Solar lobbyists demand government protection to prop up industry

It was like a scene from Atlas Shrugged: Polly Shaw of China-based Suntech told an Arizona House Government Committee hearing that massive solar production subsidies and even bigger consumer subsidies were not enough. If the Legislature passed House Bill 2701 and repealed the Arizona Corporation Commission’s rules that require utility companies to purchase increasing amounts of solar energy over the next 15 years regardless of the projected $1.2 billion cost to consumers, her company would pull its operations and a few dozen jobs from the state.

The Committee rejected her threat, approving the bill 5-2. But the next day, Governor Jan Brewer and Speaker of the House Kirk Adams, who co-sponsored the bill before deciding to kill it, successfully pressured the primary sponsor, Representative Debbie Lesko, to withdraw it.

Solar may be the most-subsidized industry in America, and is perhaps the only product that the Arizona government forces people to buy regardless of cost or technological feasibility. Solar doesn’t yet make sense as a wide-spread energy policy, and the mandates vastly exceed the Commission’s rate-making authority. That is why the Goldwater Institute is challenging the rules in court and 51 legislators co-sponsored the bill that would repeal them.

So, the solar lobby invoked the one word that will make normally sensible elected officials do crazy things: jobs. Yes, Suntech will employ 75 people. But between the lavish subsidies and costly mandates these may be the most expensive jobs ever created. Nevertheless, the strategy eventually worked; the bill is dead for now.

Suntech’s Shaw claimed the bill would “obliterate the demand for solar,” which may be true if that demand primarily is government-created. Mandate-based industrial policy didn’t work out well in the Soviet Union and it won’t work in Arizona. What’s especially perplexing, though, are the supposedly “pro-market” politicians who think its time has come.

Arizona should stop spending more and more in a frenzied competition with other states over who can give the biggest subsidies to solar and instead create a favorable tax and regulatory climate for all businesses, large and small, in any industry.

Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

Learn More:

Goldwater Institute: Goldwater Institute Appeals Lawsuit Against Arizona Corporation Commission

Goldwater Institute: Solar subsidies–or a better economic climate for all?

Arizona Republic: Solar, without intrusive regulations (Letter to the editor by Le Templar)