Overview

• The Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that the Court of Appeal must reconsider the CPUC’s NEM 3.0 decision under the proper judicial review standard.
• Justices found the lower court applied a pre-1998 deferential approach instead of the stricter review required by a 1998 legislative expansion.
• The high court stopped short of ruling on the substance of the rate cuts and left the legality of the roughly 75% compensation reduction to be decided on remand.
• The lawsuit challenging NEM 3.0 was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect Our Communities Foundation and the Environmental Working Group.
• Industry data shows that the shift from retail-rate credits to avoided-cost payments caused an 82% drop in new installation requests and threatened about 17,000 solar jobs.