The gift of the Inflation Reduction Act was really giving us certainty for the next 10 years. I’m Maria, and Michael Drews and I own Drew Solar, a residential solar company based in Madison, Wisconsin. This is a small family-owned company. It’s just Michael and I running Drew Solar together, and we have a team of amazing installers that work with us.
Every year, there has been a federal incentive for solar panels since the early 2000s. It seems every few years there’s a bit of a threat that it might go away, and that might have a major impact on our business.
As a small business, it’s hard to kind of weather the up and down bumps, but having 10 years of a 30% federal tax credit allowed us to know that we are going to have the sales that we need to kind of sustain our business in the way that we want to for the next 10 years. And so, it’s allowed us to do a lot of planning for the future. And I think most importantly, we’re investing in our employees in a new way. We’re able to bring on employees that want a long-term career and to be able to say to them, “We’re going to have a job for you where you can grow and really invest in learning the solar trades.”
We’re kind of behind the ball on climate change; it’s getting ahead of us, and climate change is happening now. And so, we need to do everything we can at every level to make the transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible. We can both provide our employees well-paying jobs and reduce Wisconsin homeowners’ electricity costs, all while growing our business and reducing the effects of climate change for future generations.
