By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
It’s our distinct pleasure to announce that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Greenpeace have come to a historic agreement. And that historic agreement is this: Solar. Rocks.
According to a new survey by Swytch, a blockchain platform that tracks, verifies and rewards those reducing the global carbon footprint, 75% of both NRA and Greenpeace members believe businesses that switch to clean energy should be rewarded – and NRA members are more than twice as likely to own solar electrical systems than the general public.
Those are the headlines from the new survey, but they are not the only evidence that solar and clean energy support crosses party and regional lines. There’s this significant finding, too:
The survey also found that an overwhelming majority (92%) of Americans believe that renewable energy is either very important or somewhat important to the world’s future and more than 81% of respondents believe that solar power is the most important.
It’s the second part of that finding that should hearten solar advocates from coast to coast. It’s long been considered a settled fact that at least 90% of American support solar, but as far as SolarWakeup can remember, this is the first survey to show Americans have a marked preference for solar over other clean energy solutions. The survey solidifies the idea that the Solar Revolution is here to stay, something that could be proven only anecdotally through stories of the industry’s spread to non-traditional solar states.
The survey also had two more interesting findings about the motivation behind decisions to go solar and what might encourage more people to do so:
- Roughly 48% of respondents stated their primary motivation for switching to clean energy would be to save money and more than 37% would switch to reduce their environmental impact.
- Almost 92% of respondents would be more willing to install solar if they had a battery to store the extra energy produced and 88% would be more willing if they could sell the extra energy produced
Those last two findings are important. It shows solar advocates that the way to potential users’ hearts is through their wallets, and it shows that net metering and battery storage are critical to the spread of the Solar Revolution.