GREENFIELD — There are some who don’t feel too sunny about the net-metering bill heading to Gov. Baker for his signature.
John Ward, co-owner of Solar Store of Greenfield, said the bill, passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday, will eliminate the ability of large solar panel installation companies to pick up the slack smaller ones can’t handle.
“We cannot do enough rooftops to make a dent — or make a large enough dent — in global warming,” he said Saturday. “We need the big companies as a solution, as part of the solution.”
Ward was speaking as part of a panel on solar net metering. The rest of the panel was made up of Stolle Singleton, the director of legislative affairs at the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Jim Barry, the western regional coordinator of the state Department of Energy Resources, and Joe Fiori, business development manager of Nexamp, a commercial-scale solar firm.
Ward said Nexamp is one of the larger companies to which he was referring.
The panel was one of three that guests could attend at Greenfield Community College as part of the 2016 Conference for Franklin and Hampshire County Municipal Officials, hosted by Senate President Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) and the Hampshire and Franklin Regional councils of governments.
The bill, viewed by some as a compromise, raises solar energy caps by 3 percent on the state’s net metering program, allowing homeowners, solar developers and local governments to sell excess power they generate back to the electrical grid for credit on their bills.
The compromise between House and Senate leaders to raise the cap on the amount of solar energy that public and private customers can sell back to the grid by 3 percent, would also decrease the value of the incentives for new projects.
Ward said he dislikes several aspects of the bill. He also said it was passed too quickly. He said the bill was introduced Tuesday afternoon, passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday.
Rosenberg, however, said the bill took more than a year to pass. He said it was introduced in January 2015 and got stuck in committee before being resolved last week following months of negotiations by a joint conference committee. Rosenberg said he did not vote because he does not vote on most bills.
In the panel session, Ward expressed concern that the bill will harm the state’s solar industry. He said companies will move to more solar-friendly states like New York and California if Massachusetts does not create a better economic climate.
Bill Perlman, a chairman of FRCOG’s executive committee, who sat in the audience, said climate change is driving up the cost of solar energy and people shouldn’t nitpick over caps.
“An old boss of mine used to say that we’re milking mice,” he said. “We have to understand there is no such thing as no-impact energy. It’s going to hurt something. But we need it, because if we don’t do it now and we don’t push it as hard as we possibly can, there will be no long-term plan.”