Local Solar Power: Red Plus Blue Makes a Green Tea Party — Episode 24 of the Building Local Power Podcast
Written by Nick Stumo-Langer

In this week’s episode of Building Local Power we interview Debbie Dooley, President of Conservatives for Energy Freedom and co-founder of the Green Tea Coalition in the southern United States. Dooley’s organizations promote “consumer choice in the energy field” to “provide competition” and stop monopolies from limiting their customer’s options in renewable energy. The Green Tea Coalition features a collaboration between members of the Tea Party Movement and progressives in the Green Party and the Democratic Party in Georgia and other southern states.
Full transcript is available here.
This conversation tracks closely with a previous Building Local Power episode where our experts discussed hyper-partisanship in our political system. That episode, Breaking Through Partisanship: Left-Right-Local, discussed how local issues and local politics cuts across partisan barriers and brings coalitions of concerned residents together.
“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,” says Debbie Dooley of talking to people across the political spectrum in order to promote local renewable energy. “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.”
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Here are some great reading and watching recommendations from our guest, Debbie Dooley:
Article from Vox
Article from The Guardian
Get caught up with the latest work from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on fighting monopoly power in energy and other economic sectors:
Solar: Choice, Competition, and Clean Air
Breaking Through Partisanship: Left-Right-Local — Episode 14 of the Building Local Power Podcast
View the full transcript of the podcast, below.If you missed our previous episodes make sure to bookmark our Building Local Power Podcast Homepage. Please give us a review and rating on iTunes or wherever you subscribe to podcasts.
Audio Credit: Funk Interlude by Dysfunction_AL Ft: Fourstones — Scomber (Bonus Track). Copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.
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Originally published at ilsr.org.
