When Jason Thornock applied for a grant from the Rural Energy for America Program after it was infused with over $1 billion in funds from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, he envisioned installing rooftop solar panels on his ranch in Cokeville, Wyoming to help lower his electricity bill. Thornock figured he could generate enough power from the sunshine on his property to provide almost all of his electricity for several months of the year, with enough left over to add to his utility’s grid for credit on his electricity bill. 

The solar power he generated—for his home and to send to the grid under a policy called net metering that compensates rooftop solar owners for the excess electricity they send to the utility––would significantly cut his $150,000 a year power bill, which has been rising steeply, he said.

In 2023, Thornock’s utility, Rocky Mountain Power, applied for a 30 percent rate increase, and was ultimately granted a 5.5 percent increase by the Public Service Commission, the state regulator. A year later, Rocky Mountain Power raised rates another 15 percent. “I thought about calling them and asking them if they would give me a 15 percent raise on my calves and hay,” Thornock said. “But we don’t have that option.”

“We’re dealing with monopolies, and they can break us,” Thornock said about his electricity costs. Net metering gives his business “a chance to at least level that playing field.”

Thornock said all this in January before the House Business, Minerals and Economic Development committee, in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital, where he had traveled to convince lawmakers to let him and dozens of others across the state install more rooftop solar. The committee was weighing the merits of H.B.183, a bill that would have steeply increased the amount of rooftop solar that schools, municipal buildings and businesses could install on their property.

Scott Heiner, the Republican majority leader in the chamber and a member of the party’s ultra-right “Freedom Caucus,” was the bill’s primary sponsor. The representative for parts of Lincoln, Sweetwater and Unita counties, he spent years working in the oil and gas industry.

Heiner’s bill passed out of committee after testimony from Thornock and several others; five days later, it cleared the 62-person House with all but six lawmakers’ support.

But in the Senate, after several amendments to the bill that some net metering advocates called “poison pills,” H.B.183 came up one vote short of passing.

Those amendments “ruined the whole net metering concept,” Heiner said. “So some of my friends over there were actually successful in killing the bill.”

“Our fear from the beginning was always that this good bill could get to the Senate” where it would be amended to a “Frankenstein of what it really was,” said John Burrows, energy and climate policy director at the Wyoming Outdoor Council, which had lobbied in support of the bill. Still, he saw some hopeful signs in H.B.183’s failure.

“It was neat to watch that sail through the House,” he said. 

But perhaps the most promising aspect of the bill was who in the state found common ground to get behind it.

“We’re dealing with monopolies, and they can break us.”

— Jason Thornock, Cokeville racnher

Heiner’s bill united climate change-deniers in the state’s Freedom Caucus with environmentalists eager to shift away from fossil fuels. The coalition included ranchers seeking ways to lower their costs, small businesses and municipal governments.

Climate change did not factor into his decision to bring the bill, Heiner told Inside Climate News. “I believe we should pursue electricity from sources that are reliable, economical, dispatchable and that our grid should be strong during the day and night, fair weather, or storm,” he said. “To do this, we need to diversify our energy portfolio and not pick winners or losers with subsidies or legislation that favors one source of electricity over another.”

Fossil fuels, wind turbines and solar energy all receive federal subsidies.

Stumping for a bill solely based on its climate benefits is “not an effective angle, really, in Wyoming,” Burrows said. But for net-metering, this session has shown that “there really is a widespread bipartisan agreement here from the grassroots that this could be a really good idea,” Burrows said. 

“Any time you can make a strong economic justification, you are able to build some new alliances.”

Net Benefits From Net Metering?

Under current state statute, only solar systems up to 25 kilowatts, which produce enough energy to power all but the largest homes, are allowed to connect to the grid. Heiner’s bill would have raised that number to 200 kilowatts, letting businesses and municipalities offset large chunks of their electrical bills. 

The arguments for and against net metering during the legislative session revolved mainly around questions of subsidization and the possibility of lowering electricity bills.

But critics complain that customers who cover their electricity charges with rooftop solar could be avoiding fixed expenses the utility priced into its bills, like the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure. A utility is legally entitled to recoup these expenses in Wyoming. 

Throughout the legislative session, utilities testified in support of legislation that would give the Public Service Commission, which sets rates for the utility, the ability to determine how net metering customers are compensated for surplus electricity they generate. State law currently requires utility customers with net metering systems to be compensated at the rate a utility would pay to purchase solar electricity on the wholesale market, which, since solar is a very cheap way of generating electricity, usually amounts to a few pennies per kilowatt-hour. 

David Bush, a state government affairs manager at Black Hills Energy Inc., a utility company, went so far as to compare the proliferation of net metering to reintroducing wolves during testimony in support of that Senate bill. While he acknowledged that net metering customers do not hurt Black Hills financially, he said, “Thirty years ago, Yellowstone reintroduced wolves. Fourteen wolves—it’s not a big deal. It’s a big deal now.” Then, he paused. “Let’s take care of the problem before it becomes a problem.”

Experts mainly agree that net metering can lead to a shift of costs onto customers who don’t have solar, but the burden on other ratepayers is negligible until 10 to 20 percent of a utility’s customers have installed net-metering systems. Heiner testified that less than 1 percent of utility customers in Wyoming have net metering systems.

“The cost shifting stuff is not a concern at this stage,” said Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago who has studied net metering across the United States. Lowering the compensation for net metering customers’ surplus energy—as critics of Senate amendments to H.B.183 suspected would happen if the Public Service Commission set the rates —“can add multiple years to someone’s payback period” for a rooftop solar system, potentially discouraging demand, he added.

Increasing the size of the solar systems that are allowed to connect to the grid could help the local airport in Sweetwater County Wyoming save money, said Devon Brubaker, the airport’s director and a staunch supporter of efforts to expand net-metering. In 2018, the airport installed just under 25 kilowatts of solar panels with net-metering in an effort to lower its costs. Building that system out to 200 kilowatts “can play a significant role in our ability to save money, which then ultimately saves our local taxpayers money,” Brubaker said. The airport receives operation funding from Sweetwater County and Rock Springs. 

The airport offsets 39 percent of the power for one of its 30 facilities with its current rooftop solar array. If the airport could offset all the electricity it uses at that facility with net metering, it would save taxpayers $5,000 annually, Brubaker said. If the airport could install a 200 kilowatt system on the new commercial airline terminal it’s constructing, Brubaker estimated that could offset about 90 percent of its annual electrical demand, saving taxpayers $40,000 a year.

Offsetting the airport’s electricity expenses across all its facilities would “wipe out $100,000 a year in taxpayer funded electricity” at current utility rates, Brubaker added.

Some in the H.B.183 worried that net metering might incentivize customers to build larger systems than they need to maximize the payback from the utility, but several net metering experts and system-owners interviewed by Inside Climate News downplayed those concerns. Rooftop solar customers are compensated for extra electricity at such a low rate that “overbuilding” their systems would take too long to pay for itself through credits from the utility.

So they are pursuing net metering for a variety of other reasons.

Horseshoe Politics

Some observers were surprised by the trajectory of Heiner’s bill this session. “There were some surprising alliances,” said Burrows. “Even though we didn’t get a compromise bill, we actually got quite close.”

The political coalition supporting net-metering made rooftop solar a pocketbook issue. Heiner said the bill was brought to him by small businesses in his district, including ranchers who were some of the most vocal supporters of increasing the size of the solar systems allowed to get net metering credit.

Tim Teichert, who owns and operates a ranch in Cokeville, testified in support of Heiner’s bill, saying he and his brother have pursued rooftop solar “just to keep up with the rates.” Teichert later estimated before the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee that he spends $80,000 on power each year. If he could eliminate that expense by burning coal, he would. “We’re completely behind coal,” he told house lawmakers, “but to offset [electricity] costs, we’ve got to have something and it needs to level the playing field.”

While climate change and air quality concerns are sometimes a factor in customers’ decisions in the state, Wyomingites are also drawn to rooftop solar for its cost-savings, said Scott Kane, co-founder and co-owner of Creative Energies Solar, a rooftop solar installer. “We have plenty of people who say ‘hey, I understand I might be able to reduce my utility bill by producing some of my own power right on my rooftop. I’m interested in that.’” 

Rooftop solar also maps neatly onto Wyoming’s brand of individualism and self-reliance in vast landscapes. “We have plenty of people who talk about it purely from the standpoint of wanting to feel a sense of independence,” Kane said.

And for some, rooftop solar protects the landscape and environment they cherish. Heiner said that expanding rooftop solar made sense in Wyoming because it would diminish the need for utility-scale solar in the state. “We do not support massive solar fields that damage our environment and hurt wildlife, while not providing a base load,” he told Inside Climate News. 

Still, Wyoming’s oil, gas and coal industries have taken a toll on the state’s environment for decades, and while solar panels do contain rare earth minerals, which must be mined, and can, if sited poorly, disrupt wildlife, they do not produce greenhouse gases to warm the climate.

“We have plenty of people who talk about it purely from the standpoint of wanting to feel a sense of independence.”

— Scott Kane, Creative Energies Solar

Wyomingites overall favor expanding rooftop solar. In 2023, researchers from the University of Wyoming published a study examining how residents felt about the state’s energy future. Rooftop solar was viewed as a “favorable” form of electricity generation by 70 percent of respondents, a few ticks behind oil and natural gas, and higher than coal mining and coal-fired power plants.

“I have not seen a bill that had more public testimony in my 13 years,” said Senator Jim Anderson, who represents Sheridan and is chairman of the chamber’s Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee, after public testimony for net-metering covered two days of committee hearings.

Traditionally, net metering was a topic Wyoming’s few Democratic lawmakers would advance. Andy Schwartz, who represented the comparatively liberal (and ultra-wealthy) town of Jackson from 2015 to 2022, was surprised to see such staunch support for net metering among members of the Freedom Caucus. “Historically, this might be an odd alliance,” he said.

But there is precedence nationally for such strange political bedfellows. During the height of the tea party era of the 2010s, conservative Republicans pushed lawmakers in red states to adopt net metering-friendly legislation with populist messaging about the technology.

Schwartz reached for the horseshoe theory of politics to describe Wyoming’s net metering coalition: as Republicans sprint farther to the right, political gravity bends some of their ideas—at least on net-metering—back to the center, bringing the left and right closer together. 

Even though Wyoming’s net-metering laws were not altered this session, its politics have expanded in new ways. “It’s an evolving issue, and I think the political alliances very well could shift,” Schwartz said.

Last year, Wyoming’s Energy Authority applied for funding from the federal Home Energy Savings program to help low-income households make upgrades to their building materials or appliances that save them money on energy costs. But since President Trump returned to office and began cutting and freezing payouts from federal programs, Burrows worried that money may never make it to Wyoming. 

If that happened, he said Wyoming could see a groundswell of support for other programs that are both pocketbook and environmentally friendly, similar to what happened with net-metering. “On a lot of these issues you can actually cast a much broader net than just focusing, for example, on the climate benefit of something,” he said.

Heiner told Inside Climate News he plans to bring his net-metering bill again at the next general session in two years, and said he saw no reason that the coalition of Freedom Caucus members, ranchers, businesses and environmentalists wouldn’t get behind it a second time. “There’s no reason for politics to get in the way with good policy,” Heiner said. “I’m willing to work with anybody and everyone to further what we see as good policy to benefit the state of Wyoming.”