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California's rooftop-solar debate is raging again

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Thursday, March 6, 2025

Two years after slashing compensation for rooftop-solar owners who send power back to the grid, California policymakers are once again looking for ways to contain high and rising electricity rates — which means the accusation that rooftop solar pushes costs onto other utility customers is once again rearing its head. Last month, representatives of the California Public Utilities Commission testified in a state legislative hearing that California’s system for compensating owners of rooftop solar is a primary cause of the state’s rapidly rising utility rates. That testimony is backed by a CPUC report, issued last month in response to an October order from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to find ways to reduce utility-rate increases. Among other potential cost savings, the report proposes further reductions to rooftop-solar compensation that the CPUC has already cut for homes, businesses, farms, and schools in the past two years. The CPUC’s rationale is that solar programs shift costs onto customers who don’t have solar. Linda Serizawa, director of the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, which is tasked with protecting utility customers, told lawmakers that the state’s rooftop-solar regime has led to non-solar-equipped customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric paying $8.5 billion more than they otherwise would have in 2024. That increase accounts for up to a quarter of those customers’ monthly bills, on average, according to the Public Advocates Office. Solar advocates and environmental justice groups have long said this “cost-shift” argument is false. In fact, they say, California utility customers would be paying even higher electric rates if the state hadn’t launched policies back in 2006 that have incentivized California homes, businesses, schools, and other utility customers to install more than 2 million rooftop-solar systems since then. Last week, several pro-solar groups shared new analysis, expanding on research released last year by energy and environmental consulting firm M.Cubed Consulting. The latest round in the “cost-shift” debate comes as the CPUC’s December 2022 decision to cut compensation for newly installed rooftop solar systems has decimated the country’s leading rooftop-solar market, potentially putting the state’s carbon-cutting goals out of reach. About 45% of the state’s solar power now comes from rooftop and distributed sources rather than utility-scale projects, but new rooftop-solar installations have fallen dramatically since the CPUC’s new compensation system went into effect in mid-2023. Without more rooftop solar, “we’re going to have increasing electricity costs, and we’re going to fall short of our clean energy goals,” said Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. The challenge, he said, is to agree on regulatory structures that allow the state to “harness rooftop solar and distributed energy to solve both of these problems.” But the cost-shift argument has short-circuited that kind of policy discussion, said Brad Heavner, policy director for the California Solar and Storage Association, a solar-industry trade group that funded M.Cubed’s cost-shift analyses. “It was devised by the utilities as a way to reframe what rooftop solar is and to put a negative light on it. And it has worked.” Now, with mounting pressure to reduce utility rates, rooftop-solar advocates fear the argument will be used once again to justify further cuts to an industry they view as crucial not only to climate goals but as a net benefit — not cost — to utility customers. What’s the cost shift? The cost-shift argument was initially put forward by the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing U.S. electric utilities. Utilities pay for building and maintaining the power grid through the rates they charge customers. The cost-shift thesis argues that paying some customers for their rooftop-solar power unfairly shifts the burden of covering the costs of keeping utilities running onto other customers. But Richard McCann, a founding partner at M.Cubed, argues that California’s nation-leading rooftop-solar resource has saved customers as much as $1.5 billion in 2024 through savings accrued over the past two decades. The reason, in his view, is simple: More rooftop solar means utilities need to buy less energy from other resources and build less power lines and other grid infrastructure to meet customers’ power demand. Back in 2005, the California Energy Commission forecasted that the state’s peak demand for electricity — the primary driver of utility costs for generation and grid capacity that are passed on to customers — would grow from about 45 gigawatts to more than 60 GW by 2022 or so, McCann said. But peak electricity demand on the statewide grid operated by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has grown far more slowly. The system has instead topped out at a record-setting peak of 52 GW in September 2022 — only about 2 GW over the previous record set in 2006. Over that same time, the state’s net-metering policies have incentivized millions of customers of the state’s three big utilities to install solar panels, he said. Much of the state’s peak grid demand coincides with hot summer afternoons — the same time that rooftop solar produces the most electricity. CAISO does not directly track how much power rooftop solar generates across millions of California homes and businesses, McCann noted. But the simultaneous trends of lower-than-forecasted peak demand and growing rooftop-solar resource indicate that “rooftop solar has displaced the peak load demand in the CAISO system and kept the CAISO load flat over that same time period,” he argued. If that’s the case, customers investing in rooftop solar have helped the state’s utilities avoid investing in new generation, transmission, and distribution, potentially saving ratepayers billions of dollars, he said. “Rates would be even higher than what they are now if rooftop solar had not been present.” Who owns the solar power used at home? McCann’s view, supported by most environmental advocates, the solar industry, and some energy analysts, is hotly contested by utilities as well as independent analysts who have championed the cost-shift thesis. In the latter group’s view, rooftop solar is a more expensive and less efficient alternative to building utility-scale solar power plants and transmission grids. Shifting money from those larger-scale alternatives not only pulls money from customers without solar to those with solar, they argue, but represents a lost opportunity for utilities to invest in more cost-effective clean power. Severin Borenstein, head of the Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, is a key proponent of the cost-shift theory. In January, Borenstein published a paper challenging McCann’s take on the value of rooftop solar, citing “fundamental conceptual errors that undermine most of its points.” Borenstein said that a proper analysis finds that in 2024 solar net-metering pushed about $4 billion in costs onto utility customers who don’t have solar. That’s not nearly as high as the $8.5 billion figure from the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, but it’s still a net cost rather than a benefit to customers at large. In February, McCann published a reply to Borenstein’s critique, delving into his point-by-point differences of opinion on how these costs should be calculated. Much of the dispute is highly technical in nature. And because these analyses rely on heavily varied assumptions — including what would have happened if the past 20 years of rooftop-solar policy hadn’t played out the way they have — many of the conflicts between the two sides on precise numbers can’t be answered definitively. That uncertainty has led both sides to accuse the other of using intentionally misleading data and methods. McCann acknowledged that his initial analysis last year miscalculated the benefits that he believes rooftop solar has delivered to customers of the state’s three big utilities. He originally calculated $2.3 billion worth of benefits in 2024, rather than the $1.5 billion that emerged from his latest analysis. The in-the-weeds exchange between McCann and Borenstein reveals a deeper disagreement at the heart of their vastly different estimates — one that cost-shift foes say California regulators have failed to fully acknowledge. It centers on a simple question: When a household generates solar power at the same time as it’s using electricity from the grid, who owns that solar?

Last month, representatives of the California Public Utilities Commission testified in a state legislative hearing that California’s system for compensating owners of rooftop solar is a primary cause of the state’s rapidly rising utility rates.

That testimony is backed by a CPUC report, issued last month in response to an October order from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to find ways to reduce utility-rate increases. Among other potential cost savings, the report proposes further reductions to rooftop-solar compensation that the CPUC has already cut for homes, businesses, farms, and schools in the past two years.

The CPUC’s rationale is that solar programs shift costs onto customers who don’t have solar. Linda Serizawa, director of the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, which is tasked with protecting utility customers, told lawmakers that the state’s rooftop-solar regime has led to non-solar-equipped customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric paying $8.5 billion more than they otherwise would have in 2024. That increase accounts for up to a quarter of those customers’ monthly bills, on average, according to the Public Advocates Office.

Solar advocates and environmental justice groups have long said this “cost-shift” argument is false. In fact, they say, California utility customers would be paying even higher electric rates if the state hadn’t launched policies back in 2006 that have incentivized California homes, businesses, schools, and other utility customers to install more than 2 million rooftop-solar systems since then.

Last week, several pro-solar groups shared new analysis, expanding on research released last year by energy and environmental consulting firm M.Cubed Consulting.

The latest round in the “cost-shift” debate comes as the CPUC’s December 2022 decision to cut compensation for newly installed rooftop solar systems has decimated the country’s leading rooftop-solar market, potentially putting the state’s carbon-cutting goals out of reach. About 45% of the state’s solar power now comes from rooftop and distributed sources rather than utility-scale projects, but new rooftop-solar installations have fallen dramatically since the CPUC’s new compensation system went into effect in mid-2023.

Without more rooftop solar, “we’re going to have increasing electricity costs, and we’re going to fall short of our clean energy goals,” said Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. The challenge, he said, is to agree on regulatory structures that allow the state to “harness rooftop solar and distributed energy to solve both of these problems.”

But the cost-shift argument has short-circuited that kind of policy discussion, said Brad Heavner, policy director for the California Solar and Storage Association, a solar-industry trade group that funded M.Cubed’s cost-shift analyses. “It was devised by the utilities as a way to reframe what rooftop solar is and to put a negative light on it. And it has worked.”

Now, with mounting pressure to reduce utility rates, rooftop-solar advocates fear the argument will be used once again to justify further cuts to an industry they view as crucial not only to climate goals but as a net benefit — not cost — to utility customers.

What’s the cost shift?

The cost-shift argument was initially put forward by the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing U.S. electric utilities. Utilities pay for building and maintaining the power grid through the rates they charge customers. The cost-shift thesis argues that paying some customers for their rooftop-solar power unfairly shifts the burden of covering the costs of keeping utilities running onto other customers.

But Richard McCann, a founding partner at M.Cubed, argues that California’s nation-leading rooftop-solar resource has saved customers as much as $1.5 billion in 2024 through savings accrued over the past two decades. The reason, in his view, is simple: More rooftop solar means utilities need to buy less energy from other resources and build less power lines and other grid infrastructure to meet customers’ power demand.

Back in 2005, the California Energy Commission forecasted that the state’s peak demand for electricity — the primary driver of utility costs for generation and grid capacity that are passed on to customers — would grow from about 45 gigawatts to more than 60 GW by 2022 or so, McCann said.

But peak electricity demand on the statewide grid operated by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has grown far more slowly. The system has instead topped out at a record-setting peak of 52 GW in September 2022 — only about 2 GW over the previous record set in 2006.

Over that same time, the state’s net-metering policies have incentivized millions of customers of the state’s three big utilities to install solar panels, he said. Much of the state’s peak grid demand coincides with hot summer afternoons — the same time that rooftop solar produces the most electricity.

CAISO does not directly track how much power rooftop solar generates across millions of California homes and businesses, McCann noted. But the simultaneous trends of lower-than-forecasted peak demand and growing rooftop-solar resource indicate that “rooftop solar has displaced the peak load demand in the CAISO system and kept the CAISO load flat over that same time period,” he argued.

If that’s the case, customers investing in rooftop solar have helped the state’s utilities avoid investing in new generation, transmission, and distribution, potentially saving ratepayers billions of dollars, he said. “Rates would be even higher than what they are now if rooftop solar had not been present.”

Who owns the solar power used at home?

McCann’s view, supported by most environmental advocates, the solar industry, and some energy analysts, is hotly contested by utilities as well as independent analysts who have championed the cost-shift thesis.

In the latter group’s view, rooftop solar is a more expensive and less efficient alternative to building utility-scale solar power plants and transmission grids. Shifting money from those larger-scale alternatives not only pulls money from customers without solar to those with solar, they argue, but represents a lost opportunity for utilities to invest in more cost-effective clean power.

Severin Borenstein, head of the Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, is a key proponent of the cost-shift theory. In January, Borenstein published a paper challenging McCann’s take on the value of rooftop solar, citing “fundamental conceptual errors that undermine most of its points.”

Borenstein said that a proper analysis finds that in 2024 solar net-metering pushed about $4 billion in costs onto utility customers who don’t have solar. That’s not nearly as high as the $8.5 billion figure from the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, but it’s still a net cost rather than a benefit to customers at large.

In February, McCann published a reply to Borenstein’s critique, delving into his point-by-point differences of opinion on how these costs should be calculated. Much of the dispute is highly technical in nature. And because these analyses rely on heavily varied assumptions — including what would have happened if the past 20 years of rooftop-solar policy hadn’t played out the way they have — many of the conflicts between the two sides on precise numbers can’t be answered definitively.

That uncertainty has led both sides to accuse the other of using intentionally misleading data and methods. McCann acknowledged that his initial analysis last year miscalculated the benefits that he believes rooftop solar has delivered to customers of the state’s three big utilities. He originally calculated $2.3 billion worth of benefits in 2024, rather than the $1.5 billion that emerged from his latest analysis.

The in-the-weeds exchange between McCann and Borenstein reveals a deeper disagreement at the heart of their vastly different estimates — one that cost-shift foes say California regulators have failed to fully acknowledge. It centers on a simple question: When a household generates solar power at the same time as it’s using electricity from the grid, who owns that solar?

Read the full story here.

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While UCLA generally did not provide the individual names of its athletes, the school was more transparent than most and shared the date of each transaction, the name of the brand or company, the amount of money it gave, and the sport. In February, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $250,000 from the beverage company Bubbl’r. Since then, Chiles has promoted that brand, repeatedly. In May, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $210,000 from the cosmetic brand Milani for “social media” — just a few months before Chiles posted a video on Instagram, promoting its makeup. One or more members of the UCLA gymnastics team have also reported deals with the food company Danone for $300,000 and with the health care company Sanofi for $285,000. Fresno State shared less information. In the 2021-22 academic year, the Fresno State women’s basketball team raked in over $1.1 million from multiple name, image and likeness deals, but the university did not disclose which players were involved or how many were paid. After influencers and former basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder transferred to the University of Miami in April 2022, the number and dollar amount of deals for the Fresno team diminished. In the 2023-24 academic year, the team made just over $1,000 from 10 different deals. Fresno State Bulldogs forward Mia Jacobs #23 attempts to block the shot of an Arizona State Sun Devils forward during a game in Phoenix on Dec. 20, 2023. During their most lucrative year to date, Fresno women on the team collected over $1.1 million in NIL deals. Photo by Christopher Hook, Icon Sportswire via AP Images Money from boosters or collectives is the hardest to trace. In May, for example, a group of UCLA donors gave an undisclosed football player $450,000 for “social media.” While private universities are not required to disclose students’ earnings, market estimates from On3, a media and technology company focused on college sports, say the highest-earning Stanford University athlete, basketball player Maxime Raynaud, could collect $1.5 million in the next 12 months. The top USC athlete, football player Jayden Maiava, could make $603,000 in the next year, according to the same estimates. These numbers are based on an algorithm that uses aggregate deals from college athletes across the country. Nationwide, the Opendorse report estimates that college athletes will earn $1.65 billion in the 2024-25 academic year. Soon, college athletes may make even more. A high-profile class-action lawsuit will likely allow schools to pay athletes directly, while still classifying them as students, not employees. If the proposed settlement agreement goes into effect, students could see payouts as early as this fall. If a school pays a student directly, the money should be divided roughly proportional to the number of male and female athletes, the Biden administration said in a U.S. Department of Education fact sheet issued in January. The page no longer exists. In the last few months, attorneys have rescinded federal labor petitions asking that USC and Dartmouth College student athletes be reclassified as employees, but new cases are likely on the horizon, said Mit Winter, an attorney who specializes in name, image and likeness law: “I do think at some point — two years, five years, whatever it is — at least some college athletes will be employees.” A Times Square billboard reads: NIL has begun For decades, college sports have been a big business, though most of the money flowed to universities, not students. Nationally, Division 1 universities reported $17.5 billion in athletic revenue in 2022, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That’s more than the gross domestic product of 83 countries. For schools with top-performing football programs, such as UCLA and Berkeley, broadcast deals and other kinds of marketing represent over a third of total revenue. Before California’s law went into effect, college athletes weren’t allowed to profit off their sport, though they frequently received scholarships equal to the cost of college tuition. On July 1, 2021 the new law took effect, and Haley and Hanna Cavinder were the first to benefit, signing deals with Boost Mobile, a cell phone company, and Sixstar, a nutrition company, just after the stroke of midnight. A Times Square billboard proclaimed they were the first such deals in the country. Over the past four years, other California college athletes have signed advertising deals with clothing brands such as Crocs, Heelys and Aeropostale and food brands such as Liquid I.V. and Jack in the Box. FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, signed contracts with at least six players on the UCLA women’s basketball team in 2021. In 2022, the Biden campaign gave a UCLA gymnast $7,000, but public records did not disclose the purpose of the transaction. No other politicians appeared in any university’s data. Last year, Visit Fresno County, a nonprofit that promotes tourism, paid former Fresno State football players Dean Clark and Kosi Agina just under $10,000 to post Instagram videos about a local farmer’s market and a minor league baseball team, according to President and CEO Lisa Oliveira. She said the posts were so successful that she asked Agina to make another video, promoting a hiking trail in the Sierra National Forest. But much of the money for students’ name, image and likeness doesn’t come from brands at all — it’s from private donors. Philanthropist and entertainment lawyer Mark Kalmansohn has given nearly $150,000 in 12 different transactions to athletes on UCLA’s volleyball, softball and women’s basketball teams since 2022, according to the data, which runs through May of last year. In an interview with CalMatters, Kalmansohn said he’s given more than $175,000 since May. “Women’s sports were almost always treated in a second-hand nature and given inferior resources,” he said, adding that his philanthropy is about “women’s rights.” In exchange for money, he asks each recipient to issue a free license of their name, image and likeness to a nonprofit organization that’s relevant to the athlete’s sport. But he said that’s not the norm. “In men’s football and men’s basketball, it’s pretty obvious that money is not for an ‘appearance’.” Instead, he explained that it’s a way to support the player and keep the team competitive. Most donors give money to specific athletes through a collective, where the donors’ identities are largely hidden. At UCLA, public data through the 2023-24 academic year shows that a collective known as the Men of Westwood channeled nearly $2 million in private donations to the football, basketball and baseball teams. At Berkeley, collectives gave over $1.3 million to athletes since the 2022-23 academic year — the vast majority of which went to the men’s basketball team. Supporting ‘elite talent’ at UC and Cal State For years, NCAA rules made it difficult for college athletes to transfer schools, but in 2021, right around the time that California started to allow name, image and likeness deals, the NCAA eased those rules. The number of students who transfer suddenly jumped in 2021 and has ticked up each year since, according to NCAA data. In practice, the new rules means that a well-endowed collective can lure athletes who want to make more money. This year, over 11% of all Division 1 football players have tried to transfer colleges, an increase from the previous year, said Matt Kraemer, whose organization, The Portal Report, uses social media posts and tips from insiders to gauge college athletes’ transfer activity. Quarterbacks are even more likely to try to transfer, Kraemer said. For institutions like UC Davis, the threat of losing a top athlete can be costly. Late in the 2023-24 academic year, donors from other universities promised top athletes lucrative deals if they agreed to transfer, so UC Davis formed a collective, Aggie Edge, to make counter-offers, said Athletic Director Rocko DeLuca. “It’s a means to retain elite talent here at Davis.” DeLuca said the collective gave men’s basketball guard TY Johnson $50,000 and UC Davis running back Lan Larison $25,000. Those transactions were for “social media, appearances, autographs,” according to the university’s data. UC Davis Aggies guard TY Johnson dribbles up the court during a game against Cal State Bakersfield in Bakersfield on Jan. 26, 2023. The UC Davis athletic director said a collective gave Johnson $50,000 for what university records describe as “social media, appearances, autographs.” Photo by David Dennis, Icon Sportswire via AP Images So far, all other UC Davis athletes — more than 700 students over 25 sports — have reported just under $19,000 in deals since 2021. A few other athletes received products, such as a free cryotherapy session or a commission based on sales. In December, former UC Berkeley quarterback Fernando Mendoza transferred to Indiana University, where he later signed a name, image and likeness deal with a collective for an undisclosed amount. UC Berkeley then recruited former Ohio State quarterback Devin Brown the day after he won a national championship. It’s not clear if the Berkeley collective offered Brown a deal, since the university’s data doesn’t name Brown. Justin DiTolla, Berkeley’s associate athletic director, said the university is “not affiliated with the collective” and that the university provides “equal support to all student athletes.” “We recognize that there is a difference in NIL support,” he said, “But it isn’t under our scope or umbrella.” The Berkeley collective, California Legends, declined to comment. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, some football players sought more money through a name, image and likeness deal by transferring to another school, but they didn’t all succeed, said Don Oberhelman, the university’s athletic director. “That’s the dirty little secret of all of this: the number of kids who blow an opportunity.” This fall, nine football players at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo announced their intention to transfer, he said. Six of them found a new university, he said, including University of Texas El Paso, San Diego State, Stanford, and Washington State — but three of them never received an offer from another school. Oberhelman said that his football coach begins recruiting a replacement the moment a player announces his intention to transfer. If that student doesn’t end up transferring, he may lose his spot on the football team and the entirety of his athletic scholarship, which can be up to $30,000 a year. “There’s raw emotion involved in these kinds of decisions,” he said. “I don’t think that’s how we would operate, but I can see a lot of people say, ‘You broke up with us.’” Oberhelman said he doesn’t know what happened to the three players from the football team who failed to transfer. “For me, it would boil down to: Did we promise that money to someone else? Did we find another transfer or a high school person to replace you? If we did, that would put your future financial aid with us in jeopardy.” Small-town name, image and likeness deals Outside of top football and men’s basketball programs, many of California’s college athletes vie for smaller name, image and likeness deals, often with local businesses, lesser-known clothing or athletic brands, or anything else they can find. Former Berkeley softball player Randi Roelling got $50 from one woman to give a pitching lesson to her daughter. In July 2023, chiropractor Lance Casazza started giving out free sessions to at least one Sacramento State football player in exchange for social media posts. Annika Shah, a basketball player at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, got her first deal through a local restaurant, Jewel of India, which occasionally has a pop-up tent outside the college gym. “I just said, ‘Hey I can market you. Let’s think of a cool slogan to put out.’” Customers who ask to “swish with Shah” at the checkout counter get a discount on their meal, she said. Shah doesn’t get any money, she said, but she does get free food whenever she visits. “It was just a cool relationship and connection that I made with this family and the owners of Jewel of India, where they just want to help me out and I want to help them.” Annika Shah, a senior business administration student and basketball player, at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters Walking around campus, friends jokingly refer to Shah as their own “Jewel of India” and she likes it. “It’s such a marketable slogan now, and it kind of identifies who I am.” Many Division 1 schools have their own websites where customers can buy gear with an athlete’s name on it, but last fall, no such platform existed at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said Shah, so she created her own. She partnered with a company, Cloud 9 Sports, and launched her own apparel brand. It’s brought in about $2,000 in sales so far, but after the university and Cloud 9 Sports take a cut, Shah said she’s left with about $800. Shah said she was never told to report any of her monetary or in-kind contributions. After CalMatters asked, Oberhelman, the athletic director, said the school is now requiring it. “We haven’t done a great job following up because we’re just not going to have student athletes that are getting even five-figure deals,” he said. Oberhelman said he only knew of eight deals, each for $2,000, all to the men’s football team from a group of private donors. Fresno State provided more data than Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but it did not designate which deals came from its collective, known as Bulldog Bread. On its website the collective says it has raised more than $690,000 in corporate donations for Fresno State. At the top tier, that includes money from former Fresno State quarterbacks David and Derek Carr, property developer Lance Kashian, and construction company Tarlton and Son, Inc. The collective recently launched a vodka brand in partnership with a distillery, where a portion of all proceeds support students’ name, image and likeness deals. Athletes at UC Santa Barbara have reported $1,800 from their collective, Gold & Blue, but many other transactions reported by the school provide few details. According to the school’s data, an unnamed person or group made 15 deals with one or more members of the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team, totaling over $50,000 in “appearance fees” for an event last August associated with Heal the Ocean, a local environmental nonprofit. The organization’s executive director, Hillary Hauser, said the nonprofit made no such contribution and had no events in August. University spokesperson Kiki Reyes said it’s “possible” that a collective made those payments, but she refused to respond to CalMatters’ questions regarding Hauser’s statement the event never occurred. From August 2023 to August 2024, male basketball and baseball athletes at UC Santa Barbara reported roughly $500,000 in compensation for appearance fees related to various charities. Over the same time frame, all other athletes reported receiving free products, sales referrals, and cash payments totaling about $1,000. At UCLA, the CEO of the Men of Westwood collective, Ken Graiwer, is listed in university records as the “point of contact” for a $450,000 contribution, distributed over six transactions in the 2023-24 academic year, to the men’s basketball team for “public appearances.” For each of those transactions, the university’s data lists the Team First Foundation, a sports nonprofit, as the vendor. Neither UCLA nor the Team First Foundation responded to questions about who made the payment. A few months before those transactions, the Men of Westwood posted a few photos on its Instagram account, showing UCLA men’s basketball players on the court with smiling children from the Team First Foundation programs. In the post, the Men of Westwood said it was “NIL outreach.” California universities try to ‘stay competitive’ Since becoming legal in 2021, the market for name, image and likeness compensation has exploded. Sports commentators, attorneys, and athletic directors say the landscape is a kind of “wild West” or “gold rush”: The money is pouring in, but the regulations are sparse or evolving. CalMatters has partial data from the 2024-25 academic year, but early indicators suggest that even more cash will soon flow to players. In September, a group of Sacramento State alumni, including some state lawmakers, said they raised over $35 million in one day for name, image and likeness deals. Cal State Bakersfield and UC San Diego recently formed their own collectives too. Last year, former Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley — one of the co-authors of the watershed name, image and likeness law — proposed a new bill to gather more data about spending by collectives and its impact on women’s sports. Newsom vetoed the bill, saying “Further changes to this dynamic should be done nationally.” Initially, the NCAA tried to prevent colleges from directly assisting athletes with deals, but the association has eased those regulations recently, blurring the lines between universities and the private collectives that support them. Many states have passed laws explicitly allowing universities to make deals directly with students. In October, Skinner and former Democratic Sen. Steven Bradford wrote a letter to California universities, encouraging them to do the same. “I strongly urge California schools to make full use of (the watershed law) to stay competitive in college sports, especially now that other states are copying California and allowing their schools to make direct NIL deals with their student athletes,” said Skinner in a press release about the letter. This spring, California District Judge Claudia Wilken is expected to approve a settlement between athletes and the NCAA that would further expand the ways universities can pay their players. In the proposed settlement, a college could directly spend up to a combined $20.5 million per year on payments to all of its athletes. The spending limit would grow over time. Regardless of the settlement, athletic directors at many of California’s public institutions, such as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Bakersfield, said they don’t plan on giving any more money directly to students because their athletic programs lack the cash. “They’re already on full scholarship, so there aren’t any more existing dollars we can really offer that person,” said Oberhelman, with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Even if the university did have the money, he said he’s concerned about the legal implications of paying students directly. “Are they going to get a W-2 now? Are we paying workers comp? Nobody seems to have answered a lot of these questions.” Mott Athletics Center at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo on Feb. 3, 2025. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters DiTolla, at Berkeley, said the university will start paying its athletes once the settlement is finalized. UC San Diego joined Division 1 sports last year, and Athletic Director Earl Edwards said it is “seriously considering” paying its athletes too “if that’s what we need to do to be competitive.” UCLA refused to comment on the proposed settlement. USC Senior Associate Athletic Director Cody Worsham said the university will “invest the full permissible $20.5 million in 2025-26.” Stanford refused to answer any questions. While no Division 1 school in California has shared details about how it plans to pay its athletes, experts, such as attorney Mit Winter, say the proposed settlement is unlikely to change the current disparities in college sports, especially within the four most lucrative and dominant athletic conferences, known as the Power Four. Stanford, USC, UC Berkeley and UCLA are all in the Power Four. For female rowers like Anaiya Singer, a freshman at UCLA, the disparities among men’s and women’s sports — and between football, basketball and everyone else — are no surprise. “Those big sports do bring in the most revenue, and they’re the most watched,” she said, while acknowledging that other athletes, such as fellow rowers, “deserve much more than we’re getting.” Singer said she’s been working on building her social media brand and has nearly 3,000 followers on TikTok and just over 1,300 on Instagram. A few “very small companies” reached out to her through TikTok about promoting beauty products, but none of the brands felt like a good fit, she said. She has yet to agree to any deals or receive any funding from a collective. Neither have most of her peers. The UCLA women’s rowing team has reported less than $500 in name, image and likeness compensation since 2021. In the proposed settlement, each school will each be able to independently determine how to distribute their funds, but Winter said universities will likely follow their peers. “If you’re in UCLA, Berkeley….you’re in the Power Four and you’re going to have to stay competitive in recruiting,” he said. “Most of the Power Four schools have all sort of landed on a similar way they’re going to pay that money out,” he added: 75% to the football team, 15% to the basketball team, around 5% to women’s basketball, and 5% to all other sports. About the data CalMatters worked to standardize the name, image and likeness data we received for analysis, but ambiguities remain. Dozens of deals indicated compensation in product rather than or in addition to cash, the value of which was often not specified. Some vendors promised certain compensation per social media post or other activity, but it’s not clear how much the athlete actually received. Some indicated monthly compensation but not how many months the deal lasted. CalMatters is showing the minimum amount of compensation student athletes reported receiving. CalMatters is providing the data as received from each school for download here with minor formatting changes and personal contact information removed. Read More College athletes are getting paid because of a California law. Will the state go even further? October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 The cost of private colleges is high, yet many low-income students still choose them January 29, 2025January 29, 2025

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Education

Food

Slim margins, climate disasters, and Trump’s funding freeze: Life or death for many US farms

Federal programs are a lifeline for farmers. Now many are questioning whether they can stay in business.

When the Trump administration first announced a freeze on all federal funding in January, farmers across the country were thrust into an uncertain limbo. More than a month later, fourth-generation farmer Adam Chappell continues to wait on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reimburse him for the $25,000 he paid out of pocket to implement conservation practices like cover cropping. Until he knows the fate of the federal programs that keep his small rice farm in Arkansas afloat, Chappell’s unable to prepare for his next crop. Things have gotten so bad, the 45-year-old is even considering leaving the only job he’s ever known. “I just don’t know who we can count on and if we can count on them as a whole to get it done,” said Chappell. “That’s what I’m scared of.” In Virginia, the funding freeze has forced a sustainable farming network that supports small farmers throughout the state to suspend operations. Brent Wills, a livestock producer and program manager at the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, said that nearly all of the organization’s funding comes from USDA programs that have been frozen or rescinded. The team of three is now scrambling to come up with a contingency plan while trying not to panic over whether the nearly $50,000 in grants they are owed will be reimbursed. “It’s pretty devastating,” said Wills. “The short-term effects of this are bad enough, but the long-term effects? We can’t even tally that up right now.” In North Carolina, a beekeeping operation hasn’t yet received the $14,500 in emergency funding from the USDA to rebuild after Hurricane Helene washed away 60 beehives. Ang Roell, who runs They Keep Bees, an apiary that also has operations in Florida and Massachusetts, said they have more than $45,000 in USDA grants that are frozen. The delay has put them behind in production, leading to an additional $15,000 in losses. They are also unsure of the future of an additional $100,000 in grants that they’ve applied for. “I have to rethink my entire business plan,” Roell said. “I feel shell-shocked.” Within the USDA’s purview, the funding freeze has targeted two main categories of funding: grant applications that link agricultural work to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and those enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, which earmarked more than $19.5 billion to be paid out over several years. Added to the uncertainty of the funding freeze, among the tens of thousands of federal employees who have lost their jobs in recent weeks were officials who manage various USDA programs. Following the initial freeze, courts have repeatedly ordered the administration to grant access to all funds, but agencies have taken a piecemeal approach, releasing funding in “tranches.” Even as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior have released significant chunks of funding, the USDA has moved slowly, citing the need to review programs with IRA funding. In some cases, though, it has terminated contracts altogether, including those with ties to the agency’s largest-ever investment in climate-smart agriculture. In late February, the USDA announced that it was releasing $20 million to farmers who had already been awarded grants — the agency’s first tranche. According to Mike Lavender, policy director with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, that $20 million amounts to “less than one percent” of money owed. His team estimates that three IRA-funded programs have legally promised roughly $2.3 billion through 30,715 conservation contracts for ranchers, farmers, and foresters. Those contracts have been through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, and Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. “In some respects, it’s a positive sign that some of it’s been released,” said Lavender. “But I think, more broadly, it’s so insignificant. For the vast majority, [this] does absolutely nothing.” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the agency is unfreezing some funds, but it’s unclear how much is being released and how soon. Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images A week later, USDA secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the agency would be able to meet a March 21 deadline imposed by Congress to distribute an additional $10 billion in emergency relief payments. Then, on Sunday, March 2, Rollins made an announcement that offered hope for some farmers, but very little specifics. In a press statement, the USDA stated that the agency’s review of IRA funds had been completed and funds associated with EQIP, CSP, and ACEP would be released, but it did not clarify how much would be unfrozen. The statement also announced a commitment to distribute an additional $20 billion in disaster assistance. Lavender called Rollins’ statement a “borderline nothingburger” for its degree of “ambiguity.” It’s not clear, he continued, if Rollins is referring to the first tranche of funding or if the statement was announcing a second tranche — nor, if it’s the latter, how much is being released. “Uncertainty still seems to reign supreme. We need more clarity.” The USDA did not respond to Grist’s request for clarification. Farmers who identify as women, queer, or people of color are especially apprehensive about the status of their contracts. Roell, the beekeeper, said their applications for funding celebrated their operations’ diverse workforce development program. Now, Roell, who uses they/them pronouns, fears that their existing contracts and pending applications will be targeted for the same reason. (Federal agencies have been following an executive order taking aim at “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs.”) “This feels like an outright assault on sustainable agriculture, on small businesses, queer people, BIPOC, and women farmers,” said Roell. “Because at this point, all of our projects are getting flagged as DEI. We don’t know if we’re allowed to make corrections to those submissions or if they’re just going to get outright denied due to the language in the projects being for women or for queer folks.” The knock-on effects of this funding gridlock on America’s already fractured agricultural economy has Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, deeply concerned. With the strain of an agricultural recession looming over regions like the Midwest, and the number of U.S. farms already in steady decline, she sees the freeze and ongoing mass layoffs of federal employees as “ultimately leading down the road to further consolidation.” Given that the administration is “intentionally dismantling the programs that help underpin our small and medium-sized farmers,” Wolf said this could lead to “the loss of those farms, and then the loss of land ownership.” Other consequences might be more subtle, but no less significant. According to Omanjana Goswami, a soil scientist with the advocacy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, the funding freeze, layoffs, and the Trump administration’s hostility toward climate action is altogether likely to position America’s agricultural sector to contribute even more than it does to carbon emissions. Agriculture accounted for about 10.6 percent of U.S. carbon emissions in 2021. When farmers implement conservation practices on their farms, it can lead to improved air and water quality and increase soil’s ability to store carbon. Such tactics can not only reduce agricultural emissions, but are incentivized by many of the programs now under review. “When we look at the scale of this, it’s massive,” said Goswami. “If this funding is scaled back, or even completely removed, it means that the impact and contribution of agriculture on climate change is going to increase.” Read Next US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency: ‘It’s catastrophic’ Katie Myers, Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, & Izzy Ross The Trump administration’s attack on farmers comes at a time when the agriculture industry faces multiple existential crises. For one, times are tight for farmers. In 2023, the median household income from farming was negative $900. That means, at least half of all households that drew income from farming didn’t turn a profit. Additionally, in 2023, natural disasters caused nearly $22 billion in agricultural losses. Rising temperatures are slowing plant growth, frequent floods and droughts are decimating harvests, and wildfires are burning through fields. With insurance paying for only a subset of these losses, farmers are increasingly paying out of pocket. Last year, extreme weather impacts, rising labor and production costs, imbalances in global supply and demand, and increased price volatility all resulted in what some economists designated the industry’s worst financial year in almost two decades. Elliott Smith, whose Washington state-based business Kitchen Sync Strategies helps small farmers supply institutions like schools with fresh food, says this situation has totally changed how he looks at the federal government. As the freeze hampers key grants for the farmers and food businesses he works with across at least 10 different states, halting emerging contracts and stalling a slate of ongoing projects, Smith said the experience has made him now consider federal funding “unstable.” All told, the freeze isn’t just threatening the future of Smith’s business, but also the future of farmers and the local food systems they work within nationwide. “The entire food ecosystem is stuck in place. The USDA feels like a troll that saw the sun. They are frozen. They can’t move,” he said. “The rest of us are in the fields and trenches, and we’re looking back at the government and saying, ‘Where the hell are you?’” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Slim margins, climate disasters, and Trump’s funding freeze: Life or death for many US farms on Mar 5, 2025.

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Climate

Conservation

Opinion: The missing ingredient for solving Oregon’s housing crisis – more land

Resistance to expanding the urban growth boundary has contributed to the region's severe deficit of housing, writes Gerald Mildner, a PSU emeritus professor of finance and real estate. The region should break from its starvation land diet, add acreage for development and help bring housing costs down.

Gerard C.S. Mildner Special to The Oregonian/OregonLiveMildner is a professor emeritus in finance and real estate at Portland State University. He lives in Beaverton.A recent op-ed offered some ideas on how the state should accommodate the growth that Oregon is expected to see by 2050, (“Opinion: Big ideas – grounded in Oregon values and innovation – can guide our growth,” Feb, 5). Urban planners Megan Horst and Gil Kelley made the argument that Oregon should adopt a 10-year moratorium on expansion of any urban growth boundary – the perimeter that divides cities’ developable land from reserved acreage. They argue Oregon should promote higher density residential development in cities and neighborhoods to utilize existing infrastructure and fight climate change. This strategy, however, runs contrary to the principles of Oregon’s land use planning system, ignores recent data and ensures that housing costs will continue to rise.Oregon’s land use planning system was designed around the premise that urban growth boundaries would be flexible to accommodate future population growth. Unfortunately, that central idea has become a triggering issue for Portland’s environmental community, and urban planners have resisted efforts to expand the boundaries, even as housing production has failed to generate anywhere close to the number of units needed to match population growth.In the last 45 years, for example, the acreage inside in the Metro Portland urban growth boundary has expanded 15% while the region’s population inside the boundary has grown nearly 80%. And roughly 40% of all acreage brought into the boundary for development was in Damascus, whose steep geography is uniquely ill-suited for housing development and has been left mostly undeveloped.As a result, we have lived for decades with essentially the same policies that Horst and Kelley are advocating for the next 10 years, resulting in enormous deficits of housing units and much higher housing costs per square foot basis. At the same time, they dismiss the success stories of the modest expansions that Metro did allow. The Washington County developments of Bethany, River Terrace and Reed’s Crossing and Clackamas County’s Villebois expansion have produced needed housing, including single-family homes, townhomes and apartment buildings. Unfortunately, master-planned communities like these need large, flat tracts which no longer exist within the current urban growth boundary. Critics of these expansions argue that developments in these expansion areas are priced beyond the means of low-income households and that developers should be forced to build subsidized housing. However, that argument ignores the wider benefits of new housing construction – including market-rate units.Occupants of these new homes will move out of more modest, older homes, making them available to lower-income households. And migrants from California and elsewhere can choose new master-planned communities, rather than bidding up the price of older housing in existing neighborhoods. Affordable housing gets created in an indirect way with new housing construction, at minimal cost to local government.Metro officials argue that we should increase the density of existing neighborhoods to provide the extra housing that we need. That argument ignores that our lowest cost housing remains two-story wood construction, such as being built in recent boundary expansion areas, and that single-family homes are still deeply popular. Relying upon 4-story or greater construction drives up housing costs by 50% on a square foot basis because of the additional cost of concrete and steel over wood. That’s fine for niche consumers wanting a high-density setting, but relying upon expensive housing as the core of our future supply will insure that housing costs will continue to rise.Instead of a 10-year moratorium on boundary expansions, we need to bring Metro’s 17,000 acres of “urban reserves” into the perimeter for allowable development. That would be a modest 7% expansion in acreage within the urban growth boundary, but the added supply would help tamp down the cost of land – a significant factor in housing costs.The state and the region face significant challenges if we are going to meet Gov. Tina Kotek’s stated goal of producing 36,000 housing units per year. Yes, there’s a role for infill housing and accessory dwelling units, but that will provide hundreds of new housing units per year, not the thousands of units that we need.Yes, we need to reform a host of anti-development policies in the city and state including rent control, inclusionary zoning, design review and permitting delays, but it’s essential that we allow more land inside our existing urban growth boundaries. And we need to assist communities that will be hosting this new housing in the urban reserves with grants for new arterial roads and sewers.If we insist on sticking with our starvation land diet, housing costs in the region and the state will remain high and our region won’t attract new business. Our children will need to move elsewhere to find good employment. Many already are doing so.Share your opinion Submit your essay of 600-700 words on a highly topical issue or a theme of particular relevance to the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and the Portland area to commentary@oregonian.com. No attachments, please. Please include your email and phone number for verification.

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Wake Up People!

Environmental activists have been camping in Sodros for more than four months with the purpose of stopping the trees from being cut down. In the past few days Chinese company CRBC workers have been showing up at the site accompanied by the police and gendarmerie forces. The activists have been requesting to see the permits and the documentation for the work they are planning to conduct from the CRBC workers. The CRBC workers haven’t shown any of the permits. Also, the work has begun without a construction board being clearly visible, which is mandatory by law.

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Social Justice

Nature

The Custodians of the Andean Gold

In the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, more than 3 800 meters above sea level, live alpaca and vicunia breeders. Quechua and Aymara families protect their animals live off of the sale of the animals’ fiber. Gold mining is another activity that predates the Conquest and is widespread among families living in the border area between Peru and Bolivia. The difficult compatibility on the same territory of these two production activities increases the need for environmental protection and workers' rights. It has become indispensable to support producers so that this activity does not disappear with the migration of native peoples, abandoning traditions and animals.

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Market Gardening In The Last Frontier

The path to successful bio-intensive market gardening in the Last Frontier involves an enthusiasm to work in partnership with nature; to steward the soil and the multitude of organisms it contains and supports. As Alaskans contemplate the reality that a staggering 95% of food found in the grocery stores is imported, Emily Garrity and her Twitter Creek Garden operation are chipping away at this food insecurity and providing a roadmap for others to emulate. Aspiring to provide alternatives to the destructive standards of commercial agriculture, life-long Alaskan, Emily Garrity, shares her hard-won secrets in this biopic short film.

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Voice of Vanilla

In the rainforests of Madagascar, vanilla offers hope to farmers hindered by the relentless tide of poverty and cyclones. How will the women responsible for vanilla cultivation weather the storms that threaten their livelihoods? Join us on this journey to uncover the truth behind one of the world’s most beloved spices and to support the women farmers at the heart of the vanilla industry.

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Green Waste

What if every person could actually make an impact on the world? “Green Waste” takes an in-depth look at the process of recycling and waste management in the community of Flagstaff. From recycling plastic bags, to re-using glass bottles, from recycling hazardous waste to the efforts of local businesses, the film shows how every contribution, no matter how small, can collectively make the difference for a better tomorrow. Filmed and Produced under the Emerging Filmmakers Program for youth filmmakers.

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California's rooftop-solar debate is raging again

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Trump administration drops suit that sought to cut toxic emissions in ‘Cancer Alley’

How a Trump effort to cut environmental red tape could backfire

College athletes can now make millions off sponsorship deals. Here’s the first look at California’s numbers

Slim margins, climate disasters, and Trump’s funding freeze: Life or death for many US farms

Opinion: The missing ingredient for solving Oregon’s housing crisis – more land

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California's rooftop-solar debate is raging again

What’s the cost shift?

Who owns the solar power used at home?

Related News

Trump administration drops suit that sought to cut toxic emissions in ‘Cancer Alley’

How a Trump effort to cut environmental red tape could backfire

College athletes can now make millions off sponsorship deals. Here’s the first look at California’s numbers

Slim margins, climate disasters, and Trump’s funding freeze: Life or death for many US farms

Opinion: The missing ingredient for solving Oregon’s housing crisis – more land

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Wake Up People!

The Custodians of the Andean Gold

Market Gardening In The Last Frontier

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