New solar legislation, in the Washington Legislature, House Bill 2346, which would have reformed and extended production credits for solar panel installations, was not successful. Recently, the solar installation company I work for laid off eight employees, and we will see how the rest of the year goes.
The solar bill was approved out of the House with bipartisan support, then died in the Senate, behind closed doors, in a special session to finalize the budget. In the House the representatives of the 45th District voted for the bill. There was not a vote in the Senate, but I did hear from our Sen. Andy Hill, R-Redmond, from the 45th, and it sounds like the will to pass the bill was not there.
The reasons that Sen. Hill gave for the failure of the bill relate to Washington not having the money in the short term to fund the new solar bill.
I find that quite odd since the new solar bill would have reduced the monetary commitment of the state in the short term. First of all, the current incentive rate is really high at 54 cents per kilowatt hour, available until 2020. In the new bill that rate would have decreased for new customers, but without the new bill solar customers will continue to sign up for the current rate for utilities that have not reached their incentive cap of one-half of 1 percent of revenue.
The biggest part of HB 2346 was the removal of the sales tax exemption. With lower incentive rates being given out and 9 percent sales tax starting to roll through the door Washington would be spending less on our solar program in the next few years.
What is clear is that Washington could have afforded HB 2346, but our representatives did not put in the work to make it happen. Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, of the 42nd District, played the antagonist and has been the main roadblock to a new solar bill for three years now.
Let’s recap some details about solar. Solar is an American invention; we manufacture panels and inverters locally in Washington and Oregon; Washington has 2,500 solar jobs minus recent layoffs; and solar power will one day be the cleanest and cheapest form of energy.
The only question about solar is when? For Washington we have chosen to delay the inevitable. By not passing HB 2346 this year we are going to begin dismantling the solar industry we created.
If we come back in 2017 to finally pass a new solar bill then we will have to pick up the pieces of what is left of the industry and rebuild from there.
For myself, I am going to dig and in and try to survive 2016 at my solar company and hope to be a part of rebuilding the Washington solar industry in 2017.
Anders Alexander is a design consultant with A&R Solar, a solar-installation company with offices in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
Correction: In an earlier version of this commentary, an editing error gave an incorrect percentage for the revenue cap for utilities offering incentives to solar panel customers. The correct rate for the cap is one-half of 1 percent of revenue.
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