I think we’ll see a pivot from the right on solar soon, once they realize how cheap it is and how much money they can make. They’ll spin it as home-grown local jobs stuff but regardless it’s a win-win.
I think we’ll see a pivot from the right on solar soon, once they realize how cheap it is and how much money they can make. They’ll spin it as home-grown local jobs stuff but regardless it’s a win-win.
The ironical thing is nothing screams independent, rugged like having your own large single family home with your own power source which is even powering your EV. The US suburbia will become net positive if more people figure out wasting roof space does not make sense
I'm not rly convinced that roofs are the best places for solar.
1. Then you need small scale transformers 2. Lots of roofs have shadows on them a lot of the time, like from trees or other nearby buildings 3. Most roofs have to get replaced every 15 years 4. Roof installed solar is fixed in place
I think parking lots, rural empty land and the like are a better starting point that avoids all 4 of these issues.
I have solar on my roof btw.
Rooftops, residential or commercial, have the benefit of being "free" land for installation. It isn't used for anything else, typically.
> 3. Most roofs have to get replaced every 15 years
What in the world?? What are your roofs made out of?
Rooftop solar has the benefit that you distribute the investment cost over a large number of people, even if the costs are a lot higher than grid-scale installations on the ground.
I'm surprised to hear that you need to replace roofs every fifteen years. What are they made of? The roofs I know last decades longer than that.
I've now seen farmers replacing diesel trucks with Rivian trucks. A lot of them are starting to get it, and the Republicans are losing them as a result.
I had a staunchly Republican environmental science professor in college say that environmentalism IS conservatism and Republicans shot themselves in the foot by making it political. He gave example after example and I'm not sure I've ever heard a more convincing argument before.
Are you sure he didn’t use the word conservation?
In red state language, conservation is being in tune with nature and environmentalism is regulatory capture.
Why are we waiting on political movements to latch on to a revolutionary technology? If they are against you saving money vote them out, regardless of party, lol
Parties are in power, not voters. Or rather, the parties hold the votes that count: those in the assembly.
You only vote once every couple years. Political movements mean less waiting.
There is a school of thought (ie ecomodernism [1]) that believes that all big problems will be solved when the economics change. I used to believe that.
Instead we have a captured system where it's cheaper to buy the politics of wealth extraction. Historically speaking this has always led to increasing wealth inequality that is ultimately resolved by war or revolution.
If the ultra-wealthy were smart, they'd declare victory because they've never had it so good and they'd seek to give back a little to placate the populace and stave off that war and revolution. But they don't. Greed has no bounds. So at some points, the guillotines are probably making a comeback. And a lot of people are going to die as climate refugees in the coming decades.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecomodernism
You underestimate how much money oil groups are pouring in lobbying. Energy could fall from the sky, it wouldn't change their mind... oh wait
The world has more than one country, and most have basically no access to oil. They will go deep into solar first. See, for instance, how the mix between the Venezuelan takeover early in the year, plus the Hormuz situation, put Cuba's energy access into jeopardy, and how that meant moving heavily into solar, as at least that remains available once purchased.
So even if a place like the US goes lighter on solar that is reasonable, Places like Spain, Italy or Morocco will go all in just to minimize dependence on a resource a third party can control. It's the ultimate counter to the Hormuz situation. Squeeze access to oil for long enough, and you accelerate the move away from it.
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I don't see this happening for a very long time. Mines and oil and gas wells are huge wealth concentrators.
Oil wells decrease in production over time. It's called the decline rate. For wells in the Permian basin, the average decline rate is about 15%. So a 1000 barrel per day ("bpd") well produces ~850bpd in year 2, ~700bpd in year 3 and ~550bpd in year 4. That means you need to be constantly drilling wells. That's more wealth concentration opportunity.
1MW of solar produces 1MW in years 1 through 20.
Additionally, the fight for control over resources induces demand for weapons. Solar doesn't do that. This is summed up as No one goes to war over a solar panel [1].
Efficiency isn't the goal. Wealth extraction is.
[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
>> 1MW of solar produces 1MW in years 1 through 20.
I agree with your post, but the above statement is not technically accurate.
Panels do drop in production over time; A very rough rule-of-thumb is around 1% loss per year.
So after 20 years production is at like 80%. (Ymmv)
Of course this isn't really a big deal. The panels themselves are cheap and can be replaced very easily. Equally there is a market for 2nd hand panels as they still produce, and are ideal for places that are not space constrained.
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The right wing prepers and homesteading communities are already fully on board with it, I think it won't be too long until the rest of the right jumps on board.
Just slap an American flag on it and call it "Patriot Solar."
Go religious. "Energy from heaven." or "The devil lives underground."
Bathe your home in God's holy light vs. the toxic foul black liquid that burns with hellfire
That works!
Associating religion with the right is such a shallow, annoying stereotype.
After all, it comes from the Star of America.
We're barreling toward a point where above a certain wealth level and below a certain population density individuals can get all their energy from the sun, store it with batteries you get in the mail from Temu/Amazon/Alibaba and connect it all together with stuff you can buy from a Home Improvement store. All done unilaterally. Very hard to sink the claws of regulation into that except after the fact (unpopular). That is a future that too many people would be happy to sacrifice a lot of pollution to prevent.
So I think the pivot you're talking about, which I agree with eventually happen, will be offset in at least significant part.
The right's opposition to it is mostly rooted in the fact that historically the fossil fuel industry has been a major funding cornerstone of the right.
It goes all the way back to this kind of thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals
The pamphlet from which we get the term "fundamentalism" was published by an oil industry tycoon.
So the right is incentivized to protect this industry even if it becomes obsolescent and is no longer the most economical or practical way to generate at least much of our energy needs (electricity).
While the right has often sounded pro-nuclear, in practice they tend not to be that enthusiastic about it when they actually get into office. Obama supported the first new nuclear plant in decades.
https://politifact.com/factchecks/2012/mar/02/barack-obama/o...
Fossil fuel interests seem to support "the enemy of my enemy". 25 years ago the best alternative was nuclear so they supported alternatives to nuclear. Now they support nuclear and hydrogen.
"historically the fossil fuel industry has been a major funding cornerstone of the right."
The Eastern Bloc in the Cold War was extremely keen on fossil fuels (and nuclear power) and very poor at dealing with pollution. As is the PRC.
In Western Europe, coal miners were the backbone of the far left in places like Germany and the UK including Communist parties. The British Labour Party's vote was traditionally strongest in coal mining areas.
I don't know so much about the US situation, but I am aware that some American coal miners were involved in socialist movements there many decades ago.
I'm not convinced. If the fossil fuel industry has such a grip on the right, how did these things make it into the 2008 Republican Party Platform [1]?
Climate change:
> By increasing our American energy supply and decreasing the long term demand for oil, we will be well positioned to address the challenge of climate change and continue our longstanding responsibility for stewardship over the environment.
...
> As part of a global climate change strategy, Republicans support technology-driven, market-based solutions that will decrease emissions, reduce excess greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, increase energy efficiency, mitigate the impact of climate change where it occurs, and maximize any ancillary benefits climate change might offer for the economy.
...
> Because Republicans believe that solutions to the risk of global climate change will be found in the ingenuity of the American people, we propose a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change. Honoraria of many millions of dollars would be a small price for technological developments that eliminate our need for gas-powered cars or abate atmospheric carbon.
Clean energy:
> Alternate power sources must enter the mainstream. The technology behind solar energy has improved significantly in recent years, and the commercial development of wind power promises major benefits both in costs and in environmental protection. Republicans support these and other alternative energy sources, including geothermal and hydropower, and anticipate technological developments that will increase their economic viability. We therefore advocate a long-term energy tax credit equally applicable to all renewable power sources.
Reducing demand for fossil fuels:
> Conservation does not mean deprivation; it means efficiency and achieving more with less. Most Americans today endeavor to conserve fossil fuels, whether in their cars or in their home heating, but we can do better. We can construct better and smarter buildings, use smarter thermostats and transmission grids, increase recycling, and make energy-efficient consumer purchases. Wireless communications, for example, can increase telecommuting options and cut back on business travel. The Republican goal is to ensure that Americans have more conservation options that will enable them to make the best choices for their families.
...
> We must also produce more vehicles that operate on electricity and natural gas, both to reduce demand for oil and to cut CO2 emissions.
> Given that fully 97 percent of our current transportation vehicles rely on oil, we will aggressively support technological advances to reduce our petroleum dependence. For example, lightweight composites could halve the weight and double the gas mileage of cars and trucks, and together with flex-fuel and electric vehicles, could usher in a renaissance in the American auto industry.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-republican-pa...
And what do the Republican party platforms from within the last decade have to say?
They no longer say anything like that, which supports my point.
The argument that the fossil fuel industry historically being a major source of their funding is why they currently oppose renewables is weak because that has been a major continuing source of their funding for many decades.
Hence to explain why the renewable support in the 2008 party platform went away we need to look for an explanation other than simply the fossil fuel industry wanted it.
It still may be due to the fossil fuel industry, but to make that argument one needs to explain why they didn't have enough power before to stop it from going into the platform in 2008 but they did have enough later to get rid of it.
The oil and gas industry loves solar and wind. You need baseload generation capacity in those outlier days where there is cloud cover and the wind doesn’t blow.
That baseload capacity comes from natural gas power plants. By building solar and wind you are guaranteeing a market for their products in the future.
Not sure what religious fundamentalism has to do with any of this.
Nope. Big oil has spent big money on propaganda for a VERY long time. Something that almost all right wing pundits and podcasters are funded by.
For the right to actually embrace solar, you need either big money in solar to start it's own propaganda campaigns or you need big oil to collapse to the point where they can't afford paying propagandists. Right now, they are making record profits so don't count on that anytime soon.
Already happened, more or less - c.f. Texas
https://texas2036.org/news-analysis/growth-of-utility-scale-...
tl;dr: https://mlu3fafnp1cd.i.optimole.com/w:778/h:495/q:mauto/f:be...
freedom energy
Of the top 10 states in solar generation in July 2026, 7/10 of them voted for Trump in 2024 [1].
The U.S. solar industry installed 43 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in 2025, remaining the dominant source of new capacity added to the grid for the fifth consecutive year. Solar and energy storage represent 79% of new capacity installed in the first year of the Trump Administration [2].
[1] https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-produ...
[2] https://tedmag.com/report-u-s-added-43-gw-of-new-solar-capac...
You would think the administration would champion these efforts, even continue or expand subsidies for it and other things like EVs. Instead they seem to be doing most of what they can in their power to quash green energy.
Because they very transparently are personally getting paid by fossil interests. It’s a naked grift, just like everything else this administration does.
Only Fox News boomers are against solar power. The rest of the right wing just doesn't want government slush fund handouts to vaporware companies like the Obama administration. If it's cheaper, great. Don't drag CO2 into the argument, just win on price and the right wing will happily adopt it.
> The rest of the right wing just doesn't want government slush fund handouts to vaporware companies
Maybe the voters don't, but the businessmen and politicians definitely do, maybe more so than democrats. Just in different sectors (military).
> just win on price and the right wing will happily adopt it
Obvious counterpoints: Trump's $700m "clean, beautiful coal" handouts, or Trump's $2B buyback of wind farm leases.
I'm talking about the voter base, not the crooks in Washington.
The voter base keeps voting for the crooks though.
Nobody likes everything any politician does. The question is who is least evil.
The less evil one, in this case, is the one that is not afraid to admit excess CO2 (emitted by human activity) is a problem.
Im sure theres an element of "private industry should profit off the sun because I'm a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and the government cant be trusted to run efficiently" vs "the government should build and maintain communal infrastructure so everyone can benefit and profit isnt extracted" with both sides thinking their version keeps things cheaper in the end for the customer.
Private industry should be able to profit off the sun and it's disturbing that you think asserting this is a dunk. Steinbeck's temporarily embarrassed capitalists quote (not "millionaires", that is a misquote of what he actually wrote in 'A Primer on the 30s' for Esquire magazine in 1960) was referring to well-off liberals involved in socialist activism in the 30s and having a naive, self-interested understanding of what policies would actually help the proletariat. The government often can't be trusted to run efficiently because the government is insulated from having to actually make a profit delivering services people want to pay for, and is often being used for other poltical ends by people who do not care about wasting taxpayer money. Communal infrastructure is often not something everyone benefits from because infrastructure that is legally required to serve everyone by law often has a bunch of compromises that make it practically unusuable for some group of people who can't do anything to change it because they are a numerical minority.
It's interesting that you took my ambiguity and lack of conviction regarding a right and wrong side as me picking one.
>Private industry should be able to profit off the sun and it's disturbing that you think asserting this is a dunk.
It wasn't a "dunk", you added that interpretation yourself.
I don't think many people on the right have ever been against solar power. It's rather being pro all power and not wanting to remove a source to replace it. The demands to remove power sources come from the left. Build as much solar as you want, but don't shut down the nuclear plants.
The current US administration has forcibly shutdown solar, onshore and offshore wind projects. Explicitly, intentionally.
A bit of realism would help here. Yes, there's a left/NIMBY overlap to some degree, but the forces from the non-right camp seeking to limit power development comes from the NIMBY elements, not the left elements.
A bit of realism is that there's a very well established anti-nuclear popular movement on the left, which has existed for decades. As long as we have access to history books and photos from the past, there is no use denying this.
Germany recently finished their complete dismantlement of the nations nuclear power. Another nuclear country Sweden, has shut down seven of their reactors, but are at least rhetorically changing back to supporting nuclear.
Go and talk in real life with people on the left and you'll find many of them are against nuclear power. Go and talk in real life with people on the right and it will be hard for you to find anybody who is against solar power. Because why would you be against solar?
The problem is left and right are too broad. There are some one each side in every different option. There are oil barrons in the right and those who like solar because it is economical. Likewise the left has those who hate all electric and want to go back to the pre electric era, and those who want solar.
People who have no other arguments than Reddit down votes: Try to get out of your bubble and sit down and talk with somebody on the right IRL and see if they have anything against solar power. I've never heard anybody in my life be against it, so maybe you are just swallowing untruths because they align with your taste.