Response to Boston Globe Opinion Piece on Rooftop Solar’s Flaws
At the end of March, the Boston Globe published an opinion piece titled Why Rooftop Solar in Mass. is flawed and how to fix it. The article argues that since rooftop solar owners are paying less in utility delivery charges, they are unfairly shifting the burden of grid side upgrades to other ratepayers.
Below is a response from Resonant Co-CEO, Ben Underwood
This piece gets one thing right: equity should be at the center of Massachusetts energy policy. But its conclusion that rooftop solar shifts costs onto low-income households points in the wrong direction.
Here’s what the authors leave out: every time a utility builds new infrastructure, those costs are spread across all customers — while the utility itself earns a guaranteed profit. That arrangement has been quietly driving up electricity bills for decades.1 Singling out rooftop solar as a “cost shift” obscures the much bigger one hiding in plain sight.
The real question is not whether to subsidize energy infrastructure — we always have. It’s who benefits.
For most of that history, the answer has been utility shareholders and wealthier businesses and homeowners. SMART incentives, net metering, and the federal Investment Tax Credit are among the first mechanisms to change that. When affordable housing goes solar, savings don’t flow to investors. They reduce operating costs and get reinvested directly into resident services.2 Without these programs, that never happens.
Raising fixed charges or cutting solar compensation won’t lower bills for struggling households.3 It will simply ensure the savings continue to flow where they always have.
That’s not equity — that’s pulling the ladder up just as more families are being invited to climb it.
Respectfully,
Ben Underwood
Cofounder & Co-CEO, Resonant Energy
Sources:
RMI, “Rebalancing Return on Equity to Accelerate an Affordable Clean Energy Future” (2024). RMI finds that utility return on equity accounts for 15–20% of customer bills and that awarded ROEs have exceeded the actual cost of equity, costing ratepayers an estimated $5.9 billion per year in excess returns.
Massachusetts DOER, “Healey-Driscoll Administration Launches Redesigned Solar Incentive Program” (2025). The state’s analysis accompanying the launch of SMART 3.0 found that affordable housing properties receive $2.64 in additional financial benefits for every $1.00 of SMART incentive.
National Consumer Law Center, cited in Sierra Club, “Fighting Back Against High Fixed Charges on Electricity Bills” (2015). NCLC found that low-income households consume 14% less electricity on average, making flat fixed charges regressive.