The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a ballot referendum, which could have rolled back a controversial December 2015 regulator decision that lowered payments to rooftop solar customers.
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Attorneys who argued the case before the court last Friday in Las Vegas didn’t immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment.
LAS VEGAS (AP) – There won’t be a voter measure about rooftop solar electricity rates on the statewide ballot in Nevada in November, following a ruling Thursday from the state Supreme Court.
But the referendum/initiative issue was not the basis of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the lower court’s injunction against the proposal being on the ballot. If the Legislature takes no action on the proposal, voters may petition for the placement of an initiative on the ballot for a vote.
Despite the purported setback, it is clear that there is support for rooftop solar in Nevada.
Citizens for Solar and Energy Fairness, a group backed by utility NV Energy, had also described the measure as “affirmatively misleading”.
The ruling is a blow to SolarCity, which spent at least $2 million pushing the referendum, and a victory for NV Energy, which spent more than $1 million fighting it.
“While we’re disappointed that the Court ruled in such a way that the people of Nevada will not be able to vote on this issue, it clarifies the role Nevada’s leadership must play in representing the majority of Nevadans who want to bring solar back to Nevada”.
Referendum proponents, led by the Citizens for Solar and Energy Fairness political committee, argued that a law passed by the state Legislature a year ago allowing the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to raise charges for rooftop solar customers killed a growing clean-energy industry in a state with abundant sunshine. “Fox said that ClearView Energy Partners is “seeing a trend in which solar advocates are ‘pivoting to the people” to have important electric rate design decisions influenced – if not decided – in the court of public opinion”. Some Nevada lawmakers have said they did not expect the change in net metering to affect those who already have rooftop solar panels, and ClearView expects Governor Brian Sandoval’s energy task force to allow existing solar customers to maintain their retail rate net metering arrangements, Fox said.
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The sell-back program, called net metering, had become so popular that NV Energy complained it was reaching a statutory cap in the number of participants.
