In commitment to solar energy, Pennsylvania sees neighbors pull ahead

For the solar industry in Pennsylvania, Wednesday is a day of envy.

At 10 a.m., Delaware Gov. Jack Markell is to sign a legislative measure boosting his state's commitment to alternative energy, including a promise to get 3.5 percent of its electricity from the sun by 2025.

It is the sort of event solar installers had hoped to be celebrating by now - in Pennsylvania.

Those ambitions fizzled, however, when the legislature recessed right after passing the state budget on July 3, effectively killing any chance this year for adoption of the long-debated House Bill 2405.

That legislation would have upped the state's obligation to use a variety of clean-energy options. Of most value to the state's fledgling solar industry: H.B. 2405 would increase from 0.5 percent to 3 percent the amount of solar power utilities would have to provide by 2024.

The current minimum of 0.5 percent by 2021 has been in place since 2004, when Pennsylvania first instituted alternative energy use standards.

With Delaware moving to 3.5 percent, Maryland to 2 percent, and New Jersey setting new megawatt requirements that equate to about 3 percent, Pennsylvania is losing solar ground in the region. That puts it at risk of losing the approximately 600 solar businesses it has and being unable to lure others, industry advocates contend.

So instead of waiting until next year to renew the push for passage of H.B. 2405, solar proponents are launching a new plan of attack.

They want the legislature to embrace the idea of a stand-alone bill that would hike the state's solar-energy requirements only. That would leave other aspects of the controversial H.B. 2405 - nuclear power and clean coal, for instance - for later consideration.

"It's really important we have this bill to move the industry from a rebate-dependent energy source to a more market-driven energy source," Maureen Mulligan of Sustainable Futures Communications said in an interview. She is the chief lobbyist in Pennsylvania for the two largest solar-energy trade associations in the region: Solar Alliance and the Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy Industries Association/Pennsylvania division.

Mulligan will attempt to make her case for a solar-only bill at a House Majority Policy Committee hearing on alternative-energy issues in Worcester, Montgomery County, Wednesday afternoon.

In an interview Tuesday, John Hanger, Pennsylvania's environmental secretary, said a solar-only bill "would be certainly better than doing nothing in the fall."