ALEC calls for penalties on 'freerider' homeowners in assault on clean energy

• Documents reveal conservative group's anti-green agenda
• Strategy to charge people who install their own solar panels
• Environmentalists accuse Alec of protecting utility firms' profits

• ALEC facing funding crisis after exodus of big donors

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 December 2013 12.49 EST

An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as "freeriders" – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama's main channel for climate action.

Details of Alec's strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.