Strange Bedfellows: Why the Tea Party is Fighting for Solar

Christopher Martin
November 13, 2013 

New York -- When do Tea Party Republicans stand together with Sierra Club environmentalists? The answer is on their support for solar energy against the monopoly power of traditional utilities in some of the most conservative U.S. states.

A Georgia splinter group known as the Green Tea Coalition, which is part of the broader anti-big-government movement, is reviving the Republican link with the Sierra Club that dates back more than a century to President Theodore Roosevelt's work to protect the environment. Its influence is being felt in other states, from Arizona in the West to North Carolina on the East Coast.

"Some people have called this an unholy alliance," said Debby Dooley, founder of the coalition and a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots. She's working with the Sierra Club to fight for solar and against nuclear power in Georgia. "We agree on the need to develop clean energy, but not much else."

The alliance is a danger for utilities such as Southern Co.'s Georgia Power unit and Pinnacle West Capital Corp.'s Arizona Public Service, which are resisting the spread of solar energy as a threat to their business model. It may help solar developers such as SolarCity Corp. and panel manufacturers including SunPower Corp. of San Jose, California.

What's uniting the environmental and Republican groups is the view that plunging prices for solar panels may mean consumers don't need to buy all their electricity from utilities and their giant centralized generation plants.

'Strange Bedfellows'

"The free market approach works well in Republican circles, so I can understand how these strange bedfellows come together," said Frank Maisano, an energy specialist at the Washington law firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. "It becomes an economic argument."

Solar panel prices have fallen 59 percent since the start of 2011 to about 83 cents a watt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That means solar power costs an average $143 a megawatt-hour worldwide now, down from $236 in the first quarter of 2011, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Nuclear costs about $101 and natural gas $70, by comparison.

In Georgia, Southern's plans to build two nuclear reactors at its Plant Vogtle site south of Augusta, each with 1.1 gigawatts of capacity, has drawn the ire of Dooley's Green Tea group. Georgia Power customers already are paying a surcharge on their bills for the $14 billion project, even though they won't start producing electricity until 2017 and 2018.

'No Competition'

Dooley said the growing use of solar power is pressuring utilities to open their grids to other energy sources that may become even cheaper in the next few years. Customers should have a choice of buying electricity from the grid or making their own at home.

"There's no competition here," Dooley said in an interview. "Solar is our only way to force them to compete."

Dooley's group worked with the Sierra Club to successfully lobby regulators in July to require Southern to buy energy from 525 megawatts of solar panels owned by other parties, including about 100 megawatts from rooftop systems.

Georgia Power has excess supplies of energy and doesn't need the additional generation from solar installations, said spokesman John Kraft.

"This wasn't something we were seeking but we didn't oppose it in the end," Kraft said in an interview.

Solar Rooftops

The odd-couple partners also are working to overturn a Georgia law that bars third parties from owning residential rooftop solar projects. The rule keeps developers such as SolarCity from installing rooftop panels at little cost to customers in return for revenue earned from selling solar power over the lifetime of the panels. That forces consumers who want rooftop power systems to shoulder all upfront costs and makes solar prohibitively expensive for most households.

Republican lawmakers are discussing lifting a similar ban in North Carolina, where Ruth Samuelson, a Representative from Mecklenberg, helped fight off attempts to gut the state's renewable energy mandate earlier this year.

"Where the Tea Party and the Sierra Club align is on pro- fairness and about the future of the planet," said Colleen Kiernan, director of the environmental group's Georgia chapter.

Environmental Links

Republicans had close links with the environmental movement until a few decades ago. John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, took Roosevelt camping for three days in May 1903 among the giant sequoias and deep valleys of what would become Yosemite National Park in California. That helped win the Republican's backing for 1906 legislation allowing the federal government to restrict activity on public land.

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