Good idea on the part of SunRun — pay you to install solar panels with no down payment on your part, and you pay them back for the energy your panels generate. But we’re left with a framing problem. Now that generating power using solar panels is actually cheaper overall than fossil fuel based power generation, the company has to fix the image that solar’s just for hippies.
Now I don’t have a lot of problem with focusing on the cost, but I’m not a big fan of throwing hippies under the bus yet again. I can’t think of a better way to fix the messaging without doing exactly that, though.
It’s cool to see Jeff Lewis from The Guild in something more mainstream though!
Hat tip Climate Crocks.
8 comments
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Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
May 11, 2012 at 2:21 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Dolphins are kind of assholes…
peicurmudgeon
May 11, 2012 at 5:02 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You could always invoke the communists (even though the Czechs don’t qualify any longer). They have large solar panel fields scattered around the countryside.
I didn’t take any pictures, but others have.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarpanels-chinacom/4310455833/lightbox/
Jim Baerg
May 11, 2012 at 10:09 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“Now that generating power using solar panels is actually cheaper overall than fossil fuel based power generation,”
Nice if true, but ‘citation needed’.
Jason Thibeault
May 12, 2012 at 12:30 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Jim: my understanding is they’re taking advantage of the new tax breaks and the really cheap solar panels coming from China recently. It makes it economically advantageous in many (apparently not all) regions where fossil-based power actually turns out to be more expensive.
Jason Thibeault
May 12, 2012 at 12:30 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
See the linked Climate Crocks story, and the links therein.
Jim Baerg
May 12, 2012 at 1:11 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
‘tax breaks’
I wonder if anyone has been able to sort through the subsidies to & externalities of various power sources to find ‘real’ costs of the different sources. Hopefully such an exercise could be better than mere ax grinding.
Jason Thibeault
May 12, 2012 at 9:22 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Considering the huge subsidies the fossil fuel power generation industry has gotten for decades, I’m sure it would turn out to be rather favorable for environmentalists.
carlie
May 15, 2012 at 7:42 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And the dolphins are all phonies
They seem nice enough at first
But they pretend to be your friend
Until they see you at your worst and then they leave you
Without a word they swim away