Study points to recommended reforms in solar energy

Solar power is growing by leaps and bounds in the United States, propelled by climate mitigation policies and carbon-free energy goals—and California is leading the way as the nation’s top producer of solar electricity.

A study in Energy Strategy Reviews has revealed a dark side to the state’s breakneck pace for solar investment, deployment, and adoption, taking a first-time look at patterns of public and private sector corruption in the California solar market.

Researchers at the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS) have identified seven distinct types of corruption abuses and risks in California solar energy. Among them, favoritism in project approvals, including a high-profile incident at the senior ranks of the U.S. Department of the Interior involving an intimate relationship with a solar company lobbyist.

To fully realize a just energy transition, the authors call for major solar reforms in California as the U.S. increasingly relies on solar energy to decarbonize its electricity sector.

“In this groundbreaking study, we find that efforts to accelerate solar infrastructure deployment in California end up contributing to a sobering array of corruption practices and risks,” says lead author Benjamin Sovacool, who is the director of IGS and a Boston University professor of Earth and environment.

“These include shocking abuses of power in the approval and licensing phases as well as the displacement of Indigenous groups, and also nefarious patterns of tax evasion or the falsification of information about solar projects.

“It’s a wake-up call that the solar industry cannot continue on its current trajectory of bad governance and bad behavior.”

Drawing on a literature review and original interviews and fieldwork, the study’s authors arrive at a framework that helps explore the wider socio-political realities driving corruption at a time of explosive growth in the California solar market, from 2010 to 2024.

During this period, the state’s solar energy production increased exponentially, reaching 79,544 gigawatt hours in 2024, or enough to power approximately 7.4 million U.S. households for a year, according to the State of Renewable Energy dashboard.

The research implicates solar energy in numerous corruption practices and risks that have adversely affected communities, policymaking and regulation, and siting decisions and planning.

“The most eye-opening finding for me is how common corruption is at every level of solar development, from small-scale vendors to high-level government officials, even in a well-regulated, progressive state like California,” says co-author Alexander Dunlap, an IGS research fellow.

Favoritism and other forms of corruption

To understand how corruption undermines the solar market, the researchers focused on numerous utility-scale deployments in Riverside County, the fourth most populous county in California. They set out to document patterns of perceived corruption from a broad range of voices, gaining insights through organized focus groups and observation at different solar sites, as well as conducting interviews door-to-door and in a local supermarket parking lot.

Respondents included residents in Blythe and Desert Center, California, impacted by solar energy development, solar construction workers, non-governmental organizations, solar company employees, federal agencies, and state and local governments.

While the study’s authors acknowledge the difficulty of confirming individual claims of corruption, their mixed-methods research approach combines these personal assertions with analysis of news stories, court testimony, and other official sources to support their findings.

They point to a blend of public, private, social, and political patterns of corruption in the California solar energy market.

1. Clientelism and favoritism: Hiring friends or family over others for solar projects and unfairly allocating government contracts or permits to project developers, which in one instance led to an investigative report questioning the influence of a sexual relationship.
2. Rent-seeking and land grabbing: Redirecting public funds or lands to benefit private developers and taking communal or public land from Indigenous peoples or other groups for energy infrastructure siting.
3. Service diversion: Withholding local benefits, such as lower electricity bills, or distributing locally generated power only to higher-paying parts of the state.
4. Theft: Forceful removal of flora or cultural artifacts, or disturbing animal habitat, to build solar project sites.
5. Greenwashing: Misleading the public about a solar project’s environmental benefits; using flawed environmental or cultural impact assessments to evaluate project impacts, such as pollution of nearby waterways; and overriding environmental protections to fast-track solar infrastructure expansion.
6. Tax evasion and avoidance: Not paying or underpaying taxes, or governmental authorities strategically failing to adequately allocate project funds to communities impacted by solar project development.
7. Non-transparency: Hiding, manipulating, or failing to disclose relevant or important information surrounding solar projects, such as the local economic benefits and environmental impacts.

A sunnier future?

Outside of a few headline-making scandals, corruption in California’s renewable energy sector has gone largely unexamined, allowing the underlying dynamics at play to erode the potential of a just energy transition.

To remedy this, the study’s authors recommend corruption risk mapping to document problematic practices and entities, subsidy registers and sunset clauses to deter rent-seeking and tax evasion, transparency initiatives aimed at environmental changes and data production (for Environmental Impact Assessment), strong enforcement of anti-corruption laws, and shared ownership models for solar to improve accountability.

This study, “Sex for Solar? Examining Patterns of Public and Private Sector Corruption within the Booming California Solar Energy Market,” is part of a larger IGS research project looking at injustices in U.S. solar and wind energy supply chains.