Last week, the California Energy Commission decided to approve a proposal from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to power some new Sacramento housing developments using offsite solar panel installations, rather than the rooftop solar panels now required for new homes in California.
While the recent solar mandate accounts for “community solar” in the case of shaded homes or apartment buildings, the recent decision loosens existing regulations by allowing developers to decide whether to use rooftop solar or SMUD’s community solar.
Because the new home solar mandate is so new, the energy commission’s decision carries a lot of weight for the future of its enforcement, according to [Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.]
“There is a really strong precedential value here,” he said. “This is a new regulation that just went into effect, and this community solar piece of it hasn’t really been tested, and so it’s going to set a precedent for years to come for how utilities and real estate developers will respond to this regulation.”
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