Local Solar Power: Red Plus Blue Makes a Green Tea Party (Episode 24)

My mission aligns with building local power because I think we can be very effective on the local level, local control, energy freedom. There’s nothing more local than a private property owner that [inaudible 00:04:41] has the right to control the energy he produces on his private property. The power belongs to the people.

If you talk to most Republicans about clean energy and you open up, “We need to go with clean energy because of climate change,” they’re not going to pay a bit of attention to anything else you say. But if you talk about energy choice, private property rights, freedom, innovation, national security and being good stewards of the environment God gave us, all of a sudden you will have a receptive audience. I live in Atlanta, there’s different roads that will take you to your final destination of Atlanta. The roads you take is dependent upon where you’re coming from. As long as we work together, someone’s willing to work together to advance clean energy and solar and other renewables, I don’t care why they’re advancing it, wanting to work to advance it. I just care in the end result.

Georgia Power has a big fiasco with plant Votgle and with Westinghouse going bankrupt. People here are very much interesting in advancing solar. Every conservative that I know believes in energy choice. They don’t like these giant monopolies depriving them of the decision of what to do on their private property. They want to be energy independent. If you have a list of 10, it may not rank one, two, three, but it will certainly rank probably five or six on that list of the top 10 with the right messaging.

Under the Obama administration the real battle has always been on the state level. There is no change whatsoever under President Trump. The battle and the opportunities to advance clean energy, the best opportunity is going to be on the state level because especially Republicans, they pay attention to a lot of things that happen on the federal level but it seems like they’re much more interested on the state level or the local level because that impacts their daily lives much more than something on the federal level does.

I think if we remove those regulatory barriers that exist and allow people to control the power they produce on their private property, you allow them to become entrepreneurs and actually make a profit off of it, then I think you’ll see solar and other clean energy to explode in the United States. Cost, yes, I see, hear a lot of people talking about the cost, upfront cost of rooftop solar, but if you remove those regulatory barriers and allow competition and choice, I think that’d do away with the cost concern.

Again, that depends on situation but I can tell you, when I first began the work in Florida the Republicans were very closely aligned with the monopolies because the monopolies campaign contributions and all of that. I began to get the message out and began to work, work with a lot of the elected officials and influencing policy by giving interviews, and all of a sudden a lot of Republicans started saying, “Hey, maybe we need to take a closer look.” They passed legislation that remove the tangible property tax from commercial solar. They’re more open to renewables that they once were.

I will be honest with you, I have seen some Democrats leaning groups that support monopolies too. It’s because these electric monopolies have a lot of money. They use their utility customers as cash cows, so it’s like they have these big money trees, so they have a lot of money that they can donate to a lot of both Democrat and Republican groups. Money drives a lot of this. I am changing it, look what happened in Georgia. Georgia Power was king forever, until, nobody ever defeated them, until 2013 when I formed Green Tea Coalition and partnered with Republicans on the public service commission to go against what Georgia Power wanted and got them to add more solar to their energy portfolio pix. I happen to believe that’s all changing.

Another thing that people are increasingly concerned about, there is nothing more prone to a terrorist attack than our centralized power grid. The federal energy regulatory commission found a few years ago that terrorists would have to take down nine of the key substations and it would cause a blackout from coast to coast that would last weeks. If we move to a rooftop solar kind of decentralized power structure, that would help protect us against such a devastating impact of our centralized power grid going down. I fully believe that solar is a national security issue.

Left and right came together, election night I was in the Tampa area, we all flew down to see if we were able to defeat it. On election night Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives came together to actually watch the local election returns in Florida to see if we were able to defeat the referendum that these electric monopolies had spent over $20 million on to pass. We were able to defeat that. We celebrated, we had Champagne. Then through parts of the night all of the Democrats were basically on one side of the room, in one section, watching the presidential election returns, and the Republicans in the coalition were on the other side, seeing if Donald Trump would win. We respected each other’s difference. We would joke with each other.

In Georgia the coalition has been bipartisan. In Nevada, it’s been a bipartisan coalition. The key to that is being able to come together and respect each other’s differences. We don’t talk about issues we don’t agree on, that’s a taboo subject. That’s the key because fighting for renewables and fighting these electric monopolies and fossil fuel interests, it’s a David versus Goliath battle, so we’re much more successful and it’s been my experience where we find a way to work together on issues we agree on. As far as Donald Trump’s election, it has really not changed my work one bit with the exception that I get a lot of news interviews because they know I’m a Trump supporter.

Now in Florida, some of the people that I’ve worked with on the front lines and stuff like that, fighting these battles in Florida, we’ll joke, they’ll laugh and call me a tree hugger because that’s what a lot of the Koch funded groups used to call me when I first became a very strong advocate for solar. But it’s best to avoid the topic because it will be divisive and it’s better to focus your energy on issues you agree on or talk about movies or personal things, but stay away from the topic of politics.

April 1st I spoke at Columbia University in New York City. Same thing, treated very, very well. You have treat … When you’re working with your friends, with friends on the left, progressives, you can be friends. I went to University of Alabama and I live right in the middle of Georgia Bulldog country during college football season, but that doesn’t mean people that don’t like Alabama are my enemies. They’re not, they’re friends.

That’s something that’s really instructive that will tell you how you can put your differences and work with people across the aisle. Like, it’s okay to bring up issues besides, “Hey, how do you feel about this issue and about that issue.” When we do we find that the left or right have a lot more in common than just energy. For example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, I worked with my friends in the labor union to oppose that. You have teachers unions are working with, in many states working with conservatives to stop common core. A lot of this has already been done in Georgia. I’ve worked with groups on the left, formed a coalition to stop a anti-union bill that was backed by the chamber of commerce. I worked with a lot of the same groups to oppose tax payer funding of a sport stadium. There’s a lot of opportunity that’s out there, you just really have to be respectful and really don’t discuss issues you don’t agree on and you’ll be much more successful.

Subscribe to this podcast and our other podcast, Local Energy Rules and Community Broadband Bits, on Apple Podcast, Stitcher or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at ilsr.org. Thanks to Dysfunction Al for the music licensed through Creative Commons, the song is Funk Interlude. I’m Lisa Gonzalez for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Thanks again for listening to episode 24 of the Building Local Power Podcast.