Put solar power in hands of poor
Arizona is the sunniest state in the nation.
Yet only about 5 percent of the state’s electricity is generated from solar energy. And Arizona added fossil-fuel pollutants faster than any other state between 1990 and 2007, worsening air quality, contributing to climate change and increasing the frequency and severity of forest fires, drought, heat waves and other extreme weather events.
Under the influence of powerful utility companies that have long enjoyed a monopoly on electricity sales, state regulators have put policies in place that maintain our reliance on coal, natural gas and nuclear energy, and make renewable energy ownership increasingly inaccessible.
Communities of color and lower income communities pay the biggest price for dirty energy, in both exposure to pollution and also in percentage of income spent on electricity.
Phoenix is among the most heavily polluted cities in the nation, especially where I live in south Phoenix. My ZIP code is among the dirtiest the nation, and home to 40 percent of the city’s hazardous emissions.
Shifting to renewable energy will help improve the health and well-being of our communities while also creating economic opportunities.
But those of us who would benefit the most from innovations like rooftop solar are currently accessing these technologies the least. Low and moderate-income families make up 40 percent of the U.S. population but only 5 percent of rooftop solar owners.
While we will all benefit indirectly from expanded renewable energy use in Arizona, we need to remove barriers and create pathways for more households to produce their own electricity through rooftop solar or subscribe to neighborhood community solar projects.
What will it take to create the renewable energy future for Arizona we want and urgently need? The recently released Arizona edition of the NAACP Report “Just Energy Policies: Reducing Pollution and Creating Jobs“points the way forward.
For example, Arizona can implement statewide policies that promote distributed energy generation and fairly compensate individuals who generate a portion of their own electricity through rooftop or community solar.
One way to do so is with “net metering,” which allows households to reduce electricity bills by generating a