Solar is Still Good for You, Even if You Hate the Environment
My daily challenge is trying to inspire and educate people about solar for their homes. For some of you reading this, you are probably thinking, “Wow, Dena, that sounds like the easiest job in the world! Everyone loves solar!” Those people probably don’t spend their day posting thing to the internet about solar and then getting responses like “it’s just a government conspiracy” or “I would never do solar because it would make my house look ugly.” It’s hard to be an idealistic environmentalist working in what is essentially construction.
The more I try to engage in conversations about solar, the more I realize how much miseducation, vitriol and straight up hatred exists towards it. I expected ambivalence, but was totally unprepared for the hatred and antagonism towards solar.
Worse, all these negative comments and posts had planted a seed of doubt in my mind. On my first day, filled with optimism, I wrote a blog post which I originally titled “You can get Solar power for nothing down! There is no catch!” I was bubbling over with enthusiasm. And then Facebook and all the haters began to rain down on my content with their government conspiracies and harsh words, and I could feel my bright-eyed enthusiam wilting.
Could Solar really be all that it’s chocked up to be? Was I being naive?
Every time I learn something new about solar I think “Gee, this seems to be too good to be true.” And I’m all on in this. So what must the average person be thinking? And how can I educate them about how they are wrong and I am right?
I learned the hard way that market research shows that people just don’t care enough about the environment. They like it, it’s reason #2 or #3 for why they go solar… but at the end of that it wasn’t going to be enough. My fully stocked armory of facts on global climate change and helping polar bears was not going to cut it.
And so, what started as a minimally funny joke in our office “I don’t care about polar bears…” turned into days on end where a group of very smart people started using math to explain why, even if you don’t care about the environment, you still need to go solar. And what it boiled down to was math of solar just makes financial sense for most people. How boring and unmarketable is that?
The video is the culmination of all of those conversations. It’s really good, it’s not boring, but it is long and there’s A LOT of math in it. If that’s your kind of thing, definitely watch it. If it’s not your kind of thing, here’s the high notes:
We looked at Matt’s actual house. Matt doesn’t have solar because he rents. But Matt does have a house, and some kids, so his bill ends up being about $200 a month.
At that rate, with the current projected/predictable increases in the cost of energy, through the “magic of compound interest” his energy bill over 20 years is going to be $96,000. That’s an awful lot of money.
Let’s say you want to buy outright a solar system to cut down Matt’s bill to nothing. He’ll pay $25,000 for the whole thing (including design and permitting) but then that’s it. No more paying his energy bill. Over 20 years, that’s going to save him about $70k. Sounds awesome!?
Awesome, if you have an extra $25k lying around. Which I feel like most people don’t. Or if they do, they aren’t spending it on solar panels.
Is there another option? Of course there is. “Solar as a service.” You end up paying $20–30 less per month. Over 20 years that will cost you about $60,000, which is about $40k less than just handing PG&E a big fat check every month. Suddenly that $20 a month starts to seem a lost less puny.
But of course, people love to talk about caring about the environment but rarely act on it. $20 a month is just not a big, sexy number that’s going to make people get off their butts and do the work to switch from gross fossil fuels to renewable energy. People can be lazy, or busy, or some other combination thereof. There’s a million reasons to put off going solar — even if you think it’s a good idea, even if you want to go solar.
I think my friend S** (name hidden to protect the sassy) put it best when she told me “I feel like if you own a house, and you don’t have solar on it, you’re kind of an a$$.” I feel that way to, but how to get people to take action on something they pretty much already know is the right thing to do? And how to do it without sounding so cranky?
It’s frustrating when you have something that seems like such a no brainer — saves people money, saves the PLANET — and those truths aren’t enough to inspire people to take action. But I guess the good news is, I still have a job because nobody else has figured it out either.
