This story initially appeared on Grist and is a part of the Local weather Desk collaboration.
Seamus Fitzgerald hears plenty of opinions about solar energy. Because the affiliate director of actual property at OneEnergy Renewables, a photo voltaic power developer, he approaches farmers and different landowners throughout the Midwest with proposals to lease their properties for photo voltaic tasks. Some landowners are enthusiastic about being a part of the shift to scrub power. Others are hostile to the thought of placing rows of gleaming panels on their land.
Fitzgerald manages to persuade many farmers by explaining the easy economics of leasing their land for solar energy. “On the finish of the day, the monetary funds from these kind of tasks are usually larger than what of us can pull off of their floor by different varieties of crops,” he mentioned. To promote solar energy to individuals who might need hesitations, he usually talks about how the know-how was invented in America. “Whenever you set up a photo voltaic venture, you’re accumulating an American useful resource right here in America,” Fitzgerald mentioned.
It echoes the best way that President Donald Trump talks about power, although he’s often heaping reward on American oil and gasoline, not renewables. Nonetheless, the Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation, the trade’s main lobbying group, has discovered loads of methods to align its work with the administration’s speaking factors. Now splayed throughout its web site, subsequent to a picture of an American flag hovering over photo voltaic panels, is a brand new slogan: “American Power DOMINANCE.” Earlier this month, the affiliation participated in a lobbying blitz in Washington, DC, urging lawmakers to maintain tax credit for clear power tasks in place.
Photo voltaic supplied virtually 6 % of whole US electrical energy technology final 12 months, nevertheless it’s been rising quick and is predicted to provide “virtually all progress” in electrical energy technology this 12 months, in response to the pre-Trump Power Data Administration. Many are hoping that the know-how—which is broadly in style amongst People, with 78 % supporting growing extra photo voltaic farms—can handle to remain out of Trump’s tradition wars over local weather change. Extra so than wind energy with its towering generators, photo voltaic power has a capability to bridge ideological divides, interesting to environmentalists and “don’t-tread-on-me” libertarians alike.
“President Trump has particularly mentioned that he loves photo voltaic—and as power demand soars, we all know that photo voltaic is essentially the most environment friendly and reasonably priced manner so as to add plenty of power to the grid, quick,” mentioned Abigail Ross Hopper, the Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation’s president and CEO, in an announcement to Grist.
In December her commerce group launched a coverage street map that displays Trump’s agenda, with priorities resembling “remove dependence on China” and “reduce purple tape within the power sector.” It’s a change from the imaginative and prescient the affiliation specified by 2020 after the election of former president Joe Biden, when Hopper promised to “meet the second of the local weather period with fairness and justice on the forefront.”
