So far four cities in California require solar panels on all new residential construction, with San Francisco as the most populous example. A proposed law would expand that requirement to the rest of the state.
"Newly sworn-in state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce legislation Monday requiring all new construction in the state to include solar panels," reports Melody Gutierrez.
The proposed law would expand current state requirements that new building "have at least 15 percent of the roof clear of obstructions and shade" to be ready for solar panels to be added at a later date, according to another article on the proposed law by Kate Wheeling.
The state bill builds on a similar ordinance in San Francisco, authored by Senator Wiener while he was a San Francisco County Supervisor. "San Francisco was the first major city in the country to require that solar panels be installed on new buildings and homes," according to Gutierrez. Though San Francisco is one of for cities around the state to require solar panels on new construction (Lancaster, Santa Monica, and Sebastopol are the others), the bill is expected to have a difficult path to adoption at the state level.
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