Union takes to the radio pushing for solar reform
Photo Courtesy Solect Energy
Solar panel systems, such as this one from Solect Energy that will be installed on the roof of a Brockton business, are part of the push for additional solar caps.
While a compromise bill aimed at fostering growth in the state's solar power industry enters its tenth week behind the closed doors of a conference committee, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers says the industry is "at risk of dying."
In a radio ad airing during morning and evening drive time on WBZ radio stations, IBEW Local 103 asks listeners to call their legislators to urge Gov. Charlie Baker, the House and the Senate to "resolve the issue now."
"Major solar projects throughout the state, representing more than 15,000 jobs, are at stake," a narrators says in the ad. "In fact, for every day the Legislature fails to raise the net metering caps, 20 jobs are lost, $3 million in private investment vanishes and $1 million in federal solar investment tax credits are wasted."
The House and Senate both passed bills last year to lift the net metering cap -- the amount of publicly and privately generated solar power that can be sold back to the grid at retail rates.
After the House passed its version of a net metering cap lift on the final day of formal sessions for the year, negotiators from both sides were tasked with working out the differences between the two pieces of legislation, including the size of the payment solar owners receive for electricity delivered to the grid.
Conversations between the two chairmen of the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy -- Rep. Thomas Golden and Sen. Benjamin Downing -- have been ongoing, but little else is known of the status of a compromise.
"We're trying to speed up that process. At this point, what we don't want to see is for them to wait for a larger bill to come out," Lisa Podgurski, manager of business development for IBEW Local 103, told the News Service. "We're hoping to get some sort of urgency here in lifting the cap, and trying to make people aware of it and how it affects their communities as well."
When the House's net metering bill passed, Golden said that an omnibus energy bill was expected to be introduced in the House in February or March. House Speaker Robert DeLeo has said that he prefers tackling energy with an omnibus bill "as opposed to breaking it up into various sectors."
The IBEW Local 103 ads have been running for about two weeks, Podgurski said, and will continue to run through this week.
Asked which bill IBEW Local 103 supports, Podgruski said the union favors the Senate's cbill filed by Downing, but that the 2 percent cap increase being discussed is not enough.
"We would like to see an immediate raise of four percent to allow what's in the queue to clear out and continued development until a larger bill and longer-term policy plan is put in place," she said. "With just a two percent raise, it would clear out the queue but we'd be right back in this same spot within two month or less."
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