There are a lot of policy makers in this capital town who remember the late 1970s as a time when solar power seemed like it would save the world. Architects were working it into their designs and learning about it in school. Old hippies were starting companies to install solar, and it looked to all involved like an inevitable movement.
Then something happened and almost 30 years went by. Now everyone is talking about solar again.
The California Energy Commission has just released
results of a survey on attitudes toward buying an energy-efficient home.
Here are some key findings in the CEC survey, run by Santa Monica-based opinion researchers Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates:
- More than half of potential home buyers in California say they would buy a new energy-efficient solar home in order to lower monthly electric bills.
- Seventy-four percent said homebuilders in California should make rooftop solar systems a standard feature.
- Those most likely to buy a solar electric system are between the ages of 18 and 49, college-educated and see themselves as environmentalists with a moderate to liberal political outlook.
This is all in the introduction, but results come from two sources. One is a survey from May 18 to May 26, 2007 of 600 recent buyers of single-family homes in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the Central Valley and the Sacramento region. It has a 4.1 percent margin of error. The survey also took into account several focus groups in Riverside, San Diego, Fresno and Concord.
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