Cloudy Forecast for LA's Solar Power Vote

On Tuesday, Angelenos will vote on Measure B, a plan to install 400 megawatts of solar panels around Los Angeles.

Based on the title alone – the Green Energy and Good Jobs for Los Angeles Program – the measure should pass resoundingly in a city that has consistently ranked at the top of most-polluted cities lists.

But Measure B’s passage is anything but assured.

Controversies have erupted over how hastily the proposal was put on the ballot, two widely differing independent analyses – one that estimated the program would cost $3.6 billion; another that estimated it would cost, at most, $1.6 billion – and accusations that the whole deal is practically organized crime, with the massive contract to install the panels going to one union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Lost in all the finger-pointing is the question of what impact Measure B would have on the solar industry, taxpayers and pollution in Los Angeles.

First, it's important to remember that Measure B is just one part of the LA Solar Energy Plan, a program by city's Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to develop 1,280 MW of solar power in Los Angeles by 2020. The plan offers an ingenious solution to the problem of energy-hogging air conditioners being needed not only when the sun is at its peak but also when other energy demands are highest: Use the sun, which shines in Los Angeles 276 days a year, to power the city and keep it cool. As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa explains:

"The sun’s power and our climate make solar power Los Angeles’ most abundant natural resource."

The LA Solar Energy Plan anticipates tapping that resource at three levels, focusing on consumer solar projects, with feed-in tariffs, financing and distributed generation to sell power to the grid; a large-scale solar plan, likely with large solar power facilities in the desert; and utility-owned solar programs, which Measure B addresses.

Measure B alone is ambitious. It would create 400 MW of power by 2014 by placing solar installations on city properties and on city-owned airports, and by offering incentives for commercial, industrial and institutional customers to have solar installations put on their property in exchange for incentives.

It would almost double the U.S. solar capacity in 2007, power approximately 250,000 homes, and prevent about 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted in Los Angeles. But these savings would still be dwarfed by the county's annual 90 million-ton CO2 footprint.

Some groups support the overall LA Solar Energy Plan, but oppose Measure B specifically.

Adam Browning, Executive Director of the Vote Solar Initiative, a non-profit organization that promotes solar energy, worries that it will handicap the private solar market.

He wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the project had a lot of upside in terms of economies of scale, but that it also had a potential for utilities to use their market power, access to customers and monopolies over transmission lines to crowd out other solar players and ultimately limit the city's solar production. Noting LADWP’s reputation as the dirtiest utility in the nation, due to its reliance on coal, he added: