Cooper Admin Appears to Confirm CPR’s “Clean Energy” Suspicions

Via Unsplash

Yet more evidence the Cooper Admin preaches “clean energy” simply to advance protectionist policy for the solar industry

On Oct. 26, we wrote about potential unspoken motives behind Gov. Roy Cooper’s decision to veto Senate Bill 678, which classified nuclear energy as “clean” energy.

We speculated at the time:

A provision was added [to S. 678] in the House that increased by ten-fold the percentage of electricity generation than can come from rooftop solar leasing programs… It’s a policy question that can and surely will be explored further, but it was taken out of this final bill (recall the bill passed the Senate unanimously without this provision in it the first time).

But the rooftop leasing provision, if left in place, would’ve been a boon to Cooper’s solar industry allies. There’s some speculation that Cooper’s veto came because the final bill didn’t include this provision.

If true, that’s Cooper yet again opposing clean energy because it doesn’t single out his preferred clean energy vendors.

Well, that unspoken motive got a lot closer to an explicit motive on Friday. Peter Ledford, Gov. Roy Cooper’s Clean Energy Director (we like to call the post “Solar Industry Director”), specifically called out that solar leasing provision in public remarks at an industry conference.

The News & Observer reports:

Ledford also referenced Senate Bill 678, legislation that removed some limitations on permitting for nuclear powerplants. When the bill entered a conference committee made up of House and Senate members, Ledford noted, it included an increase on rooftop solar leasing limits that many advocates said could establish a market in North Carolina. While in that conference committee, the provision was removed and the final bill ultimately was designed to help build new nuclear power plants.

The News & Observer’s framing of the rooftop leasing issue is a bit off the mark, but that’s to be expected considering a climate activist organization quite literally funds their work.

In any event, the decision by Cooper’s Solar Industry Director to publicly complain that the sweetheart solar provision didn’t survive in S. 678 is yet more evidence that Cooper vetoed the bill because of its absence.

It’s funny. Cooper has been talking about his devotion to clean energy for years and years. But somehow, he always finds ways to oppose some forms of clean energy to the benefit of one industry: solar.

We’re fully on board with cleaner energy – given a choice between more carbon emissions or fewer carbon emissions, it seems obvious to choose fewer. Nuclear and solar and gas and other forms all move towards that policy goal.

But we’re not on board with preaching the virtues of “clean energy” simply to advance protectionist policy for a favored industry. Cooper has been doing it for years.