Climate activists and the solar industry are “natural allies” that “could mobilize politicians and citizens across the aisle to make clean energy even more affordable for everyone, and spur millions of well-paying solar jobs,” cleantech marketer Carter Lavin argues in a post on The Energy Collective.
Campaigns to date, aimed at connecting climate hawks with solar installers, “only scratch the surface of what the groups can achieve together,” he writes. “So much more could be done if we also flipped that relationship, connecting solar customers and would-be customers to the activist community.”
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Lavin says cooperation to date has been limited because the groups “don’t really understand each other,” are both strapped for cash, and are unaccustomed to reaching beyond familiar limits—the solar industry “is not very politically active,” and most of the climate community is “not used to working with for-profit entities.”
But “funding is only the third most important resource for enabling the partnership between climate groups and the solar industry to win pro-solar legislation,” he suggests. “The groups already have the most importance resources for this undertaking”: the U.S. industry’s network of 400,000 customers and one million prospects, and the climate movement’s “amazing ability to quickly inspire, train, and engage large groups in the political process.”
