Where to Listen:
If you look around at houses, schools, churches–you’re probably seeing more and more solar panels on their rooftops. A lot of that is thanks to federal incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act that make solar more affordable. But those programs are now at risk of being cut, and tariffs could be pushing the low solar costs we’ve been seeing much higher. Fortunately, solar has a pretty determined advocate who’s spreading the word about how solar works for Wisconsin.
Host:
Amy Barrilleaux
Guest:
Elise Couillard, Couillard Solar Foundation
Resources for You:
Transcript:
Amy Hi there and welcome to the Defender, Wisconsin’s environmental podcast powered by Clean Wisconsin. I’m Amy Barrilleaux. Something pretty interesting happened on March 21st, you probably didn’t notice, but for the first time ever, for five hours, solar energy was the number two energy source in America. The next day, it happened again. Number one was the fossil fuel methane, but for Clean Energy advocates, it’s a big deal, showing how far solar energy has come in such a short time. And as a resource, solar is still largely untapped, especially here in Wisconsin. But progress is happening. In this episode, I talk with Elise Couillard from the Couillard Solar Foundation, who’s working hard to convince Wisconsinites to let the sunshine in. That’s right now on The Defender. If you look around at houses, schools, churches, you’re probably seeing more and more solar panels on their rooftops. A lot of that is thanks to federal incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act that makes solar more affordable. But those programs are now at risk of being cut and tariffs could be pushing the low solar costs we’ve been seeing much higher. Fortunately, solar has a pretty determined advocate who’s spreading the word about how solar works for Wisconsin. Joining me is Elise Couillard, a solar consultant and board member. Of her family’s Couillard Foundation that helps schools and nonprofits gain access to solar energy. You started your career, not in solar, but in conservation, so wildlife and ecosystems, and you made this shift to solar that started during the pandemic. How did that come about? What about solar kind of captivated you?
Elise Um, my dad would make the argument a lot that if we don’t get off fossil fuels and we don t make this transition quick enough, it doesn’t matter how much I want to educate people about species and ecosystems and things like that, they won’t exist in the same way that they do now for me to even educate people. And um, I never questioned that that was true. It’s just really hard to move away from something that you really love and that just spent the last eight to 10 years studying and researching in. And at that time, so many things were taken away from us during the pandemic. So it felt like a loss of something that I had worked so hard for and wasn’t really willing to accept like I’m not ever gonna get back, be able to get back to that again. And then now through this transition and focusing my incorporated work now more on conservation organizations, I’ve made it all fit and work, which is what so many people were good at doing, and people my age are saying, you know, like, I don’t have to just work this job that doesn’t mean anything to me. I can make it what I want it to be. And so it was both. It was that those words were impactful from my dad, and I knew that they were true. And then the more that I got into it and learned, the more I was like, I can still be in the realm of things that I’m also really passionate about with And things like that. I just need to help people make the argument the same way that the argument was made impactful for me. So now I get to do both, which is awesome.
Amy Well, let’s talk about your foundation work and some of the things that are happening right now. Solar for school, solar for good, solar series, a lot of solar stuff. So what are the things kind of going on right now?
Elise Yeah, so the Cuillard Solar Foundation acts as a advocacy and educational program as well as providing means to get a solar project put up. So our grants are in the form of donating the solar panels themselves to kind of reduce that equipment fee that might be on the installation side of things. So, typically the foundation through two grants. Solar for Good and Solar for Schools, which are administered by Renew Wisconsin and the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. They match about 50 percent of the solar panels that would be needed for a project, up to about 50 kW, which is a good size project. For a school, you know, a school might need 300 kilowatts, 400 kilowatths. Obviously, that’s a much bigger building, but it can still be… We have a lot of youth green teams from schools that get these programs started. And so getting that initial grant is oftentimes we’re the catalyst, where the school, the school board, the community can’t ignore those students’ work to get that project going anymore. And we’ve often been told that was really the thing that made us able to launch these fundraising programs, make the capital operational argument, and really get it going. Um, and then solar for good goes on through the rest of this month. So it started April 1st and it runs all month that application period. Um, we have about 277 projects, solar projects in the state right now across schools, nonprofits, humane societies, veteran organizations, housing authorities, you know, like a pretty big gamut of groups. And so we’re really excited to break that 300 project. We’re pretty sure that we’ll get there. We usually get 20 to 40 applications per round, at least for solar, for good. Schools is a little bit more, sometimes there are like bursts and a district is doing multiple schools. And then other times we have fewer applications per year, per round. But yeah, we think we’ll get over 300 projects this year. So that’s kind of on the project programming, funding side of things. And then our solar series, our educational things start this month as well. Yesterday, we met with a busload of librarians from the winding library system, and that was great. It felt like oftentimes we get a little ahead of ourselves and I’m thinking like. Why didn’t we invite all of the librarians in the different things, you know, but the office was really kind of full anyway. But that felt like a mini solar series where we were talking to librarians about libraries going solar and resilient centers and how they really serve as trusted community institutions and what that means for them in terms of a solar or any investment that’s more energy efficient things like that that that the community would be like. Oh, that’s a choice Can you tell me a little bit more about why you did that? So that went really great. I thought I hope they all had a good time. And then in May is usually our biggest event of the year. That’s Soul Stock. In the past it’s always been a music festival and this year the challenge from our board was can we make it music is awesome Can we make a little more on brand with what we do? And telling our story a little bit better. So we’ve invited four green teams, I’ll call them, from around the state that are trying to get their project off the ground. We’ve invited them to come, pitch their story and their project, and we’re gonna do kind of crowdfunding live at that event. So that’s gonna be five to eight. You can purchase voting tickets and vote for your favorite project, the presenters that are most charismatic, you know, that you really are drawn toward. How the project is going to impact that community, you know, whatever it is can make up why you vote for a group. There’s going to be food and also still music and some exhibitors, electric vehicles, things like that. So just overall, like a really good, fun, uplifting time. You know, this is the time where people need to see and hear those stories and be encouraged that like this is still happening. The transition is still going on. The direct pay is still the direct pay, and you can still apply for those incentives. So we haven’t stopped, we’re not going to stop, and so we hope that this is just another thing that people can leave feeling really inspired and excited that good things are still happening all around the state and beyond our state, but that’ll be our focus for.
Amy You mentioned direct pay, so for folks who may not know what that is, it is if you’re a non-profit or a municipality that is tax-exempt, usually you hadn’t been able to access tax incentives for solar, but now because of the Inflation Reduction Act and direct pay you can get that incentive, which has been a big motivator. Have you talked to people who are kind of unclear on what’s going on right now?
Elise Yeah, I mean, we, oh, everyone, as far as being unclear or just nervous. And, um, I myself kind of changed. I wanted to make sure that my clients would feel proud of a project and really happy about it after it was done, even if something were to happen. Okay. With the direct or elective pay. I’m feeling more confident now, sat in a lot of calls by all the incredible nonprofits nationally and in the state, doing great work to talk about like, from a legal standpoint, this is not going anywhere, at least from this time period to this time. Now we know more information here and we think that’s extended from this year to time. So in the last couple of months, as other things, like tariffs, which are also really impacting the solar industry as well as everything else, is I’ve felt actually more confident over the past four months than I did at the start of the year. So I don’t think, I think people can feel good planning a project for 2025 and 2026, that those incentives are gonna be available to them. The application physically on the website, that’s another change Is that those applications are being moved to different sites and it’s hard to find, but not the direct and the elective pay. I check it pretty commonly and that pre-application is always right where I’ve always found it and is always open, I’ve never seen it close. So unlike other things that just kind of disappear one day, they come back or I have to do digging, that one has remained consistent. So people in, that are consultants and advisors on these projects, I think are feeling more confident. I totally understand project hosts and individuals who are making these investments still feeling nervous. I get that, but I would just say, sit down and have an honest conversation with your installer, your advisor, whoever it is, and I think you’ll feel a lot better after that conversation.
Amy You did mention tariffs, because I had heard, but hadn’t thought about it today, that tariffs were going to impact clean energy, because they’re impacting really everything that is manufactured overseas. So what are you, I guess, bracing for here over the next?
Elise Um, so we have set up at the Couillard Solar Foundation, we’ve set up really intentional partnerships with, um, the solar panel vendors that we purchased from. Um, one of the founding, uh, members of the foundation, he helped with my dad create the solar canopy product. And so, um he goes back to Jordan routinely to visit his family. Um, and so he has a great relationship with this solar panel manufacturer in Jordan, the country of Jordan, um, that he’s seen their, their facility can tour it, you know, feel really good about that manufacturing plant. And they have always been a preferred trading partner, meaning we aren’t, uh, we don’t have tariffs on their project, their products and things like that. And now for the first time, it’s being floated that there will be. So when you’ve done all this work to make these relationships, it’s hard to try to pivot now. And there’s no pivoting too. So we make about 1% of the solar panels in the United States. There’s not physically enough even made in the US to do the projects currently proposed in the USA. And even if everyone who has ever wanted to build a solar panel manufacturing plant started the construction on those plants today. They could not make enough, they could not finish their factories and finalize a product and create a product in the next five years to meet the demand that is currently happening in the United States. So it’s completely unrealistic that you would say, we need these Made in America panels. Am I against panels being made in America? Not at all. But I’m against slowing down progress that has been happening. And in Wisconsin specifically, there’s, you know, the product, the manufacturing side of it, there’s also the electricity increases in rates and surcharges that we’re going to face. We purchase electricity from Manitoba Hydro in Canada. When Canada is angry at their supposed-to-be friends in the United States, they will respond to that with charges and fees. They’ve already floated a 25% surcharge for the electricity entering Wisconsin. And they’ve proposed an 11% electricity rate increase for the next two years. So all that does is hit Wisconsin families and Wisconsin business owners. There’s no utility just accepts that as the cost of doing business, they pass those electricity surcharges and increases in rates onto their customers. And so that’s gonna hurt Wisconsin a lot. And so. I mean, on the one hand, even better reason to go solar and to go renewable and to stabilize your own operations for your home and your business, because you can set the cost of your electricity if you’re making it yourself. Um, but it’s complicated by the products coming in. The racking is often, um, aluminum or steel, which we can see tariffs on. So, you know, the, some of the materials themselves, but there’s a lot already in the States as well. That for. You know, maybe the remainder of this year won’t have fees increase on it because it’s sitting in a warehouse in the United States right now. It’s ready to be put into a project essentially. So I think 2026 could be a year that it’s hit if this isn’t figured out. And we’ve seen some increases here and there or proposed or just the bid itself. You know sometimes you have 30 days to make a decision, to sign a contract, whatever. Now you might start seeing shorter windows, because they can’t guarantee those prices for such a long time, given that like, today tariffs on, oh, now it’s off, you know, it’s changing so rapidly that it doesn’t allow people that flexibility.
Amy It feels like we just went from, you know, after the pandemic, there was a shortage of everything and solar, you know, was was hit among those industries that were hit and then, you know, we got back at it and then you had the IRA, which was meant to incentivize solar and wind component manufacturing, part of it anyway, in the United States. But now that’s at risk. So it’s kind of like what if the IRA goes away and the tariffs stay. What do you see happening to people’s ability to even get solar?
Elise In the incentivization for building a manufacturing plant, many of those, that construction is happening now or it started last fall and getting production things in line, you know, you have to be able to UL list your product. You have to meet a number of like certifications that this panel is what it’s rated at before you can sell your product that doesn’t happen over one to two weeks. That’s a longer process. So. You have a bunch of people who made a commitment, who started a factory, who hired people with this intention that like, yeah, we’re going to make this product in America. And now they’re having this same thing that they got wrapped, ramped up to go basically saying, and now we’re gonna, so there’s, there’s not even support for the American made products themselves. You know, they were put in because of the IRA. They were started to be constructed because of that. And then now taking that away disincentivizes and harms them. For making the very investment that it’s claimed should be being made or that we should be purchasing right now. So there’s a real disconnect there for me as far as what you’re asking and where you’re ask people to purchase from and then making it at all a meaningful feasibility for them to do those things or for us to manufacture those types of products here. So frustrating. Yeah, very frustrating.
Amy Well, let’s talk about that 300 number, 300 projects, all across Wisconsin. When you look back to when you first started working and being a part of this to where we are now, how does it make you feel to kind of be close to that 300 number?
Elise It feels really good. I am, I’m unfortunately one of those people that like, nothing is ever quite good enough. I’m trying to like get over that, but, um, I can be really proud while also saying, okay, here’s the next thing that I want to see. Here’s the thing that want to say, we have almost 300 projects and if I want, you know, we were eager to get these in for them to be examples for their communities. And so it was less of a focus on how are each of those 277 project sites a real beacon for advocacy and education within their own communities. So like if I wanna go to those organization’s website and click on a tab about their solar project and see a dashboard of how much energy they’re creating right now as we’re looking out this window and seeing the sun is up. I’m probably not going to find that tab on most of these organizations websites. And, you know, they’ve got small teams, maybe a volunteer has created their website. You know, there’s a lot of reasons why promoting that solar project from a digital sense, a lot people host the ribbon cutting. They do a lot in that first initial year when there’s a lot excitement around it. And then it gets a little bit quieter after that. So I’d love to see more of the groups that have put in a Solar for Good and Solar on Schools project, I’d love to see them to continue to communicate about what that project is doing for their organization. We hear from some groups that every quarterly they’re presenting to their boards how much they’ve saved in electricity and then sometimes even say, and we’re proposing operationally to put it here, or we’ve been able to hire a new staff member or whatever. That’s the type of stuff I love hearing about. And that I’m eager to revisit the 277 groups and say, okay, you’ve had a good couple of years, one to five years that this has been running. How can we make it even more impactful for your organization and for your community and revisit some of those relationships? Because we know there’s some statistics that just physically something being up in a building where you can see it, causes a certain amount of adoption. At least from residential solar. So like you get the first array, then you see an adoption of a certain percent in a neighborhood of more people. And then the more the solar panels go up, if you get to like 50% penetration in a neighborhood, then it’s kind of like a, well I want it too, because like everybody, I want one, because they have one. And then you really get to see a lot of turnover because people are feeling like left out, like everybody else has this thing and I want this thing, how do I get it? And they have every other neighbor to tell them how it’s working for them and how they go through the process. And it’s that much easier and that much more comforting. So I’m eager to build on that storytelling idea. I’ve been hearing that so much this year and this last fall of like another thing of the pandemic is just having like less face-to-face meaningful interactions with people. Like more people go through the drive-through and don’t like just sit and talk to somebody, like look them in the face. And so. The more that we sit down and talk through these ideas and make people feel good about a change that is happening and can happen, I think it’ll make you feel better personally and it also gives you some tools to be like, I can do that or I can talk to my church about why aren’t we going solar or is the church open to me starting getting a team of people who are interested? It just makes them feel that much more able to. Start the conversation. Whereas before it feels out of reach or they weren’t thinking about it at all because people have a lot of things to think about. So I’m thinking about that, how we revisit with projects that have an operational thing and I’m think about how we can build in the coming years more of our projects to be based and really thinking about resilience. So in the community centers that we work with, in housing authorities that we work with, if that’s an area that provides pivotal services across a really diverse age range, is it the right place to talk about batteries and a hybrid inverter and communication? If the grid is down and people, this has happened in the past two winters in Deerfield consistently, where we had a significant outage, unfortunately, typically over a weekend, where our community center is closed. And lots of people are on the Facebook page of the community center saying, you know, what do we do? I don’t have any heat and like I need help and all these things and they don’t have the staff to man the center at the weekend. So talking about how we better communicate in those types of emergencies and create a place where people can, you shelter for an hour, charge their phone for an our. Um, it’s already attached. The one in Deerfield is attached to the food pantry. So get some food or warm up some food in the microwave if they need to. Um, like seemingly simple things that when you don’t have power, you really, uh, take advantage of, and, um, we, we’ve just been having more kind of rolling outages as well. Like lunchtime, like I’m trying to make lunch and that’s when the power goes out for an hour. And it’s like. Okay, well, this is fine, I’m gonna be fine, but I also, I am opening the fridge in the dark, we’re so used to just being on, right? And so thinking about how people can have more resiliency in their community-based organizations, because I think that’s gonna be happening more, that we’re having more outages, and we’re more just like for an hour that it’s off and things like that. So if people are making it themselves, they don’t have to worry about that as much.
Amy Are you finding that people are, as they see more solar on houses or schools or municipal buildings, that there’s been a kind of a change in attitude or perception than when you first started talking with folks about this?
Elise Yeah, I think there’s a lot more willingness to just say like, oh, I don’t have any issue with solar energy. You know, like people may have some other thing that they have a question about or I wanted to go here, but not there, things like that. But I, in the last couple of years even, I’ve met far fewer people who are like, no, I know I don’ believe in solar energy or I would kind of be like, well, what? What is there not to believe? But I haven’t really personally met people that are saying this is not a technology that I would get behind or that I would advocate. Most people are like, yeah, it’s great, but, and then the but is something that we can talk about and work through and make them feel more comfortable about. And I’m also experiencing fewer buts. It’s more like, oh, this organization really wanted to go solar. And we got all this going, and then it kind of died when, and I’m kind of hearing the one thing that broke or brought down the project, and then that gives you that many more things to talk about with programming or seek out programming that does something a little bit different than maybe the Couillard Solar Foundation does to fill those gaps. If you know what the gaps are, you can fill them, right? So I feel like people are. Able to communicate those things better, at least to me and I hope in other circles too, to fill some of these gaps so that we make these projects that much easier for our nonprofit partners as well.
Amy So we talked a lot about, you know, barriers that you’ve overcome over the last several years and some new ones that are kind of cropping up, that are pretty much out of everybody’s control, it feels like. So when you look at the future of solar adoption in Wisconsin, what kind of keeps you hopeful when you see those barriers coming up, and they’re big ones, that we are going to be able to kind of make this transition to away from burning coal, oil, and gas, which is what this is all about. What keeps you motivated that that’s going to happen?
Elise Well, we’re a relatively northern state compared to the rest of the states. And, um, with, you know, really no state incentives, unlike, you know, our Illinois neighbors and our Minnesota neighbors. There’s a lot of things that the state themselves are doing to help foster adoption of solar. And even without those programs, we are still 18th in, um new solar that is… Being introduced and being put into our state. So that gives me hope that people are on board. They’re making the investment, despite not having the same incentives that other, our neighboring states have. So that makes me feel really good. It seems to me with that, that people getting over the like, but we get snow, so we can’t. And that people have learned a little bit more how you can design an array to shed snow quicker or that if it’s a ground mount, you- there are tools to clear it off safely and things like that, that like the snow is not necessarily the end all be all to not do a solar project. So. Yeah, I think that is one thing that gives me a lot of hope. I think as a young person, I have to have hope. If I’m not hopeful that this transition is happening, that we’re gonna get more rooftop solar, that people who individually own homes and businesses, like they have to be encouraged to do this and they have make these changes because there’s no planet B. There’s no plan B. So like I just need to believe that people. Um, are going to hear the arguments and, and see what a good investment it is and make those switches because I, I don’t, I didn’t want to think about where we’ll be if they don’t you know, so I kind of keep going with that way where I’d use very active language of like, no, we’re going to do this and this change is going to happen and we’re gonna see it this way because if I don t use that language and I don’ believe that, yeah, it would get kind of hard to like be hopeful about the future. So that’s kind of where I’m at, that if I just keep hyping it up. Maybe that will be, uh, impactful enough or I mean, it’s really, it feels really good. I was on maybe WNPR, like when the foundation first started, it was, it was very early on and I was still learning and I talking all about what the foundation was doing, but like, I couldn’t have talked about tariffs or aluminum manufacturing or whatever. Um, I mean I could have, cause my dad was in manufacturing. So I did grow up in that, but not as knowledgeable on the solar side. As I’ve become more recently, and a man came up to me at the WASB Conference, the Wisconsin Association for School Boards Conference, and he was like, are you Elise? I heard you a year ago on this radio program, and it made me start with other teachers in my school to get our solar project going, and now our solar projects with your grant is going, and I was like oh my gosh. Like. I just think that you just are talking, you know, it’s just the two of us right now in this room, so you feel, it can feel like you’re just talking into a microphone that doesn’t go anywhere. Um, but it’s really nice to hear that people heard you and, um, and that they’re seeing the signals and that they talk to an installer that made them also feel really good and confident about this project. And so, um. It I’m, I’m just surrounded and supported by people in this industry that are. You know, hopeful and encouraging and really smart about what they do. And so that makes it a little bit easier to be the, the fangirl, the hype girl too.
Amy And I think everybody needs a hype man or girl, a person in their lives. So thank you so much, Elise, for being here and talking to me about solar. I think we’re in an exciting place in Wisconsin. And so I think, we’re grateful to have you kind of spreading the word.
Elise Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Amy And thanks for listening to The Defender. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, leave a review. It helps other people find us. For more information about federal incentives to help you save energy or install solar. Check out the show notes or log on to our website, cleanwisconsin.org. I’m Amy Barrrilleaux, talk to you later.
