Killing solar jobs, businesses in Kentucky would not be conservative

These days “conservative” practices don’t match up with real conservatives, who are all about the support of open and free markets and fair competition, and against any restrictive regulations that would hinder competition.

Now, a new breed of reverse-conservatives wants to undo existing legislation for the sake of benefiting a monopoly. The goal of these reverse-conservatives is to prevent small business development when it gets in the way of the large companies by presenting inconvenient competition.

Anti-competitive legislation that would doom roof-top solar development is awaiting a Friday morning vote in the House. Senate Bill 100 would reverse existing net-metering regulation adopted by the Kentucky Public Service commission.

Distributed energy, like roof-top solar, provides electricity at the doorstep without running miles in expensive transmission lines, thereby reducing transmission and distribution losses. This benefits all, including utilities.

Any legislator that supports the anti-solar bill is sacrificing small and medium sized solar businesses and technologies that would adopt solar in the future.

The issue was fought particularly hard last year, but thanks to a bipartisan effort was defeated, despite the more than $300,000 that spent rolling out false propaganda.

The existing net-metering law protects the utilities by capping at 1 percent the market share that can come from roof-top solar. Presently, some 1,100 roof-top solar homes represent about 100th of the 1 percent cap allowed. The utilities are not fighting against net-metering, they are fighting against competition.

Net-metering reduces the need for utilities to purchase additional power at expensive peak times and decentralizes the power grid, which means it makes Kentucky less vulnerable to outages and improves grid resilience, which is needed.

Consumers support keeping net-metering which allows them to install solar and produce clean power that they want but can’t get from their utilities. Or if offered, it’s at a much higher cost. Having the present net-metering law, allows them to choose. Their voices helped defeat the anti-solar bill last year.

Last year, the day after the bill was defeated, solar folks went back to work and their businesses have picked back up since. Now, all are having to fight for the jobs they provide around the state.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that solar energy accounts for the largest proportion of employers in the electric power generation sector in the United States. At national level, the solar industry in 2016 employed just under 374,000 individuals in full- or part-time jobs vs. the entire fossil fuel industry of some 187,000. The solar workforce increased 25 percent in 2016.

In 2016, Kentucky’s electric power sector employed 1,722 in solar jobs, 2261 in coal and 472 in natural gas.

Kentucky doesn’t need more monster companies or monopolies. They are ineffective, not price competitive and do not contribute to the economy the way smaller businesses across the state do.

The Kentucky legislature developed and passed the present net-metering interconnection law. It’s odd that “reverse conservatives” are vigorously fighting a law that’s founded on good conservative principles and contains limits to protect the utilities long before those limits are reached.

Kris O’Daniel is a farmer in Springfield. Reach her at krisodaniel@ncsmail.net