![\"California](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/dreamstime_m_15103637-1-700x467.jpg\")
<\/p>\n By Martin McConnell
\n April 21, 2026<\/p>\n
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The Environmental Working Group (EWG)<\/a> and its allies in California are asking the California Supreme Court to review an appeals court decision that they say \u201cthreatens the future of clean energy in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with the Center for Biological Diversity<\/a> and the Protect Our Communities Foundation<\/a>, the EWG petitioned the court on April 17 to review the California Court of Appeal\u2019s<\/a> March ruling. The ruling upholds a policy instated by the California Public Utilities Commission<\/a> that sharply scales back net energy metering programs<\/a> around the Golden State.<\/p>\n The policy was originally sought out and lobbied for by California\u2019s three monopoly utility companies, the EWG says. In exchange, the group\u2019s coalition argues that upholding the policy \u201cgave too much deference to the commission\u2019s decision-making\u201d and ignores the state legislature\u2019s recent directives.<\/p>\n \u201cMany Californians struggle to pay their ever-increasing electricity bills, and the commission\u2019s ill-conceived policy will only make matters worse,\u201d says Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG\u2019s SVP for California. \u201cPutting clean, reliable rooftop solar financially out of reach for millions of renters and homeowners makes no sense.<\/p>\n \u201cAn affordability crisis is the time to promote efforts to reduce energy costs and save people money \u2013 not reward the monopoly utilities by throttling their competition.\u201d<\/p>\n Righting an affordability crisis<\/p>\n The recently upheld policy has \u201cfailed to account for the many benefits of small, distributed solar systems,\u201d according to the EWG. These distributed energy resources help to lower costs and make energy more affordable in California, where electricity is often at a premium<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe utilities don\u2019t like this program because it hurts their bottom line,\u201d Del Chiaro said last November, upon hearing of the court\u2019s initial decision. \u201cThey see rooftop solar as their biggest competitive threat and want to halt its growth, using the CPUC to achieve that end.\u201d<\/p>\n All of this comes back to a 2022 decision by the CPUC, which \u201cseverely damaged\u201d California\u2019s rooftop solar program. After triggering a sharp drop in solar installations, the decision inadvertently caused tens of thousands of solar worker layoffs and company bankruptcies around the state.<\/p>\n Since then, the state\u2019s Supreme Court has already overturned one appeals court decision, sending the case back for another review. Now, the EWG hopes to get their case heard once more, before the state\u2019s highest court.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Supreme Court agrees to hear our case, we\u2019ll make clear how the commission\u2019s anti-solar policy fails on every front,\u201d Del Chiaro adds. \u201cIt\u2019s unlawful, undermines efforts to lower electricity bills and harms Californians and our environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Tags: California<\/a>, California Public Utilities Commission<\/a>, Environmental Working Group<\/a>, net metering<\/a>, policy<\/a>, rooftop solar<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Martin McConnell April 21, 2026 The Environmental Working Group (EWG) and its allies in California are asking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,14047,98596,120250,5409,120251],"class_list":{"0":"post-278734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-california-public-utilities-commission","12":"tag-environmental-working-group","13":"tag-net-metering","14":"tag-policy","15":"tag-rooftop-solar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"gavel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/gavel-with-solar-panels-700x467.jpg\")
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