MidAmerican has a seat at the table at the Iowa Capitol. Are your representatives standing with Iowa farmers, homeowners, schools, churches, and business owners or sitting down with MidAmerican? Contact them to find out.
If you’ve seen any of this year’s newsletters and action alerts, you know Iowa Interfaith Power & Light can’t stop talking about MidAmerican’s Sunshine Tax and their attempt to monopolize the sun. The reason we keep talking about it, holding workshops, posting to Facebook, and asking supporters to contact their legislators is because we have an opportunity to stop this bill.
To maintain and grow our solar industry, it will take many more Iowans standing up against the big money behind the lobbying, the television ads, and the false argument that those solar panels on that church are costing the neighbors through unfair subsidies. Collectively we must ask our senators and representatives to oppose SF 583 and HF 669. Take time and read this excellent analysis from Iowa Environmental Council.
I snapped the photo above at the Senate Commerce subcommittee that advanced the bill on February 27. Standing around the table are environmental organizations and agriculture groups opposed to the bill. Sitting at the table are the three senators, their staff, and the MidAmerican lobbyist with the hand gesture. Yes, MidAmerican had a seat at the table and wrote the bill.
The choice couldn’t be clearer. Are Iowa legislators going to stand with Iowa voters or are they going to sit at the table with MidAmerican and let monopoly utilities impose a sunshine tax on homeowners, farmers, small business owners, churches, schools, and any other Iowan who wants to invest in customer-owned solar energy?
The answer to that question is still up for grabs. But we can make a difference. Our voices matter. That’s why the REAL Coalition, the sham “grassroots” organization representing the monopoly utilities, is buying television ads and flooding social media. They know if regular Iowan’s speak their minds in support of broad, bi-partisan public policy to support both customer-owned and utility scale solar energy, we can defeat their bill.
The investor owned utilities fought net metering in the early 2000s, but Iowa lawmakers stood by farmers, communities, schools, homeowners, and small businesses. We didn’t sacrifice customer-owned wind energy as a tradeoff for utility scale wind energy generation. The same is true for solar. We can have both. Iowa needs both.
But if this Sunshine Tax passes, the costs to Iowans wanting to install solar on their roofs, barns, schools, and churches will dramatically increase. If this bill passes, in the next five years, we can expect dozens of churches won’t install solar that likely would have. Scores of schools will take a pass on installing solar. Hundreds of farmers will pencil out an investment with too little return. Hundreds of businesses will calculate that the 50% or greater increase in the payback period of installing solar creates too much risk. A thousand homeowners will realize they would be providing value to the grid at times of peak demand, but would be penalized by this new tax rather than rewarded for their investment. The downturn in solar installations caused by this Sunshine Tax would also mean our state’s 800 plus solar installer jobs would be at risk.
Iowans have fought hard to make our state a clean energy leader, but our leadership is at risk. Last year, the investor owned utilities gutted our energy efficiency programs. This year they are going after net metering.
In the past, Iowans advocated for and won bi-partisan, clean energy laws and regulations. Clearly, we can’t take those victories for granted. We don’t have the money to buy television ads. What we do have is even more powerful. We have our voices and our votes. One of the most powerful, faith-based climate actions we can take right now is to contact our state senators and representatives and ask them to stand with farmers, homeowners, small business owners, churches, and schools and to oppose HF 669 and SF 583. Tell them Iowa must not let MidAmerican monopolize the sun.
Join fellow Iowans of faith for a workshop to Faithfully Protect Solar–March 16 in Des Moines, March 24 in Dubuque, and April 13 in Iowa City/Coralville