The Tribal Solar Initiative, after working through spring 2021 on case studies about Tribal solar projects, brought together a small group of regulatory and utility representatives to discuss Tribal solar deployment policy barriers and potential solutions. On July 12th and 14th, small groups of representatives met to discuss the identified barriers to Tribal solar deployment.
In these listening sessions, the two groups discussed these identified barriers:
Non-Project Specific Barriers
- Lack of Tribal Representation
- Tribal leadership and Staff Technical Capacity
- Timing
- Tribes Served by Multiple Utilities
Distributed and Commercial-Scale Barriers
- Net Metering
- Third-Party Ownership
- Rooftop Solar Incompatibility
- DG Interconnection Requirements
- Tribal Utility Formation Conflicts with Net Metering
- Tribe Served by Co-ops that are not State-Regulated
Utility-Scale Barriers
- Distribution Utilities Lack Wheeling Tariffs
- Property, Sales Tax Jurisdiction Questions Cause “Double Taxation”
- Lack of Options for Selling Utility-Scale Output
- Tribe Lacks Land-Use Planning or Land Entitlement Process; NEPA Process
All Project Scale Barriers
- Federal Tax Policy