Solar Power Is Kicking the Kochs in the Balls

A guy that seems to dislike the Koch brothers as much as they dislike solar power (Photo via)

Last year, a small solar revolution happened across Europe, as Spain, Italy and Germany reached "grid parity’" – the point at which the cost of producing electricity from solar energy becomes cheaper than the cost of buying it from the national grid. Just a few years ago, solar installations needed massive government subsidies to be cost effective. Now – in three countries, at least – they can compete on equal terms with their dirtier cousins.

It’s not a one-off, either. Analyses and methodologies vary, but the general consensus is that Portugal, Australia and parts of Mexico and the United States are at or near grid parity, and the rest of the US – still the world’s biggest consumer of power – is likely to follow within the next decade or so. This doesn’t mean that we’re all suddenly going to switch to clean solar energy overnight – fossil fuels are still projected to make up the bulk of our energy sources for decades to come. But it does mean that, as the Washington Post put it, “electric utilities should struggle to sleep at night”. Thankfully, nanotechnologists are already busy at work on the world’s smallest violin.

Why now? Well, we can thank Germany and Spain for pumping billions of dollars worth of government subsidies into the market (in Spain’s case, nearly going bankrupt in the process), helping to decrease the cost of the technology involved. Solar panels have fallen in price by more than 95 percent over the last 30 years or so. Then there’s the rising oil price – only a few years ago, oil reaching $100 a barrel was a big deal. Now it’s the new normal, and, in the long term, prices are only going to move one way as the cost of finding the last dregs of the stuff and getting it out of the ground rise inexorably. In Latin America, one of the main reasons highlighted by analysis for the failure to reach grid parity so far is that conventional fuel remains fairly cheap – that’s unlikely to last.

For most people, our new solar-powered overlords are good news. For Big Energy, it’s a nightmare. Slow to innovate, lumbered with vast national infrastructures to maintain, and selling a product that gets more expensive to produce each year, fossil fuel companies are facing what could be a massive disruption to their market – one that they look set to be on the wrong side of.

Which brings us to the Koch Brothers. The billionaire kids and their $100bn oil-based business empire look set to be among the tragic victims of this revolution. In the future, their faces will no doubt appear on charity telethons alongside starving African children as Coldplay whine away in the background; but they’re not giving up without a fight. Having bank-rolled the "grassroots" Tea Party – a mass-movement of people persuaded to support policies that harm them – they’re now taking the fight to solar.

The rather melodramatic Koch-funded Heartland billboard campaign

Their first tactic was to deny that climate change was an issue. Finding themselves on the wrong side of science, the intrepid OAPs decided to create some of their own, bankrolling new studies on renewable energy and the climate. This backfired when Richard A Muller, the climate sceptic responsible for a Koch-funded study on global warming, was so persuaded by the evidence that he performed a sudden and highly public U-turn. The Heartland Institute, a think-tank also funded with Koch money, responded with a billboard campaign comparing people who accept climate science with the Unabomber; a PR strategy that turned out to be less persuasive then they'd hoped.

Undaunted, a second study was funded that tried to prove renewables would drive up the cost of electricity for ordinary folk. This time it produced the right result, only to be undermined when one of the authors basically admitted to fudging the numbers. That hasn’t stopped the "findings" from being used in any number of hysterical TV ads depicting solar power as some sort of Commie plot to eradicate the elderly, or something.

The next prong of their attack has been to target the people who actually use solar power. Earlier this year, political attack ads in Arizona portrayed solar energy users as greedy villains who made children cry. The Kochs and their allies spent millions of dollars in the state trying to impose a monthly fee of $50 dollars or more on customers using solar cells in order to "compensate" electricity firms. Ultimately, they failed – the state did elect to impose a fee, but set it at just $5.

But in another unfortunate twist for the Kochs, the Tea Party they spent so much money funding and nurturing have suddenly allied themselves with environmentalists and come out in favour of solar power. That’s not as crazy at it sounds, either. Tea Party members tend to be pretty libertarian folk, strong advocates for personal freedom and independence. What could be more in tune with their ideals than generating your own power, without the need for massive state infrastructure?

Having lost control of the Tea Party, and watched the rebel campaign halt legislation that would have helped them in states like Oklahoma, the Kochs have had no choice but to fight back, leaving them in the absurd position of funding a campaign to fight back against the campaign they funded.

There’s a real beauty in watching democracy and the free market coming back to kick the Kochs in the balls. They can hurl their billions at state politicians, but like King Cnut and the tide, all they’re doing is delaying the inevitable. Solar energy will reach grid parity in more countries over the coming decade, but the story won’t end there – it will keep getting cheaper, oil will keep getting more expensive and technology will continue to move forward. That should benefit almost everybody. Almost.

@mjrobbins