From: Gerard Manning <[email protected]>
Date: October 13, 2023 at 2:17:04 PM PDT
To: COUNCIL-Donna Colson <[email protected]>
Subject: PCE Exec meeting this Monday
Dear Donna,
I’m a Burlingame resident, we’ve been in touch about climate issues in the past, and we finally met in person at the Diane Papan event downtown a few weeks ago. I’m writing about an agenda item on your Exec Committee meeting this coming Monday. I hope it’s not a problem to write to your Burlingame Council address, I couldn’t find a PCE address.
On Monday, it looks like you will be asked to approve implementation of a near-carbon-copy of the NEM3.0 revision approved by the CPUC last year. It’s since been renamed to Solar Billing Plan (SBP) and then to Net Billing Tariff (NBT) (you know something stinks when they have to rename it twice!).
In the 6 months since NEM3 came into effect, it’s been an utter disaster for distributed energy - CALSSA, the solar installers group, say that orders are down by 80% or more, and will drop further if the AB205 ‘fixed charge’ proposal goes through.
I’m sure you know better than me how we need to triple electricity generation by 2045, how we are hamstrung with delays in building transmission lines, and how every ton of CO2 we emit today will stick around for centuries - so our actions now are as important as in 2045.
I’m not really sure how regulation or CCAs or politics works, but I would beg of you to at the least, have a transparent discussion about this proposal, and the negative impact it will have on PCEs plans for distributed power, on our local ability to withstand future heatwaves + PPSPs, and on our overall survival through the climate crisis. I’m not sure if you get private reports from staff, but I was shocked that the public agenda packet makes no mention of the impact on distributed generation goals or rooftop solar in general.
The CPUC is insanely out of line with the rest of California, the world, and especially San Mateo people, when it comes to addressing the climate crisis, so rubber-stamping their historically most hated decision (>150,000 written complaints, 8 hours of public comments at multiple meetings etc.) seems like a horrendous decision. At least have the debate and make your reasons transparent to your constituents, but better still, come up with a better plan!
Thanks so much for all you do on PCE and Burlingame council. I apologize if my email is a bit ‘shouty’ but it’s hard to talk about climate without getting het up a bit! Best wishes,
-Gerard Manning.