Congress Asked To Eliminate $270 Million A Year In Solar Subsidies

The Daily Caller discusses the impact of net metering with William Yeatman. 

“Net metering threatens the stability of electricity grids by depriving them of necessary investment,” William Yeatman, an energy and environmental policy researcher at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Conservative groups signing the letter included CEI, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Tax Reform, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, and the Consumers Alliance for a Strong Economy.

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Researchers have found that expanding net metering or maintaining it for long periods of time will drive up power prices. Without government support from net metering, solar energy is non-viable, according to a 2015 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“Under net metering regimes, owners of rooftop solar panel installations gain from the sale of the electricity they produce,” Yeatman said. “However, they don’t contribute to upkeep of the physical infrastructure of electricity transmission and distribution.”

“That is, beneficiaries of net metering programs don’t contribute to the maintenance of the grid, which makes their ‘benefit’ possible to begin with,” Yeatman said. “The unfortunate ‘solution’ to the investment imbalance created by net metering is to charge all ratepayers more, in order to compensate for what the rooftop solar panel owners are not contributing.”

Read the full article at The Daily Caller.