By Al Gore’s telling, the pri­vate sec­tor is our best hope for avert­ing cli­mate change. In a wide­ly viewed Feb­ru­ary TED Talk, the for­mer vice pres­i­dent pre­sent­ed ​“the case for opti­mism on cli­mate change” — a stark rever­sal from the doom-and-gloom pro­jec­tions about impend­ing cat­a­stro­phe for which he is known. Fos­sil fuels still account for 82 per­cent of U.S. ener­gy con­sump­tion. But Gore is now san­guine, in large part, because the pri­vate sec­tor is flock­ing to invest in renew­able ener­gy, what he calls ​“the biggest new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty in the his­to­ry of the world.”

Without robust public-sector solutions, the move away from fossil fuels could leave many behind. But done right, a clean energy economy would also usher in a more equitable one.

His argu­ment goes like this: Thanks to a rapid drop in the cost of wind and solar-ener­gy pro­duc­tion, a full-blown tran­si­tion to renew­able ener­gy has nev­er looked more fea­si­ble. Grid par­i­ty — the point at which renew­ables become cost-com­pet­i­tive with con­ven­tion­al fuels — is nigh. Even­tu­al­ly, with enough pri­vate invest­ment, renew­able ener­gy will sim­ply ren­der fos­sil fuels obso­lete, dri­ving down emis­sions in the process.

Can the invis­i­ble hand real­ly guide us to a low-car­bon future?

Deb­bie Doo­ley thinks so. The 57-year-old founder of the nation­al Green Tea Coali­tion is one of a grow­ing num­ber of right-wing activists enter­ing the fight for what she calls ​“ener­gy free­dom.” This blend of con­ser­vatism and envi­ron­men­tal­ism is an ani­mat­ing force in nation­wide efforts to expand the use of home solar panels.

Res­i­den­tial solar has a nat­ur­al appeal for the Green Tea crowd. Many states lim­it res­i­dents’ choice of elec­tric­i­ty providers to a few large util­i­ty com­pa­nies, to the great frus­tra­tion of many. Home and busi­ness own­ers who opt to install pan­els on their roofs essen­tial­ly become pri­vate pow­er-pro­duc­ers. Doo­ley believes they should be free to sell direct­ly to neigh­bors, break­ing up gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ed monopolies.

“Cap­i­tal­ism and the free mar­ket are a nat­ur­al fit for solar,” Doo­ley tells In These Times. ​“The gov­ern­ment needs to get out of the way.”

Dooley’s not wrong to sug­gest that restric­tive reg­u­la­tions may be stymieing the growth of the nascent indus­try. While solar has expe­ri­enced rapid growth, it still accounts for less than 1 per­cent of pow­er in the U.S. Since 2013, dozens of states have enact­ed fee hikes and sur­charges for users of rooftop solar ener­gy, as well as bans on net meter­ing, a pol­i­cy that helps home­own­ers off­set the cost of solar-pan­el instal­la­tion by let­ting them sell sur­plus elec­tric­i­ty back to util­i­ties at retail prices.

But reg­u­la­tors have often embraced these poli­cies at the behest of anoth­er set of pri­vate actors. Gas, oil and util­i­ty com­pa­nies all see the home-solar boom as an exis­ten­tial threat to their mar­ket and have thrown their lob­by­ing weight behind anti-solar mea­sures. In 2013, the Guardian revealed a con­cert­ed plan by the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil — whose mem­bers at the time includ­ed Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon­Mo­bil — to tar­nish renew­ables’ image and pass nation­wide restric­tions on them.

Dooley’s solu­tion is ​“solar choice,” a suite of poli­cies that includes net meter­ing and exemp­tion from cer­tain tax­es. Join­ing her are fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives, faith groups and orga­ni­za­tions like the Alliance for Solar Choice, backed by some of the country’s biggest solar com­pa­nies. Envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions such as the Sier­ra Club have also enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly signed on.

Last year, this unlike­ly alliance suc­cess­ful­ly passed the Solar Pow­er FreeMar­ket Financ­ing Act in Geor­gia, which allows home­own­ers and busi­ness­es with on-site solar to buy from and sell to third-par­ty providers. Doo­ley and her allies are hop­ing to push through sim­i­lar mea­sures in Flori­da, New Hamp­shire, Neva­da and elsewhere.

Doo­ley is a skilled coali­tion-builder. She talks envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship with greens, and mar­ket choice and nation­al secu­ri­ty with fel­low Repub­li­cans. (“We don’t know that ISIS is not in this coun­try try­ing to hack into our infra­struc­ture.”) She doesn’t deny the exis­tence of cli­mate change, but she avoids bring­ing it up. And while she sup­ports state-fund­ed renew­ables research and devel­op­ment, she argues against reg­u­la­tions on emis­sions, a car­bon tax or any long-term ener­gy subsidies.

Pro­gres­sives have thus far latched on to an easy point of agree­ment with the Green Tea Coali­tion: Lev­el the play­ing field and renew­able ener­gy will win the day. It’s a tempt­ing argu­ment, and the mot­ley group going up against ossi­fied util­i­ties and their cor­po­rate allies is easy to root for.

But the pri­vate-sec­tor solu­tions envi­sioned by con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal­ists leave much to be desired. If left to the free mar­ket, clean ener­gy is like­ly to remain out of reach for many Amer­i­cans. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry, 49 per­cent of U.S. house­holds can’t access res­i­den­tial solar — either because they don’t own their own homes, or live in build­ings that can’t host rooftop pan­els. Even for those that can, the upfront costs of rooftop solar instal­la­tion are high — between $15,000 and $29,000 for a typ­i­cal system.

Green pow­er to the people

With­out robust pub­lic-sec­tor solu­tions, the move away from fos­sil fuels could leave many behind. But done right, a clean-ener­gy econ­o­my could also ush­er in a more equi­table one, as Nao­mi Klein argues in her 2014 book This Changes Every­thing: Cap­i­tal­ism vs. the Cli­mate. Ger­many holds lessons for U.S. orga­niz­ers in this respect. The country’s social move­ments have for years demand­ed favor­able mar­ket incen­tives, fed­er­al fund­ing and ambi­tious cli­mate goals. In 2015, Ger­many sourced more than 32 per­cent of its pow­er from solar, wind, bio­mass and oth­er renew­ables. Today, rough­ly half of the country’s renew­ables capac­i­ty is com­mu­ni­ty-owned, break­ing up the pow­er of the country’s big utilities.

In the U.S., rur­al elec­tric coop­er­a­tives (RECs) present a promis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. These mem­ber-owned ener­gy coop­er­a­tives were cre­at­ed through the New Deal to bring pow­er to areas that weren’t served by pri­vate com­pa­nies, includ­ing 90 per­cent of rur­al homes. Today, more than 900 RECs serve 42 mil­lion peo­ple—12 per­cent of the country’s pop­u­la­tion — in some of the poor­est areas of the U.S.

At present, RECs get about 70 per­cent of their pow­er from coal, and have grown large­ly unac­count­able to their mem­ber­ship. But activists believe that if these pub­licly sub­si­dized elec­tric coop­er­a­tives were to embrace renew­ables, they could become cru­cial vehi­cles in the fight for a low-car­bon future.

Last year, sev­er­al elec­tric coop­er­a­tives in North Car­oli­na launched solar projects with the help of pub­lic fund­ing. Tak­ing advan­tage of an ener­gy effi­cien­cy loan pro­gram admin­is­tered by the USDA, the Roanoke Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive now offers its 14,000 mem­ber-own­ers access to com­mu­ni­ty solar, which is installed and main­tained by the coop­er­a­tive and affords size­able sav­ings on their month­ly bills.

Scal­ing up this mod­el will require expand­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for renew­ables and mak­ing it eas­i­er for RECs to annul long-term con­tracts with oil and gas com­pa­nies, says John Zip­pert, direc­tor of pro­gram oper­a­tions at the Alba­ma-based Fed­er­a­tion of South­ern Coop­er­a­tives’ Rur­al Train­ing and Research Cen­ter. It will also take grass­roots mobi­liza­tion: One of his group’s most recent ven­tures is an effort to reform the Black War­rior Elec­tric Mem­ber­ship Cor­po­ra­tion, a REC serv­ing 26,000 mem­bers in Alaba­ma, most of them African-Amer­i­can. Zip­pert explains that they hope to both re-democ­ra­tize Black War­rior — the cur­rent lead­er­ship is appoint­ed and pre­dom­i­nant­ly white — and tran­si­tion it over to renew­ables, cre­at­ing a mod­el for reform efforts around the coun­try. RECs’ broad reach could help scale up the use of wind and solar pow­er dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Mean­while, com­mu­ni­ties deeply impact­ed by racism and inequal­i­ty would get the chance to share in the boon of the clean-ener­gy economy.

To date, pro­gres­sive green groups in the Unit­ed States have been bet­ter at artic­u­lat­ing what they don’t want — the Key­stone XL pipeline, for instance— than what they do. That leaves an open­ing for the new breed of con­ser­v­a­tive green activists to offer an alter­na­tive vision of a decen­tral­ized mar­ket where cus­tomers ​“enjoy the free­dom that comes from being able to gen­er­ate your own pow­er,” as Doo­ley puts it.

With cli­mate leg­is­la­tion all but impos­si­ble at the fed­er­al lev­el, pri­vate sec­tor solu­tions car­ry an unde­ni­able charm, and remov­ing the bar­ri­ers to their devel­op­ment will be an inevitable part of our ener­gy tran­si­tion. But as the fault lines in the cli­mate fight begin to shift, pro­gres­sive envi­ron­men­tal­ists must put for­ward an ambi­tious pro­gram — one that sees clean, reli­able pow­er as a pub­lic good.