Volts podcast: 20 years of solar advocacy, with Adam Browning of Vote Solar Volts

In this episode, veteran solar advocate Adam Browning reflects on 20 years of running campaigns as the founder and leader of Vote Solar, one of the scrappiest and most successful solar advocacy organizations in the US. Browning, who is stepping down from leadership this year, helped grow the group from four people to 40, and along the way he’s learned a few things about how nonprofit campaigns can succeed against better funded opponents.
Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Adam Browning, September 17, 2021
(PDF version)
David Roberts:
There aren't a lot of positive, hopeful stories competing for attention in the US these days, but one ray of light — if you'll pardon the pun — comes in the form of solar power. During the 21st century it has plunged in price, to the point that it is the cheapest available source of power in most big energy markets. Though it provides just 3 percent of US electricity today, analysts say it could provide close to half by mid-century. 
Adam Browning has lived through every stage of this extraordinary ongoing story. He co-founded Vote Solar, a nonprofit that advocates for solar energy at the state level, in 2002, to push for solar on public buildings in San Francisco. 
Since then, he has helped build a team of 40 people that operates across the country and has led numerous campaigns for state policy and regulatory changes. For as long as I’ve been doing energy journalism, I’ve known Adam and Vote Solar to be reliable sources — smart, practical, and results-oriented. I read all their emails, which regular listeners will know is high praise.
Now, after 20 years, Browning is stepping back, shifting to an advisory role and handing off day-to-day leadership of Vote Solar. Given his long experience, I thought it would be interesting to talk to him about what he has learned, how much things have changed for solar, and where solar and climate advocacy need to go next.
Adam Browning, welcome to Volts.
Adam Browning:  
Thanks, really pleased to be here.
David Roberts:   
You’ve been at this for 20 years now. Tell me the Adam Browning origin story. How did you gravitate to this particular field? It must have been relatively soon after you were out of college; it must have been one of the first things you did and stuck with it. Tell us how you got into all of this.
Adam Browning:  
You're too kind. My youthful demeanor — I’ll have to tell my stylist. It wasn't quite right out of college. I've never had a plan that I put into place; I've always moved from the thing that seemed really interesting to me at the time, and then was open to that next opportunity. 
After college, I did Peace Corps in West Africa, which was in many ways an incredibly formative experience, a moveable feast that I continue to look back on and think about, and that experience continues to nourish. After that, I joined EPA in San Francisco, the Region 9 office, and worked there for about eight years. The origin story — not of Adam Browning, but really Vote Solar, which is probably more to the point here — was really born out of spending a good chunk of time with the federal government doing environmental protection. I was doing a lot of enforcement and inspecting smokestacks, and fines were exceeding limits in some ways.
David Roberts:   
This would have been during the Clinton years, yes? 
Adam Browning:  
Yes, and then a little bit of the Bush years. So that experience was a wonderful introduction to how environmental protection works and doesn't work in this country. 
When I was nearly 30, I had a beer with a college buddy, and he was working for then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. This friend, David Hochschild, is now a California energy commissioner, the chair of the Commission. He had just put solar on his roof at home. At the time, solar was really expensive, and there wasn't much of it; it was very much a hippie pipe dream. But he put it on his house and was enthralled by it. And