Polarization is huge obstacle to US climate policy. One hope: cross-party clean energy uptake. My new @NatureEnergyJnl article (w @peterdhowe + Chris Miljanich) merges satellite data w/ voter file to explore political behaviors of solar PV households 1/ 🧵 nature.com/articles/s4156… 
For decades, US climate beliefs have been sorting around party lines. Today, many Republican officials have turned against the energy transition - in some states they are even working to rollback state-level clean energy policies 2/ theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
But Republicans are not homogenous. Surprising political coalitions like the “Green Tea Party” have captured the imagination. Still, it is an empirical Q: are clean energy Republicans the exception or the norm? 3/
yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/08/climat…
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Imagine you were transported to some random neighborhood in the U.S. Does knowing the house in front of you has solar tell you anything about its occupants? their ideology? their political behaviors? how they differ from their next-door neighbors who don’t have solar? 4/
With fun new data, we can finally figure this out. We started with data from Google's Project Sunroof, which processes satellite imagery to classify US addresses with solar panels. We also randomly sampled nearby addresses without rooftop solar. 5/ google.com/get/sunroof
Then we took all of those solar and solar neighbor addresses, and merged them with the US voter file. Now we were, in @ecotone2's words "cooking with an induction stove". We had everything we needed to describe political behaviors of solar households and compare to neighbors. 6/
First take-home: There are LOTS of Republicans with solar. In fact, we show how Reps in a given neighborhood are just as likely to have solar as Dems. More Dems w/ solar overall - but only because neighborhoods with solar are, on average, in places that have more Dems. 7/
And solar households vote. A lot. Solar households have a higher proportion of residents who have voted in both primary and general elections. This is good news for the public to emerge as a voice for clean energy expansion. 8/
We also explore other potential factors that might shape household-level political behaviors. For example, we don't find any differences in the partisan composition of solar energy adopters as a result of state-level policy environments. See paper for this and more 9/
And @Uptheleft has also written a commentary about our results in the News and Views section of @NatureEnergyJnl 10/ nature.com/articles/s4156…
(By the way, Google's Project Sunroof also led to this terrific paper by @DeborahSunter @sergiocasterdz and @dan_kammen. As they show, there are massive inequalities in access to the energy transition. nature.com/articles/s4189…) 11/
So solar households are ideologically diverse! Consistent with @peterdhowe, @mudfire, @ecotone2 and my work on partisan distribution of US climate beliefs. Even in most conservative parts of country, many Republican voters support climate action. 12/ link.springer.com/article/10.100…
And Republican support for renewable energy research funding is extremely high, with greater than 80% support nationally and strong majorities in every congressional district. You can explore the data for yourself via @YaleClimateComm tool: 13/ climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations…
All energy transitions are fundamentally political. Our results offer some hope for "feedback effects": policies might nurture new political coalitions that can make Republican elites more responsive to green publics! 14/ talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/climate-d…
At scale, renewable energy infrastructure could involve millions of additional citizens with home energy installations. The existence of a cross-party coalition of citizens with growing stake in energy sector decarbonization offers just a bit of good news! /fin
