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By Canary Media
Canary Media
Tim Pawlenty was a two-term Republican governor of Minnesota and made a run in the 2012 presidential primary, which ultimately went to Mitt Romney. Now, Pawlenty has reemerged on the national political scene as the leading evangelist for solar energy, while the industry seeks to recover from a stinging political defeat.
In June, Pawlenty took over as president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the largest solar-specific trade group in the U.S. He steps into the job at a uniquely turbulent moment in the industry’s history. Solar developers had revved up to take advantage of the supportive policies in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, only to have Republicans win back control of D.C. in 2024 and gut the climate law in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“The current state is relatively bleak,” Pawlenty said of solar’s political clout in Washington. “But … nothing stays the same in politics, and there’s hope in what’s to come in the future.” He was speaking during my onstage interview with him Tuesday at Canary Media’s Climate Week NYC summit on the energy transition in rural America, one of Pawlenty’s first public appearances in his new role.
Despite the setbacks in Congress, solar is far and away the biggest source of electricity getting built in the country right now, and has been for several years. Factor in the “unbelievable exploding demand for energy in our country,” and the business fundamentals for solar and storage have never looked stronger. But, Pawlenty noted, state and federal governments still stand between the sector and what can get built, so the industry has to sharpen its political efforts if it wants to deliver on its enormous potential.
“Eventually, the policymakers catch up to the facts,” he said. “We have really good facts on our side. Some of the old narratives, some of the old spins … are out of date. If you bring policymakers to the current story with current facts, it goes something like this: Solar and storage is the most cost-effective form of energy in the country, without question.”
And while a common Republican critique of the domestic solar industry is that it relies too much on panels imported from China, in fact, the U.S. has nearly eliminated Chinese panels thanks to trade policy and the rapid growth of domestic manufacturing capacity, Pawlenty said.
Besides working to ensure politicians have fresh intel on the state of U.S. energy, Pawlenty wants to push for policies where a strong bipartisan consensus already exists.
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“Going forward, we’d like to adopt policies and have politics around solar and storage that are durable,” Pawlenty said. “While it’s very tempting to just say, ‘Let’s roll whenever we can roll,’ I think it’s wise to at least take a half a step back and say, ‘Are we advocating for policies that are likely to survive political turbulence and change?’”
For instance, Pawlenty argued, the industry should push to “turbocharge” domestic manufacturing for clean energy. Indeed, Trump’s budget law kept the Inflation Reduction Act’s domestic manufacturing incentives, even as it cut tax credits for solar installation, and the Trump administration has adopted stricter trade protections on imported solar panels since then. Domestic solar and battery manufacturing has surged in the last four years, but it’s still too early to evaluate the long-term stability of this recent industrial revival.
The solar industry aspires to mass appeal, but its members often get tied in knots of jargon when they try to communicate outside their own ranks. Pawlenty avoids that pitfall by making his case in plain English, and drawing connections between solar and conservative values that don’t typically get floated in climate policy conversations.
“Iran can’t block the sun, and so if you’re into national security, as I am, I like things that Iran can’t block, or North Korea, or China, or Russia, or any of the other folks who want to do us harm,” he said.
Though energy policy gets written in cities, large-scale solar projects get built where there is space. As of last year, 87% of U.S. clean energy generation happened in rural areas of the country, per a Rural Climate Partnership analysis. This buildout has increasingly encountered local resistance in communities concerned about changing uses of legacy farmland, a fear sometimes exacerbated by misinformation that spreads on social media.
As many rural areas consider restrictive rules to limit solar or battery installations, Pawlenty said the solar industry can position itself as a defender of private property rights, supporting policies that allow farmers to develop their own land as they see fit.
“I’m from a farm state — I’ve spent a lot of time in farm areas and with farmers,” he said. “From a conservative standpoint, land rights are pretty important. We want to make sure that those are not lost in the shuffle either, as we talk about what farmers can do with their land as the owners of land.”
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Julian Spector is a senior reporter at Canary Media. He reports on batteries, long-duration energy storage, low-carbon hydrogen, and clean energy breakthroughs around the world.
Electrification
Politics
Offshore wind
Virtual power plants
U.S. regions
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