Sunny LA Goes For Solar

Listen to the full audio story

Download the MP3

L.A. is a really sunny place. It gets up to 278 days of sunshine a year. So you'd think L.A. would be a major player in developing solar power. But the city hasn't gotten as far as you would think.

The DWP is still one of the dirtiest utilities in the States, getting almost half of its power from coal. That doesn't fit in with Mayor Villaraigosa's vision of making L.A. the greenest city in America. He's thrown his weight behind solar power, saying, "We use more solar energy, we use less dirty coal."

Today, Villaraigosa, a born-and-bred Angeleno, signed an ordinance empowering the DWP to test a new "feed-in tariff" program that makes it easier for businesses to generate power on site and sell it back to the grid.

City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who partnered with the Mayor to write the ordinance, explained:

"A feed-in tariff allows a solar provider to go to multiple businesses or somebody who
owns huge warehouses throughout the region and say to them, 'Look, I can make a deal
with DWP [for buying our solar-generated power] if you give me the tops of your roofs.
The businesses make a little something, the solar provider makes a little something, and
the people of L.A. have better, greener energy."

But the devil's in the details, said Adam Browning of Vote Solar, a San Francisco green-energy policy group -- the proposed projects have to be doable.

"As long as there are strong project viability requirements in a market-based approach [like
this], that is to say, you make sure that the projects that are bid in are real projects, not
spurious ones, [it can work]."

This version of the feed-in-tariff program is a test to work out those details. If all goes well, the program will be ramped up next year, incorporating what was learned from the test-version about implementation, customer service, and pricing.

Improving the city's environment is personal for the mayor:

"I remember when I couldn't get out of my classroom -- they'd keep you in your classroom
because the air was so dirty."

And he clearly hopes he'll leave a lasting legacy:

" As we go, so goes the state, and so goes the nation."

With business, labor, and neighborhood groups behind it, proponents think this can serve as a model for the nation.