What was once a luxury expense for the environmentally conscious California homeowner will now be a requirement in just two years. Starting in 2020, all new single-family homes built in the state will be required to have solar panels. California becomes the first state to mandate residential solar power now that the state Energy Commission unanimously approved the measure as part of California’s aggressive campaign to combat climate change. Governor Jerry Brown stated his intent to slash carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030.
California, long the vanguard of progressive energy policies, is already the nation’s largest solar market. While the mandate is a boost for the solar industry, critics warned that it will also drive up the cost of buying a house by almost $10,000. The price of solar company shares surged on the decision this past week while homebuilders’ fell.
Another critic of the mandate is Malibu resident and home designer Vitus Mataré, who called the state’s decision “near- sighted.” Mataré, who is also a physicist, weighed in with his opinion on the new rules with serious doubts.
“The state’s solar mandate fails to take into account the efficiency issues inherent in small scale solar energy production,” Mataré described in an interview with The Malibu Times. “The required residential systems will provide marginal savings over the anticipated lifetime of the panels while shifting energy costs to those homes that are not feeding back onto the grid at mid-day.”
Photovoltaics—the conversion of light into electricity—done poorly is an “environmental disaster,” Mataré said.
“The mandated program will result in a glut of short-lived, low-quality panels produced overseas littered on the roofs of California residences,” Mataré predicted. “The life expectancy of the current crop of silicon-based panels is significantly lower than advertised. The carbon footprint and long-term environmental impact associated with semiconductor manufacturing processes is unconscionably high.
“The California mandate will only exacerbate the global rush to bring substandard panels to market,” the home designer continued. “The failure rate and premature loss of efficiency guarantees they end up in our landfills. They cannot be recycled without a significant energy investment, even greater than the wasteful process used to create each panel in the first place. Meanwhile, the toxic silicon waste, doping materials and metals left over from the manufacturing process pose an ever-mounting environmental threat. Storage batteries made overseas will become another major source of long-term pollution.”
Cutting pollution, specifically, air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, is exactly what the Energy Commission is working toward with the mandate, according to information distributed by the agency.
“Under these new standards, buildings will perform better than ever, at the same time they contribute to a reliable grid,” Commissioner Andrew McAllister, Energy Commission’s lead on energy efficiency, said in a prepared statement. “The buildings that Californians buy and live in will operate very efficiently while generating their own clean energy. They will cost less to operate, have healthy indoor air and provide a platform for ‘smart’ technologies that will propel the state even further down the road to a low emissions future.”
While blasting the new solar requirements, Mataré did credit current utilities with offering solutions, including Southern California Edison’s Time Of Use (TOU) rate plan. TOU plans offer less expensive electricity during the overnight hours with tiered early morning and late-night hours, with the costliest electricity usage during the mid-day. TOU plans are often used by consumers with high electrical use, such as homeowners with electric cars who charge them overnight to benefit from cheaper rates. Mataré explained the plans can address mid-day use and “excessive power going back to the grid that time of day,” also adding, “Large commercial farms are much more efficient and can better address a myriad of efficiency issues of low-grade photovoltaics.”
As to what we might expect new homes in Malibu and other California cities to look like once the design of new homes must accommodate the solar panels, Mataré quipped, “Undoubtedly there will also be a lasting negative visual impact affecting us all.” He likened some homes to look like they’ll be “sporting erector set head gear.”
“Few architects will seek to integrate energy generating equipment into the tectonics of a home,” Mataré predicted. “Elon Musk’s innovative photovoltaic tiles come at a high price and [could] be abused in mundane fashion to create some truly hideous buildings that will remain eyesores for decades to come.”
Another Malibu architect with more than two decades’ experience building homes in the area, Bruce Bolander, said the new component to home building will make initial electrical costs rise simply as a new component to construction. However, he pointed out, “It’s not about the payback. It’s about reducing our carbon footprint.”