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A three-judge panel in North Carolina upheld Duke Energy’s reduced payments to rooftop solar owners on Tuesday, unanimously rejecting claims from climate justice advocates that the smaller credits run afoul of state law.

The ruling upholds for now a scheme that took effect last October after Duke, some of the state’s oldest solar installers, and multiple clean energy groups reached a complicated truce to avoid the bruising battles over net metering seen in other states.

NC WARN, Environmental Working Group, and others opposed to the compromise argued that regulators adopted it without conducting their own analysis of the costs and benefits of net metering, a requirement of a 2017 statute. Such studies typically show that rooftop solar offers net benefits to the grid, contrary to utility claims.

The appellants rested their argument in part on a statement from one of the 2017 law’s authors, John Szoka, a Fayetteville Republican who served in the state House of Representatives for a decade. An Energy News Network article quoted in the appeal describes Szoka as “adamant” that the Utilities Commission, not Duke, should conduct the study.

The appeals court panel agreed, based on the plain text of the law. 

“The commission erred in concluding that it was not required to perform an investigation of the costs and benefits of customer-sited generation,” Judge Hunter Murphy, a Republican, wrote. 

But in a disappointing twist for the challengers, he continued, “however, the record reveals that the commission de facto performed such an investigation when it opened an investigation docket in response to [Duke’s] proposed revised net energy metering rates; permitted all interested parties to intervene; and accepted, compiled, and reviewed over 1,000 pages of evidence.”

Joined by two Democrats, Judges John Arrowood and Toby Hampson, Murphy’s opinion also rejected arguments that the commission erred by failing to consider all of the benefits of rooftop solar and by forcing solar owners to migrate to time-variable rates instead of allowing flat rates to stand.

“The commission properly considered the evidence before it and made appropriate findings of fact and conclusions of law,” Murphy wrote.

Many solar installers saw a dip in sales and interest in the last quarter of 2023 when the lower net metering credits took effect. But they were also hopeful about a new Duke program that rolled out this spring, which offers solar customers incentives to pair their arrays with home batteries.

Jim Warren, NC WARN executive director and an outspoken Duke critic, said in a press release that he and his allies would weigh an appeal to the state’s Supreme Court. 

“This ruling directly harms our once-growing solar power industry and the communities constantly battered by climate change driven by polluters like Duke Energy,” he said.

North Carolina appeals court upholds Duke Energy’s lower net metering rates is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Solar customers and clean energy advocates are waiting to see if New Hampshire will continue its system for compensating customers who share excess power on the grid. 

State regulators at a recent hearing seemed unconvinced about the policy’s benefits, despite support from utilities, customers, and hundreds of residents who submitted public comments on a proposed extension. 

“This commission is highly skeptical of anything involving energy efficiency or clean energy, and focused almost solely on cost,” said Nick Krakoff, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire. 

These compensation plans, generally referred to as net metering, are widely considered one of the most effective policies for encouraging more solar adoption. Recently, however, several states have changed or considered changing their programs, as utilities object that the policies are too costly and some politicians and policymakers push for more purely market-based approaches. 

New Hampshire’s net metering rules haven’t been modified since they were established in 2017. The state’s public utilities commission opened a case to consider the question of whether and how to adjust the rules in September 2022. A year into the proceedings, the state’s major electric utilities — Eversource, Liberty Utilities, and Unitil — came out in support of continuing the existing system of net metering, despite the tendency of utilities nationwide to consistently push for lower net metering rates. The move was a welcome surprise for environmental advocates. 

“If you don’t have a compensation rate that’s high enough, you’re not going to have customers that are going to want to invest in solar panels or other renewable energy,” Krakoff said.

Striking an agreement

In early August, a diverse coalition including the utilities, the Conservation Law Foundation, Clean Energy New Hampshire, Granite State Hydropower Association, Standard Power of America, and Walmart reached a settlement agreement about the future of the policy. 

The agreement calls for the state to keep the current net metering structure in place for two years; at the end of two years, utilities would propose time-of-use rates for net metering, so the compensation rate more closely matches the real-time value of the power being sent into the grid. Also, any projects that join the net metering program during those two years will receive the same compensation for 20 years before transitioning into whatever new system is created by then (currently the compensation ends in 2040). 

An influx of public comments has also reflected wide support for the tenets of the agreement. Nearly 450 comments were submitted since the beginning of the year, more than Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, has ever seen in a public utilities case, he said. The vast majority urge the commission to maintain the current net metering system. 

Peterborough resident Brian Stiefel was among those who filed comments. He and his wife installed 37 solar panels on their home in 2021, at a cost of $51,000. Though the solar doesn’t fully cover their electric bills, it provides $2,000 to $3,000 in savings per year, in large part due to net metering. 

“A big part of the decision to do this was the fact that the state would approve us for net metering,” Stiefel said in an interview. “If that’s going to change it could have a significant financial impact on everybody who has panels and is set up with net metering.”

An uncertain path forward

However, clean energy advocates say they have seen some signs in recent months that the commission might not be paying much attention to the benefits the system creates, while seeking out evidence that net metering creates a cost burden for consumers who aren’t part of the program. 

“The concern is that the chair is looking for a cost shift and is going to do whatever it takes to find one,” Evans-Brown said. 

Last spring, the commissioner requested a series of records in the case, several focused on gathering information about other states’ net metering programs — information that did not seem relevant to the decisions needed in New Hampshire, Evans-Brown said. The commission also requested, in a different docket, information about stranded cost recovery, which it then placed into the record on the net metering case as well, a move energy advocates interpreted as an attempt to focus on costs to the exclusion of benefits.

Then, in hearings on August 20 and 22, the commissioners asked questions that seemed focused on finding costs being passed on to consumers, even though there is simply no such evidence on the record, Krakoff said.

Advocates’ concerns are magnified by the commission’s history: In 2021, the commission drastically reduced funding for the state’s energy efficiency rebate and incentives. Though the utilities, consumer advocates, and environmental groups had come to an agreement to raise funding for the programs, the commission claimed that the program would burden consumers and that the state should focus on promoting market-based energy efficiency services. 

Current commission chair Daniel Goldner was one of the commissioners who signed the energy efficiency decision. During his confirmation hearing earlier that year, Goldner expressed skepticism about climate science, and advocates raised concerns about his lack of experience in the energy field.

“They expressed strong skepticism of energy efficiency and actually gutted the program,” Krakoff said, comparing that case to the present-day net metering proceedings. “It’s very concerning.”

Now advocates, homeowners, and other stakeholders can only wait to see what the commission decides and when they decide it. An order could come by the end of the year, said Evans-Brown, or the commissioners could decide to push the matter well into the new year — there are no deadlines set on the process. 

Should the commission in some way reject the settlement, there is still hope the legislature would take action to protect net metering. As part of the proceeding, state Sens. Kevin Avard, Howard Pearl, and David Watters submitted a letter explaining their belief that reducing net metering compensation would be against the goals of the legislature. 

“It is the intent of the legislature to preserve a viable net metering program in the state of New Hampshire, and we will take action to do so if necessary,” they wrote.

Resolving the question through legislative action, however, would leave the matter open and undecided for even longer, making it harder to encourage solar development in the state, advocates noted. 

“We were expecting this to be a challenging docket when this was first announced,” Evans-Brown said. “It’s frustrating, but not surprising.”

In net metering case, New Hampshire regulators focus on costs while ignoring benefits, advocates say is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.