Solar Round Up: What’s Happening in the Courts and Our Community

Bill Powers is an energy expert, clean power advocate, and engineer specialized in local renewable resource strategies.  He is an energy consultant with decades of experience analyzing utility infrastructure and wildfire mitigation spending, focusing here on SDG&E’s $6.9 billion investments. He is an energy engineer in San Diego sharing perspectives on public power and local solar advocacy.

Cailey Underhill is the Advocacy and Development Director for the Solar Rights Alliance. She leads campaigns to repeal fixed utility taxes and discusses critical solar-related bills moving through the legislature.

Genaro Bugarin is a Director at the Energy Coalition, highlighting community solar updates and on-the-ground implementation lessons from California’s first small, multi-sited projects.

Loretta Lynch is a lawyer who served as President of the California Public Utilities Commission during the first California Energy Crisis, fighting deregulation and monopoly utility bailouts. She provides crucial legal insights into NEM court cases and fights for community protections.

Ms. Lynch served on the CPUC from 1999 through 2004, including through California's Energy Crisis 2000 through 2002.  She fought deregulation and PG&E's first bankruptcy bailout, and has worked since in many venues for community-based renewable energy. Prior to government service, she was a partner at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco.