Walmart Plots to derail Rooftop Solar Energy Revolution

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/10/walmart-rooftop-revolution.html

Walmart Plots to derail Rooftop Solar Energy Revolution
By contributors | Oct. 11, 2014
By Deirdre Fulton via Commondreams.org

The Walton family—who, as heirs to the Walmart fortune, have more wealth than 42 percent of American families combined—are impeding the nation’s transition to a clean energy future, a new study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) finds.

“The Waltons claim to have a deep commitment to sustainability, but their support for anti-solar initiatives tells a different story,” said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at ILSR and author of How the Walton Family is Threatening America’s Clean Energy Future (pdf). “The Waltons are investing in efforts that both undercut clean energy and prevent average Americans from benefiting economically from solar power.”

The report reveals that since 2010, the Waltons have donated $4.5 million to more than 20 organizations, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, and the American Enterprise Institute, which are leading state campaigns against clean energy polices such as those that encourage utilities to source a share of their electricity from renewables or allow customers with rooftop solar systems to feed any excess electricity they produce back into the grid and be paid the going retail rate for it.

One such organization, the Goldwater Institute for Public Policy in Arizona, has received half a million in Walton Family Foundation grants and insists “there is no such thing as clean energy.” The Goldwater Institute has sued to overturn the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard policy, which mandates that utilities rely on renewable energy for some of their power and also says that a portion of this power must come from small-scale local sources, such as rooftop solar.

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http://www.ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ILSR-WaltonSolar-Report-Final.pdf

Executive Summary

Critical fights over the future of our energy system are underway in dozens of states, with far-reaching implications for both climate change and our economy. At issue is the recent, rapid expansion of rooftop solar, which is revolutionizing who owns and profits from electricity generation. Rather than power production being monopolized by utilities, more and more households are becoming energy
producers themselves. This transition is saving families money and driving the creation of tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.

But rooftop solar threatens the profits of utilities and the companies that supply them with energy. These powerful interests have gone on the offensive and are campaigning to weaken policies that enable rooftop solar in multiple states. They have begun to score wins, including a pivotal victory in Arizona, where regulators granted the state’s largest utility, APS, the right to impose new fees on households with rooftop solar. The fees have undermined the economics of rooftop solar, dramatically slowing installations and causing widespread job losses.

While journalists have begun to expose the powerful interests, including the Koch brothers, behind these campaigns, the involvement of another wealthy family — the Waltons, heirs to the Walmart fortune and majority owners of the company’s stock — has gone unnoticed. This report finds:

* Since 2010, the Waltons have donated $4.5 million to more than 20 organizations, including Americans for Prosperity and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which are leading the state campaigns against clean energy.

* A Walton-owned solar company, First Solar, was instrumental in helping APS win in Arizona, backing the utility even as the rest of the solar industry joined environmental and consumer groups in opposing the new fees. First Solar builds solar arrays for utilities and, as such, stands to benefit even if households are blocked from generating their own electricity, even if it means slowing the overall growth of solar. The company is now intervening in a fight over rooftop fees in Nevada and tracking an emerging regulatory debate over rooftop solar in California.

* First Solar helped instigate a World Trade Organization proceeding that could force several U.S. states to repeal laws that use solar
incentives to spur local job creation. First Solar does most of its manufacturing in Malaysia.

The findings of this report are significant in part because of what’s at stake for our energy system. Rooftop solar offers an enormous opportunity to accelerate the transition to renewable power, broaden the ownership of electricity generation, and create tens of thousands of good jobs. We can’t let the Waltons snatch that future from us.

This report also offers an instructive case study of the complexities of contemporary green-washing. For nearly a decade, the Waltons have presented themselves as environmentalists. But as this report, and our previous reports on Walmart’s environmental impact, demonstrate, beneath the family’s public environmentalism lies a deeper agenda: furthering a highly concentrated, and deeply destructive, corporate economic model. The Waltons’ environmentalism is best understood not as a counterpoint to this imperative, but rather as a tool in service to it.

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[djean111]

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