Jon Powers (00:02):
Welcome back to Experts Only. I’m your host, Jon Powers. I’m the co-founder of CleanCapital and served in the Obama administration as Chief Sustainability Officer. On this podcast, we explore solutions to climate change by talking to industry leaders about the intersection of energy, innovation, and finance. You can get more episodes at cleancapital.com.

Welcome back to the Experts Only podcast. Today, we are having Solar Energy Industries Association CEO Abigail Ross Hopper on for her final interview as CEO. For folks who don’t know, Abby is leaving after almost a decade at the helm of SEIA and moving on to future roles.

We really talk about the growth of the industry over that decade, some of the things that we’ve seen work well, and some of the challenges that we as an industry need to face going forward. But really, it’s been a remarkable ride for her and for the industry.

I think we’re all excited about the next step, but we all have a lot of gratitude for the leadership and guidance that Abby has given us as we’ve worked to address a lot of opportunities and challenges along the way. As always, you can get more episodes at cleancapital.com, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

Abby, thanks for joining us again on Experts Only.

Abigail Ross Hopper (01:24):
It’s so good to see you, Jon. Good morning.

Jon Powers (01:26):
Yeah, I hate that this interview is sort of your last as the CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, but you’ve had such an amazing impact on our industry—on what we’re doing—really framing and helping grow the concept of the solar decade.

But I want to step back. Before you took the job, and for folks who aren’t familiar, could you talk for a second about what you were doing and why this job even interested you?

Abigail Ross Hopper (01:50):
Yeah. So immediately before this job, I was serving in the Obama administration—some great alumni, I hear, from that administration. I was serving as the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. That oversees all offshore energy development, primarily oil and gas, but also offshore wind.

And it’s a political appointment, so I knew that my time was coming in January of 2017. The last two jobs I had before this, I worked for a governor and I worked for a president, and I knew my end date before I started because they’re both term-limited. So this is the first job I’ve had in a long time where I had to decide to leave.

But anyway, I was doing that, and I mean, I just love energy. I love energy policy. I love energy politics. And I was thinking about what’s next.

Most people assumed I would go work for an offshore wind company because I love offshore wind. That was the word on the street—not my word, just other people’s words to me. Like, “Oh, you’re going to go work for fill-in-the-blank.”

And I became aware of this position that—

Jon Powers (03:07):
It’s amazing, by the way, how people will put that on you when you’re in a position like that. Like, “Oh, you’re going to go do this next.” I’m like, “Am I?”

Abigail Ross Hopper (03:11):
Totally.

Well, I’m from Maryland, and when the head of the Maryland Energy Administration happened to also resign about two days after I made my announcement, I got multiple texts like, “Oh, are you going to go be the head of the Maryland Energy Administration?” And I said, “Well, I did that in 2012, so I’m not going to go do that again.”

Anyway, I actually got to lunch with Scott Wiater—I don’t know if you know Scott from Standard Solar—and then I chatted with Tony Clifford, also from Standard Solar, and they were like, “Oh, so there’s this job open at SEIA.”

Jon Powers (03:57):
Oh, interesting.

Abigail Ross Hopper (03:57):
And that was the start of it. It was a very long search process. But it ended up being amazing.

When you’re in federal service, you have to disclose conflicts if you’re looking at other jobs. So I was really taking this strong position that I had a job to do. I wasn’t looking for other jobs. I certainly didn’t want to conflict myself out of three-quarters of my portfolio while I still had the job. But because it had nothing to do with my portfolio, it was really the only job I pursued while I was still in service, and I didn’t have to do any ethics filings.

Jon Powers (04:42):
That’s amazing. So paint a picture for folks: in that timeframe, what did the industry look like then?

Abigail Ross Hopper (04:49):
Oh my gosh. So the industry was about—I have the stats somewhere—30 gigawatts installed in the country. We had just, I think, hit a million rooftop systems—

Jon Powers (05:06):
Wait for a second. How much did we do last year?

Abigail Ross Hopper (05:09):
Last year we did almost 50 in one year. Yeah, we’re well over 250 or 300 gigawatts total.

Jon Powers (05:16):
Yeah.

Abigail Ross Hopper (05:16):
Absolutely. It’s completely transformed.

There was really very little manufacturing at all here in the United States. I will say, I find this so interesting: the question I got asked the most during my interview process was how do you manage the different sectors of the industry—inter-industry fighting—which I thought was such an interesting question given that we were dealing with national policy issues. That was the question I got asked the most.

The organization itself was about 40 people. So we had a federal affairs department. I think we had four people total doing regulatory and congressional affairs.

SEIA had never had a long-term lease of its own. We only had subleases. So we would take two- or three-year subleases. We were in a place—it was a lovely location over on 14th, right above the Hamilton restaurant—

Jon Powers (06:36):
Oh yeah, I remember.

Abigail Ross Hopper (06:36):
The space itself was, in my humble opinion, terrible. There was no sunshine, and we were the solar industry. It was crazy.

Jon Powers (06:51):
Right. I remember that place.

Abigail Ross Hopper (06:52):
Remember that place? Yeah, and it was all those internal-atrium kind of spaces, which I hate. And I had a little tiny conference room that had no windows—not a window to be found. And my office was—I actually thought they were joking when they showed me what my office was on my first day.

Because that’s one of the things that happens when you go through a search firm: you never actually go to the office to interview.

Jon Powers (07:19):
You were coming from a pretty amazing office.

Abigail Ross Hopper (07:21):
I came from a very lovely, beautiful office. There were different sections. There was the conference table that sat 12 people, and there was the sitting area, and then there was my desk, and there was the beautiful view of the Washington Monument, and it was this old historic building.

Jon Powers (07:43):
And now you’re only three blocks away.

Abigail Ross Hopper (07:44):
Seriously. Except I didn’t have a view.

And I don’t think we ever talked about storage. It was just not part of our lexicon. Net metering was kind of a hill that we would live and die on. It felt like a really different place.

Jon Powers (08:06):
What’s interesting is your time there almost parallels our time at CleanCapital, because we are hitting 10 years this year. So as you were helping to transition the industry, we were growing. We were buying operating assets at that point—really small operating assets. Storage was something everyone thought was a holy grail, but it really wasn’t happening yet.

And then I think about where the offtake community was in general. Were you in the role when Trump decided to pull out of the Paris agreement?

Abigail Ross Hopper (08:42):
I started my job the same week he got inaugurated.

Jon Powers (08:45):
Oh, wow.

Abigail Ross Hopper (08:45):
Yeah. The whole time.

Jon Powers (08:49):
So as that happened, there was such an effort to unify people who were still in the climate space, and all these offtake leaders started to step forward. BlackRock, Larry Fink’s ESG work—all that really came out of the federal government backing away, in a way that’s ironically happening right now.

And it created momentum where I always talk about how policy, finance, and technology are aligning in our space. Technology has been there in solar for a long time, but it’s even better today. Finance started to move. And you’ve helped really shape the policy landscape, both at the federal level and the state level.

Thinking about your 10 years, it’s ebbed and flowed. There was Trump one, then Biden, then Trump two. What’s it been like for you watching this? Our friend Scotty loves to call it the “solar coaster.”

Abigail Ross Hopper (09:47):
Absolutely.

Jon Powers (09:47):
And for folks who don’t know Scott, there’s literally a picture of him in SEIA’s office on a roller coaster.

Abigail Ross Hopper (09:52):
Absolutely. Embedded into our table.

Jon Powers (09:55):
Exactly. How has that policy landscape ebbed and flowed for you, especially leading a group focused on it?

Abigail Ross Hopper (10:03):
Yeah, it’s changed in a number of ways. And one of the most impactful is on the trade front, which might not be what you thought I was going to say, but it was such a momentous thing that happened.

So I got some really good advice before I started my job at SEIA, which was: “You’re not a solar expert. You’ve never worked in solar before. Maybe you should just go listen.” I thought that was really good advice.

So I went around the country. I went to a couple of our events. I went to RE+ Boston. I visited some of our member companies. And I really was asking a lot of questions and thinking. The kinds of things people were talking about were policy certainty. We had just had the five-year extension of the ITC, so that was a huge win, but also other ways in which we could create that policy certainty.

And I had this whole plan that I was going to go on this 100-day listening tour and then deliver: “This is where I think we should go.” Well, on the hundredth day, Trump initiated the Section 201 investigation.

And so my whole big vision of where we could move got scrapped into: we are in crisis mode. And that 201 investigation totally took over everything.

So that’s why I say—and just like you were saying, stepping back from the federal government commitment allowed different parties to step up into leadership—those brutal beatings we took on trade really forced us to address the fact that we didn’t have domestic manufacturing, and to build out a domestic manufacturing platform, lobby for it hard, and have it pass in the IRA.

And look at what’s happening around us. There is so much manufacturing being brought back to the United States.

Jon Powers (12:20):
I do think that for someone who’s in this space and doesn’t know all the statistics—

Abigail Ross Hopper (12:23):
Oh, does it know all the statistics? No, no.

Jon Powers (12:25):
I do know statistics only because I spent the first six months of last year with you in DC lobbying. I don’t think people are aware—or are beginning to be aware—but it is such a powerful story.

And I think for me it leads to something you’ve actually done really well in investing in SEIA as a leader, which was the communication piece of this, telling our story. Because I think we as an industry are not great at it.

So I look at what you were investing in as a leader: communications, politics, as well as policy, of course. But for you, how have you seen our ability to communicate as an industry change over the time you’ve been in that seat?

Abigail Ross Hopper (13:06):
It has been transformational. I think as an industry more broadly, we have matured a lot, and that applies to the political side as well.

When I got to SEIA, what it felt like—and I’m not sure, this was just my impression as a newcomer to the industry—was that we didn’t love doing the politics. We are the right choice. We’re the moral choice. For all of the reasons why people should go solar, politicians should support us. And that felt like a little bit like our political strategy.

Jon Powers (13:45):
A hundred percent agree.

Abigail Ross Hopper (13:45):
We should. That’s not a point—

Jon Powers (13:49):
By the way, there are still people with that mindset.

Abigail Ross Hopper (13:50):
God bless them.

Jon Powers (13:51):
Try asking them to give to a PAC.

Abigail Ross Hopper (13:52):
“Why do we need to do that? I don’t do politics.” Well, then maybe you shouldn’t be in a highly political, infrastructure-based industry—an industry that is so deeply influenced by politics.

So that has been a maturation. While there are some who still don’t engage, so many more people—like yourself—have stepped out and said, “Listen, we have chosen to be in a highly regulated industry. We have chosen to be in an industry that is influenced deeply by politics, and so we have to invest in politics.”

Similarly, we just didn’t have the infrastructure built to tell our stories. And so at SEIA, we’ve built that infrastructure. One of the things I feel the most proud of around that is that we have both told stories in places where people are, on platforms and with technology people are using, and left a lot of that moralism to the side—like, “This is the right thing. You should do this. You have to go solar because…”—and instead told the story of people whose lives are impacted, either because they’re working in solar or they’re customers of solar.

That’s obviously a much more attractive message. And I think the change over the last decade, both in terms of our political maturation and our communications maturation, has been super exciting to watch.

Jon Powers (15:25):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for folks that don’t follow you on LinkedIn, for instance, or Stephanie on your team, they may not know you were doing these amazing media—what were you guys calling them when you spent all day at a studio doing—

Abigail Ross Hopper (15:37):
Oh, satellite media tours.

Jon Powers (15:39):
Yes. Going around talking about what we’re doing at the local level on local stations and how powerful that is.

Looking at the last presidential election, we as an industry were way more politically involved—

Abigail Ross Hopper (15:51):
Way more.

Jon Powers (15:51):
—than in a long time. I think that paid off in the first half of the year.

I think there’s often a misread of what happened in July when the bill passed, where we had built up a coalition of 22 Republicans on the House side to sign a letter saying, “Don’t touch this stuff.” If it hadn’t been for—which I’ll say—genius efforts of the Trump administration, and I hate to use “genius” tied to the Trump administration, but the flood-the-zone approach—“We’re going to get all this in one bill and get it passed”—an energy bill on its own would’ve never passed.

Abigail Ross Hopper (16:27):
Never.

Jon Powers (16:28):
Never.

Abigail Ross Hopper (16:29):
Never.

Jon Powers (16:29):
And I think now one of my fears is that we are going too far in the wrong direction in response to that, versus continuing to build that coalition and build up support.

So as you look at what you learned going through the first six months of this year—you’ve clearly been through a lot of different crises in the industry, but this was a new front.

Abigail Ross Hopper (16:56):
I learned a lot about political reality. And I learned a lot about how we have to continue to show up for the people who show up for us, even if the way they show up isn’t exactly what we had wanted.

I think we all, as an industry, learned a lot about the complexities of the issues facing elected officials in Washington. As you said, this was not merely an energy bill. This was a bill that had a lot around healthcare, around SALT, around taxes—state taxes, federal taxes.

We were telling our board—you were in the boardroom—for over a year in advance of the election that these tax cuts were going to expire at the end of 2025, and they were going to go looking for money.

And so the other thing I learned is that not everyone lives in the world that you and I live in, where we’re like, “Oh yeah, they’re looking for money, so this isn’t really about…” As much as it feels like it’s about clean energy, it’s not really about clean energy.

And so how we communicate, and what’s in the realm of the doable, is informed by that. Not everyone knows that.

One of the things that I found the most frustrating, and also the most illuminating, was this flood of people, companies, and interests that came in at the last minute and were like, “What do you mean we’re not going to just get a 10-year extension of the ITC? And why aren’t you asking for that? And you’re so weak, and you’re terrible at your job, and you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Jon Powers (18:48):
And they were not in the room for any of the conversations leading up.

Abigail Ross Hopper (18:50):
Not a single one. Not a single one.

So that, personally for me and personally for my team—we were doing hand-to-hand combat on the daily, and then taking this incoming from people, some of whom I’d never met in the nine years I’d had this job, who were critiquing our advocacy efforts.

Jon Powers (19:13):
Loud, but not present, right?

Abigail Ross Hopper (19:15):
Loud but not present. Or present at the last moment, riding in on the white horse to save the day.

Jon Powers (19:24):
We put together a letter outside the effort with a bunch of financial folks and tried to bring that to the table at the end. We were trying for weeks.

Some of the feedback we got about what we should be doing—where are you and why are you not doing it? I think for me the biggest walkaway from that first six months is: being there, being in the room, mattered.

In some cases, we were bringing what was a knife to a gunfight. We’re facing decades and decades of fossil fuel political investments, and we’re trying to catch up. They’re running localized Facebook campaigns that kill permitting for projects, and we’re seeing permitting or storage-fire legislation popping up all over the place because they’ve got a mechanism to spread lies about it.

For me, the next transition for us is maturing more as an industry and being part of that fight.

Abigail Ross Hopper (20:13):
One hundred percent.

Jon Powers (20:14):
Putting real money into it.

Abigail Ross Hopper (20:16):
That’s right. Because being critiqued for bringing a knife to a gunfight only makes sense if we have the resources to buy a gun, right?

Jon Powers (20:25):
Right. Before that, it was a paper airplane.

Abigail Ross Hopper (20:30):
It was a paper airplane, or a plea.

I decided halfway through my tenure at SEIA, I was like, I’m so glad at least now it doesn’t feel like my only argument is, “Please don’t hurt us. Please.” Just throwing myself on the mercy of whoever was in charge. And now we’re like, “Listen, we have all these jobs, we have electrons, we can make them move fast, we can do it for cheap—let’s go.”

Jon Powers (20:56):
Yeah. And I think they underestimate the forces that are trying to crush the industry right now. One of them sits in the Secretary of Energy’s office, who is a former fossil fuel executive and ran an anti-climate group, and there are other political folks in the administration who did not anticipate the demand crisis they’re facing right now.

And I think we as an industry need to continue to be out there touting our solutions and pushing forward, and moving this to the state level. I know that’s happening.

Without looking too far ahead, if you could sit down with the executives of the industry and challenge them to do one thing in 2026, what would it be?

Abigail Ross Hopper (21:38):
It would be to get serious about their political giving, and to do it in an organized way among each other. It’s not super helpful if all of them give to one elected official. You’ve got to have a strategy and you’ve got to have some good tactics.

That would be it. We can tell our story all day long, but if we’re not engaged in the political fight, we’re never going to win in a meaningful way.

Jon Powers (22:12):
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think we got better at it last year, but we’re still playing JV football, and we’ve got to get—

Abigail Ross Hopper (22:20):
Well, right. And to your point, the varsity team has been playing for well over a century. It’s not shocking that we don’t have that infrastructure and history and culture of political giving in the same way. But it doesn’t mean we should just be like, “Oh, okay, we’ll wait another 80 years and maybe we’ll get there.”

Jon Powers (22:42):
Exactly. Flip that around to the new CEO. If you could sit down with them—and you probably will at some point—and give them advice, what would it be?

Abigail Ross Hopper (22:57):
Oh my gosh. Well, if they ask my opinion: tell everyone to get more political.

Yeah, get more political.

First of all, I would say that they have an incredible team at SEIA. I’m really proud of the professionals who work there. People talk about culture and they talk about hard work and all that stuff, but I feel like we really do live it.

Jon Powers (23:21):
Can I pause for a second? You guys were named one of the best workplaces in Washington, DC. Was it 2024?

Abigail Ross Hopper (23:26):
Yeah, multiple years.

Jon Powers (23:28):
It speaks to the culture you’ve built there.

Abigail Ross Hopper (23:30):
Yeah. And I was just chatting with Darren, our interim CEO, and we were talking about that phrase: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If you don’t have a good culture, you’re not going to get anything done.

So I would say: you have an amazing team; continue to value them.

And on the political side, I would say: stay nimble. We don’t have to tie ourselves to any particular person or party or state. We have the benefit and beauty of really bringing solutions, almost whatever the problem is.

If the problem is not enough power, we can do that. If the problem is high prices, we can do that. If the problem is not enough manufacturing, we can do that. If the problem is that we need more on the defense side and we need to be thinking about national security, we can do that.

So making sure we can tell those stories in all the different ways.

And the third thing is very personal: the beauty of the role is that a lot of people are paying attention to what you do. And the challenge of the role is that a lot of people are paying attention to what you do. So just know whose opinion matters. Be very, very open to feedback—but feedback from those whose opinions you value and trust.

Jon Powers (25:10):
Yeah, that’s great feedback. Honestly, that’s great feedback for any CEO.

Abigail Ross Hopper (25:13):
Honestly, you’re totally right. Everyone has opinions about what you do.

Jon Powers (25:18):
The number of people who told us no when we were starting CleanCapital—or that we were going to be wrong.

There’s a venture capitalist who reached out to be on the podcast because he wrote a book, and I will never forget the meeting 11 years ago when he told us there’s no way our company was going to work. And I’m like, “Yeah, we’re good.”

Abigail Ross Hopper (25:39):
Are you going to let him on the podcast?

Jon Powers (25:41):
No.

Abigail Ross Hopper (25:45):
So how did you keep asking? What was the lesson you learned there when people kept telling you no?

Jon Powers (25:50):
Yeah, it’s funny. I just interviewed Tom for the 10-year anniversary, where we talked through some of those things.

We were actually raising our Series A when Trump got elected. And I remember the night that Hillary lost was obviously crushing in my household, and we literally had to get on a plane at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. My wife and I had been up drinking wine, watching the returns come in until 4:00, and then flying to Silicon Valley to ask for money.

Just having to stick to the belief that we knew we had something, and pushing through until we got to the right yes. And candidly, all those nos were a benefit, because the yes we got was the right partner.

And as we’ve grown, we’ve continued to think that way in terms of finding the right people who are additive to what we’re doing. We’ve been with Manulife now for four or five years and could not have a better partner.

So I walked out of July—this last July—feeling absolutely crushed after the legislation passed. And I remember going out to RE+ thinking it was going to be a bit of a funeral service, and was shocked at the energy there. I was reinvigorated by the fact that this is a $70 billion industry, we’re booming, and people are still doing deals. And just being back around that more regularly gave me the energy I needed to say, “Look, this is where we’re going. We’re here to stay.”

Abigail Ross Hopper (27:18):
Yeah. Policy’s not going to stop us. The market has spoken. The market knows what it wants. We are definitely facing some policy challenges, but they’re not going to stop our progress.

Jon Powers (27:36):
The way I explain it to people outside of solar is: imagine this administration wanted to stop the iPhone from happening, and they picked the guy who was responsible for the telephone pole to be the head of the communications department. And they’re doing everything they can to sell more telephone poles in the meantime. But this is happening.

Abigail Ross Hopper (27:58):
This is the one, and the band is there. I’m going to use that and credit you. That’s a great way to explain it.

Jon Powers (28:04):
So I want to go to the last question, which is: go back to yourself nine years ago. You’re taking the job, you’re on that 100-day listening tour. If you could sit down with yourself on that tour, what advice would you give yourself?

Abigail Ross Hopper (28:23):
I would give myself a couple pieces of advice.

My life has changed so personally, so dramatically in these last nine years. I’ve gotten divorced. I’ve been a single parent for the vast majority of my tenure at SEIA. I just got remarried a couple months ago—in August, I got remarried in August.

So personally, my life is different. I had three younger kids at home, and now they’re all away at school; one’s graduated. So the one thing I would say personally—and I’ll try not to cry—is: spend a little more time with your kids. That’s the advice I would tell 2017 Abby.

On the professional side, I would say: be brave. Just continue to be brave.

We did some really brave things at SEIA. I actually remember the moment that I knew the Section 201 case might be coming, and so I had my board ready. The moment it hit, we met, we took a vote, and we put out a statement strongly objecting to it. And I got all this feedback like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe SEIA has been so outspoken and taken such a strong stance.” And I thought, isn’t that my job?

Shouldn’t that be my job?

It felt brave to be out there in front, speaking up and saying things. Brave both on the trade side and, at times, on broader political issues. We didn’t say a lot about outside political things, but we did speak up when George Floyd was murdered and say, “This is not acceptable.”

And then—I sound like a Pollyanna—but man, this industry is kick-ass. It just keeps moving and keeps evolving and keeps innovating. You put a challenge in front of us and we figure out how to go either around it or over it or through it. We’re not stopping.

That’s what attracted me in 2016 to start here in 2017, and that’s what I love about it. And so that’s partly why I did spend so much time on the road, because like you were saying, that energy—talking to entrepreneurs, talking to CEOs like you, talking to people on the front lines—what is exciting you about the industry?

Every time I meet someone in the industry, my first question is, “How’s business?” I just want to know what’s exciting, what’s challenging, what are you doing?

And so to the younger me, I would say: keep that spirit alive. Now you see why I’m conflicted—spend more time with your kids, and spend more time with the industry.

Jon Powers (31:24):
Oh, I get it. I’d say the same thing to myself as a startup person: be present. Be present at home, be present at work, because you end up being present in neither place. And it’s a tough balance.

Abigail Ross Hopper (31:37):
It’s a very tough balance.

Jon Powers (31:38):
There’s so much more we could talk about. The work you’ve done for women in the industry, the efforts not just in bringing them together but empowering folks across the industry. It’s been such an exciting decade for us.

I’m excited to see what you do next. And I think on behalf of so many folks, I just want to thank you for your leadership and, now personally, for your friendship. I look forward to staying in touch as you make your next moves.

Abigail Ross Hopper (32:02):
Oh, Jon, thank you so much. And thank you for your friendship. To you and to everyone else, I’m going to be the loudest cheerleader for our industry from the sidelines for a little while. And then at some point, I’ll be back.

Jon Powers (32:15):
You’ll be back.

Abigail Ross Hopper (32:16):
I’ll be back.

Jon Powers (32:18):
You’ll be back. Well, enjoy the sidelines for a while.

Abigail Ross Hopper (32:20):
I will. I hear they’re really lovely.

Jon Powers (32:24):
And thank you to the team at SEIA for helping us put this together, as always. And to the CleanCapital team—Colleen Young, specifically—for her help as our producer.

You can get more episodes at cleancapital.com. And Abby, I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Abigail Ross Hopper (32:40):
Absolutely.

Jon Powers (32:42):
Thank you.

Abigail Ross Hopper (32:42):
Bye, Jon.