Letter: Supporting solar energy best policy

From: Patricia March

Columbus

As an owner of solar panels for the last nine years, I read with great interest the Feb. 18, 2019, article in the Indy Star entitled “Dark days linger for the state’s solar industry”. Sen. Jim Merritt, Republican chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee, stated, “I’d like to give SB 309 some time to see if we did in fact dampen down the solar industry. …I think we need to give this some time to see where we went wrong and where we went right.”

Of course, SB 309 dampened down the solar industry. Surely that was the whole point of 309. What an infuriating, mocking, disingenuous statement!

I suggest Sen. Merritt read the Star article to educate himself if he really can’t figure out what happened. According to Merritt, he needs “at least two and maybe five years to find out if we put a complete damp blanket on solar.” Sounds to me like a complete damp blanket was the plan, and a drop in the growth rate of the solar industry by 93 percent suggests the plan was quite effective!

Rooftop solar energy is not a hippy-dippy, West Coast idea. It is a totally commonsense, brilliantly simple concept using a free, nonpolluting resource to create electric energy for homes, businesses, governments, churches and other organizations. Who doesn’t think this is a good idea?

Perhaps it’s the politicians who receive campaign contributions, free meals and complimentary tickets to sporting and other events from lobbyists for industries that make their money from costly and polluting fossil fuels. When decisions made by elected officials go against the public interest, and ordinary citizens are trying to figure out why, it pays to follow the money. When that is done, the answer is clear: Solar power for ordinary citizens is being stifled because it represents a threat to shareholder profits and politicians’ campaign contributions and personal perks.

Merritt received $80,000 in campaign contributions from the utility industry, but he’s not the only one who has benefited. The Indy Star has reported that from 2011-2017 the investor-owned utilities and their lobbyists spent many millions of dollars wining and dining some of our pro-fossil fuels legislators and filling their campaign coffers ensuring that solar power would continue to be stymied in our state.

I love the fact that:

• My family has solar panels bought with our own hard-earned money

• On sunny days we can see our electric meter run backward

• Many months of the year, we only have to pay Duke’s $10 monthly minimum

• Our solar energy doesn’t pollute the air or water, and thereby makes my family or my neighbors sick

• Our solar energy isn’t contributing to global warming.

Indiana policymakers should be working to make life better for the state’s residents, helping people put more of their energy dollars back in their pockets, and creating a healthier environment in which we all live — not funding political campaigns and receiving personal perks by doing the bidding of the big utility companies.