"Walmart heirs working to kill affordable rooftop solar power"

[applegrove]

Walmart heirs working to kill affordable rooftop solar power

by Laura Clawson at the Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/09/1335430/-Walmart-heirs-working-to-kill-affordable-rooftop-solar-power

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The Waltons' anti-solar efforts fall into two categories. Since 2010, they've given at least $4.5 million in donations to organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Prosperity that are trying to weaken clean energy policies at the state level. These donations are part of a widespread corporate attack on policies that allow homeowners to use rooftop solar panels not just to power their own houses, but to sell excess solar power to utility companies. These utility companies might not be against solar power, but they're definitely against losing business to household-level solar. The logic is a familiar one:


... beneath the [Walton] family’s public embrace of environmentalism lies a deeper agenda: furthering the highly concentrated corporate economic model that has generated so much wealth for so few, often at extraordinary cost to both the environment and working people. The Waltons’ environmentalism is best understood not as a curious counterpoint to this imperative, but rather as a tool in service to it.

They put that into very direct action with a solar company, First Solar. Yes, the Walmart Waltons own a solar company. But! First Solar doesn't build solar for households. It builds utility-scale solar arrays, which means its interests are fully aligned with utility companies. Really aligned:

In June 2013, Walton-owned First Solar sent shockwaves through the solar industry when its CEO, James Hughes, published an op-ed in the Arizona Republic endorsing a proposal by the state’s biggest utility to impose a new fee on households with rooftop solar. Averaging about $50 to $100 a month, the proposed fee would be large enough to completely destroy the economics of household energy production, halting the spread of residential rooftop solar in Arizona. As the rest of the solar industry closed ranks and joined with environmental and consumer groups in opposing the plan, First Solar backed the utility, insisting that it was right to maximize its financial position. Bryan Miller, a vice president at Sunrun and president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, put First Solar’s actions in perspective: “No solar company has publicly advocated against solar until First Solar.”




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[Ecumenist]

1. FUCK EM!! I am beginning to H-A-T-E these people. HOW MUCH FUCKING MONEY DO YOU

NEED? People need to wake the fuck up. These Motherfuckers are only interested in making as money as they possibly can for THEMSELVES and everyone else be damned.

[SheilaT]

2. I live in a western state, New Mexico, and in this part of the country

you typically do not own the mineral or the water rights of the land you own. Usually someone else owns them.

I am honestly surprised that someone hasn't figured out a way to tie up the solar rights, so that you cannot put a solar panel on your home and actually realize any benefit from it. Give it time.