I didn’t set out to pick a fight with Bill O’Reilly. But he started it when he trashed solar energy on his show. It happened just a few hours after a large California school district selected my solar energy company, the Bay Area’s SPG Solar, to install one of the largest school solar power systems ever built—and all at no cost to the taxpayer and at an immediate reduction of 10 percent in the district’s power bill.
Then O’Reilly said something to get my complete attention: He said solar power was too expensive and too complicated.
Bull.
And that’s why I wrote this commentary.
Fox News superstar Bill O’Reilly was stoked. The topic was climate change, and his guest, San Francisco radio talk show host Leslie Marshall, had just said her plan to save the world would require a tax increase.
Liberals never admit that to O’Reilly. Not even his “brain room” where they “triple check everything” could have seen that coming.
But then Marshall turned it around and asked O’Reilly what he was willing to do to save the planet. “I’d like to put solar panels on my house,” O’Reilly said, “and heat my house through the sun. I’d like to do that for a reasonable amount of money. They can’t do it for a reasonable amount of money, number one.
“And it’s so complicated…I can’t do it. …So don’t tell me about my grandchildren. If they can figure out the solar panels, they can have them. But it’s all bunk. It’s all bull at this point for a guy like me. …I want a clean planet. But I’d like the stuff to work.”
So there you have it: In the world according to Bill O’Reilly, solar is too complicated and too expensive.
Well, Mr. O’Reilly, triple check this: The Irvine Unified School District just selected my company, SPG Solar of Novato, to install one of the most ambitious solar school projects in the country. With panels at 21 schools, the district will save at least $17 million over the life of the 20-year project; and solar power will produce about half its energy.
If 20 years seems like a long time, consider this: There will be an immediate 10 percent reduction in the district’s energy bills, all at no cost to the district. That’s how inexpensive buying and installing panels has become. That’s how powerful the tax incentives are.
If you want to talk carbon, fine: Rest assured, these panels will prevent lots and lots of carbon from entering the atmosphere. Everyone loves that. But make no mistake: This deal could not have been done unless it made financial sense.
So it’s not expensive. Nor is it complicated—it doesn’t require interactive consumers to switch back and forth from solar to “other.” Consumers, whether it’s O’Reilly on Long Island, or Irvine School Board member Mike Parhan in Irvine, don’t have to do a thing other than pay a fixed—and lower—monthly energy bill.
To see the complicated side of solar power, you need to visit one of our solar installations at the Far Niente winery in Napa Valley, where we built a solar energy array on top of a pond. The panels actually float—the first system of its kind in the world. That was a little tricky to build, but just like the school, all they do to get energy is sit back and watch the sun shine.
You want complicated? How about building five acres of solar panels in one of the most desolate (and strangely beautiful) places on earth: The Furnace Creek Resort and Hotel in the middle of Death Valley. Or Livermore, where we built the world’s largest solar energy system for a movie theater, while never letting the moviegoers even know we were there. The owners don’t operate these systems any more than they operate their oil, gas or electric lines.
It’s even simpler than it sounds, so I’ll stop before I start bloviating. Because, as O’Reilly’s viewers know, that’s his job. Telling the truth about how hundreds of companies around the country are making simple, powerful and inexpensive solar energy systems is ours.
Tom Rooney is president and CEO of SPG Solar, one of California’s oldest and largest solar companies. You can reach him at (415) 883-7657.
