Like most small business owners in New Orleans, and as someone with a deep appreciation for our community, I worry our city is becoming more expensive, less reliable and therefore less attractive to residents, local businesses and investment. That’s why I want to weigh in on a recent City Council hearing about providing 10,000 low-income households with rooftop solar subsidies.
On the surface, it sounds great — help families lower their bills and shrink their carbon footprint. But unfortunately, this plan rests on a foundation that no longer exists.
The problem: President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill gutted the federal incentives that solar installers depended on. Practically overnight, the residential solar market collapsed. PosiGen — the largest rooftop solar provider in Louisiana — has shut down operations here. With local firms gone, who’s left to fulfill the City Council’s rooftop solar promises? Potentially predatory, out-of-state companies with no roots in our community. That’s not clean energy; that’s a setup for fraud. And the people most at risk of being taken advantage of will be the very low-income residents this program is supposed to protect…