the report, solar energy could produce enough energy to power all the homes in the U.S. in as little as 15 years, as long as technological advances continue and the solar effort receives long-term policy and market support.
Energy Department researchers said acceleration of clean energy deployment requires incentivization through mechanisms like tax breaks and net metering to move away from fossil fuels and increase adoption of both utility-scale and residential solar energy systems.
Net metering, also known as a net metering tariff, is the process through which people who generate power with small-scale renewable energy systems can sell the energy they do not use to the utility companies to which they are connected.
The net metering billing mechanism can result in vastly reduced monthly energy costs for renewable energy customers, an incentive that has helped residential solar energy system adoption grow thirtyfold in the U.S. over the last decade.
Net metering for residential power customers and schools in Indiana began in 2005, when the Indiana Utility …….