Tyson Slocum: Community Solar Programs Can Deliver Cheap Renewable Energy to All Income Groups

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

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Community Solar Programs Can Deliver Cheap Renewable Energy to All Income Groups

Posted April 6, 2016

Interview with Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Solar power is booming across the United States, in part because the cost of solar panels has plummeted in recent years. The solar industry forecasts that roughly 20,000 mega-watts of solar capacity will come online over the next two years, doubling the country's existing solar capacity, which today only provides a tiny fraction of the nation's overall energy mix.

Residential rooftop solar panels that produce electricity are one of the fastest growing sectors of the solar boom, but more than three-quarters of America’s homes are not suitable for solar installation, for a variety of reasons. However these homes can benefit from what's called community solar, in which solar arrays are built in a separate location – and residents can buy into the system to receive electricity. But community solar is not available in every state, mostly due to opposition from the electric utility industry.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at Public Citizen. Here he explains how solar installations work, why utilities often oppose these systems, and how community solar programs that target the participation of low income groups can establish a business model that will allow the greatest number of people to benefit from solar energy.

TYSON SLOCUM: There is no question that when you’ve got more and more customers generating their own electricity – either from their own solar panels that they own, or generating power through a community solar program – that is in opposition to the financial interest of the incumbent distributional utility, because a utility earns money based on the sale of electrons to its customers, and if a larger proportion of its customers are not buying those electrons from the utility anymore, or, in some cases, actually requiring the utility to buy electrons from them, in the case of a successful rooftop solar facility that is producing electrons in excess of what the household uses in electric power. So there’s no question that the nature of the electric utility business model that’s existed since the 1880s when Thomas Edison invented the first centralized power plant in New York City, we have to recognize that technology, in the form of cost-effective rooftop solar requires dramatic changes in the corporate and business structure of electric utilities.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Tyson Slocum, how are solar systems funded, and who benefits?

TYSON SLOCUM: The primary way that rooftop solar owners can get compensated for their costs associatedwith buying and installing and operating these systems is through various tax subsidies. At the federal level, there’s an investment tax credit that is set to phase out and expire over the next five years. And that simply allows you to take a tax credit based on the value of the cost of the solar system that you’re installing on your rooftop. There’s also, depending upon the state or municipality, a number of different state and local tax incentives.

But the biggest incentive, this is featured in more than 30 states, is something called net metering, which says that if I am producing more electrons from my rooftop solar system than I am using in my household, then every month I can get credit on my electric bill for the excess electricity that my solar panels sold into the grid. But the amount of the payment that is provided to the solar owner is based upon the retail price of electricity. Now, if you’ve got one percent of households in a utility service area that are getting paid by other, non-solar customers, that’s not a big deal. But if 5 percent, or 10 percent or 20 percent of all of a utility’s customers are producing their own electricity from rooftop solar, and are getting paid by customers that don’t have rooftop solar, it does create an equity issue, where those that have the financial or technical capability to generate their own power from rooftop solar, they are going to see dramatically lower electric bills, and those customers that cannot afford access to rooftop solar or don’t live in a building where it’s possible – because they live in a multi-family building, they don’t own their building because they rent, or if the building is just not in a suitable sunny place because of trees or whatever, they’re going to see higher rates.

So the problem has been that the utilities are saying, There’s this cost shifting, and that’s why we shouldn’t do rooftop solar at all. That’s not an excuse. The fact of the matter is that all we need to do is to design programs that maximize not only the deployment of rooftop solar, but the equitable access to rooftop solar. And I think the community solar concept is one of those ways that we can ensure that we get penetration of rooftop solar into low-income and other communities that otherwise might not be able to get it, because you can design a community solar program with specific targeted goals for low income participation and you can do that by pooling resources together. So that’s why we like what’s known as a Value of Solar Tariff, that tries to more accurately pinpoint the benefits of solar production to the environment, to the climate, to the utility system and for the household.

For more information, visit Energy Program at Public Citizen.