EGN NEWS DESK
Fiscal board needs a net-metering examine; policymakers wish to wait
Until lately, Puerto Rico’s net-metering program appeared protected from the upheaval affecting different native insurance policies. A handful of states — most notably California, the nation’s rooftop photo voltaic chief — have taken steps to dramatically slash the worth of rooftop photo voltaic, usually arguing that the credit make electrical energy dearer for different ratepayers.
Before Governor Pierluisi signed Act 10 into legislation, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau had been scheduled to reevaluate the island’s net-metering coverage — a transfer that photo voltaic proponents frightened would result in weaker incentives.
Despite making vital progress, the territory continues to be removed from assembly its near-term goal of attending to 40 p.c renewables by 2025, and plenty of view rooftop photo voltaic and batteries as key to closing that hole.
That’s why Puerto Rico’s policymakers opted to delay the bureau’s assessment and lock within the current monetary incentives for a minimum of seven extra years. Under the brand new legislation, regulators can’t undertake a complete assessment of web metering till January 2030. Any adjustments wouldn’t take impact till the next yr, and even then they’d apply solely to new clients.
However, in April, the Financial Oversight and Management Board urged the governor and legislature to undo Act 10 and permit regulators to check web metering sooner. When that didn’t occur, the board made a comparable enchantment in a May 2 letter, threatening litigation to have the legislation nullified.
The FOMB was created by federal legislation in 2016 to resolve the fiscal disaster going through Puerto Rico’s authorities, which at one level owed $74 billion to bondholders. The board consists of seven members appointed by the U.S. president and one ex officio member designated by the governor of Puerto Rico. The entity has performed a central and controversial position in reshaping the electrical energy system — which was fragile and closely mismanaged even earlier than 2017’s Hurricane Maria all however destroyed the grid.
According to the FOMB, Act 10 is “inconsistent” with a fiscal plan to restructure $9 billion in bond debt owed by the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, which makes the cash to pay again its debt by promoting electrical energy from large-scale energy crops. Act 10 additionally “intrudes” on the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau’s capacity to function independently, the board wrote, because it prohibits the bureau from learning and revising web metering by itself schedule.
“Puerto Rico should not fall again to a time when politics reasonably than public curiosity … decided power coverage,” Robert F. Mujica, Jr., FOMB’s government director, wrote within the letter.
While the board stated it “helps the transition to extra renewable power,” its members oppose the way in which that Puerto Rico’s elected officers acted to guard what is among the island’s handiest renewable-energy insurance policies.
In latest days, photo voltaic advocates, nationwide environmental teams, and Democratic lawmakers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Congress have moved swiftly to defend Puerto Rico’s net-metering extension. They declare that efforts to undo Act 10 are much less about upholding the bureau’s independence and extra about paving a strategy to revise web metering.
“For the board to principally assault net-metering actually goes towards what my understanding was for his or her creation, which was to look out for the financial development of the island,” stated David Ortiz, the Puerto Rico program director for the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors.
The renewables sector in Puerto Rico contributes round $1.5 billion to the island’s financial system yearly and employs greater than 10,000 individuals, in response to the May 17 letter from U.S. policymakers.
Ortiz stated his group “is absolutely relying on web metering” to help its slate of tasks on the island. Most lately, Solar United Neighbors opened a group resilience heart within the city of Cataño, which concerned putting in photo voltaic panels on the roof of the native Catholic church. The nonprofit has additionally helped residents in three neighborhoods to band collectively to barter discounted charges for solar-plus-battery methods on their particular person houses.
Javier Rúa-Jovet of SESA famous that web metering has already undergone intensive assessment. That features a two-year examine overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy, generally known as PR100, which analyzed how the island may meet its clear power targets. The examine means that web metering isn’t more likely to begin driving up electrical energy charges for utility clients till after 2030, the yr the Energy Bureau is slated to revisit the present guidelines. PR100’s primary discovering, which is that Puerto Rico can get to 100 p.c renewables, assumes the present net-metering compensation program continues till 2050.
The fiscal oversight board has requested that laws to repeal or amend Act 10 be enacted no later than June 30, the final day of Puerto Rico’s present legislative session. After that time, the FOMB says it should take “such actions it considers crucial” — probably setting the stage this summer season for one more net-metering skirmish within the U.S.
Should policymakers heed the FOMB’s calls for, advocates concern it may change into more durable to develop clean-energy methods, notably inside marginalized communities that already bear the brunt of routine energy outages and air pollution from fossil-fuel-burning energy crops on the island.
“In a second the place the federal authorities is investing a lot cash to assist low-income communities entry photo voltaic, the FOMB on the opposite aspect making an attempt to have an effect on that simply doesn’t make sense,” Ortiz stated.
