Rooftop Solar Will Make California Homes More Affordable

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As you may know, California has decided to make rooftop solar mandatory in all new houses starting in 2020. But you might not know this:

In addition to the solar mandate, the commission approved new insulation and air filter requirements for newly built homes. In all, the new residential requirements are expected to make a single-family house $9,500 more expensive to build on average, but save $19,000 in reduced utility bills over a 30-year period, according to the Energy Commission. Monthly mortgage payments should rise by an average of $40, but utility bills should fall by $80, a commission analysis says.

The $9,500 estimate you keep hearing about includes not just the solar panels, but also the new insulation and air filter stuff. And it’s all likely to make homes in California less expensive by the only metric that matters: monthly payments.

I don’t have a strong opinion about this mandate because I haven’t spent any time digging into it. Tentatively, I’d say that it sounds like a good idea even if it’s not the best idea ever. There’s no law that says we can’t have both rooftop solar and utility-scale solar, after all. We have lots of sunshine in California, so why not make use of it as broadly as we can?

Rooftop solar does present genuine issues for utilities, especially if it includes net metering (the ability to sell excess power back to the grid). Still, these issues aren’t insurmountable, and utilities generally protest too much. Solar and wind are the future until something better comes along, and I’m perfectly happy to live in a state that not only cares about climate change, but also has a powerful hedge against future increases in the price of gas and oil.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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