1st Amendment
Americans have the right to put solar on their homes or
businesses. Today’s systems beautify and add value to
communities and homes, and yet antiquated rules prevent many
homes and businesses from going solar. From restrictive
covenants to onerous connection, permitting and inspection fees
these rules create fundamental barriers to solar. Utilities
should not be allowed to restrict green power with red tape.
2nd Amendment
Americans have the right to connect their solar system to the
grid with uniform national standards. This is as simple as
creating a standard jack for telephones. Can you imagine buying
a phone in Nevada and bringing it home to California and finding
out it doesn’t fit into the wall jack? Other industries don’t
stand for this and neither should we.
3rd Amendment
Consumers have the right to Net Meter and be compensated at
the very least with full retail electricity rates. Call this
solar's eminent domain-utilities use the power we make, and we
expect to be compensated at its actual value. This is not just
the cost, but the true value of solar including our security
benefits, peak power benefits and environmental benefits - as
well as the true price for carbon.
4th Amendment
The Solar Power Industry has the right to a fair competitive
environment. It's the most basic right there is-equality under
the law. Today, solar has anything but. And that’s not just an
opinion, that’s a fact. From 2002 to 2008, federal subsidies for
fossil fuels were $72 billion while solar received less than $1
billion. This is completely disconnected with the desires of the
American people. Recent independent polling shows that 92% of
the public supports greater use of solar. And yet taxpayers are
forced to subsidize companies like ExxonMobil, companies that
are the richest in the history of the world. It’s that
simple-and that wrong. Subsidies aren’t the only issue of
fairness, which leads me to number 5.
5th Amendment
We also have the right to equal access to public lands. Oil
and natural gas companies are operating on 45 million acres of
public lands. Today, solar companies have access to ZERO.
America has the best solar resources in the world and we can’t
harness the full potential of the sun without accessing our
sun-baked lands of the West. Of course, there’s little point in
collecting energy unless there’s a means of distributing it.
6th Amendment
We have the right to interconnect and build new transmission
lines. Here, too, we seek no more than what other industries
already have. The next great build out of our transmission lines
must connect the vast solar resources in the southwest to the
population centers across the United States.
7th Amendment
Americans must have the right to buy solar electricity from
our utilities. Consumers have no choice but to buy power from
utilities. Although recently, some utilities have started to
listen to the 92 percent of Americans who want them to
prioritize a kilowatt of power drawn from the sun over any other
energy source. We have a long way to go. Therefore, for any
renewable portfolio standard to be effective, at either the
federal or state level, it must contain a large carve out for
all solar energy technologies.
8th Amendment
Consumers have the right, and should expect, the highest
ethical treatment from the solar industry. From minimizing our
impact on the environment to providing systems that work better
than advertized to ensuring that we accurately communicate how
incentives work for consumers, our industry must operate at a
higher ethical standard than any other. We will not stand for
those who cheat, lie and take advantage of the good name of
solar energy.
We declare these rights not on behalf of our companies, but
on behalf of our customers and our country. We seek no more than
the freedom to compete on equal terms and no more than the
liberty for consumers to choose the energy source they think
best. These rights, like those on which country was founded, are
a simple matter of common-sense. In fact, you might even call
them "self-evident."
But that doesn't mean they're self-evident in the halls of
power, especially when our opponents are pumping as much haze
into the energy debate as they are into the environment.
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