U.S. Navy vet­er­an Elmer Rankin, 71, has a fail­ing heart, prostate can­cer and arthri­tis that keeps him in a wheel­chair. Last year, Rankin, who sur­vives on his Social Secu­ri­ty checks, could no longer afford the mount­ing costs to heat his home and pow­er the oxy­gen tank he uses every night. He turned down the heat and got so cold that he wound up in the hospital.

For­tu­nate­ly, while Rank­in’s health remains pre­car­i­ous, today he’s no longer scram­bling to pay for pow­er. Thanks to rooftop solar pan­els — paid for with a Cal­i­for­nia sub­sidy — Rank­in’s month­ly ener­gy bill has dropped from an aver­age of $250 to less than $22. Last month he paid just $1.09. On sun­ny after­noons, he likes to sit and watch his elec­tric­i­ty meter run backward.
“Solar pow­er did­n’t just save me mon­ey — it saved my life,” he says.

Like clouds tem­porar­i­ly block­ing the sun, the con­tin­u­ing par­ti­san debate about Solyn­dra — the Fre­mont solar pow­er firm that went bank­rupt last year despite a $528 mil­lion fed­er­al loan guar­an­tee — has obscured the more impor­tant sto­ry tak­ing place in the solar ener­gy field: Clean, renew­able solar pow­er is rapid­ly becom­ing a main­stream, afford­able U.S. ener­gy option — and a boon to our over­all economy.

The solar indus­try world­wide has been grow­ing by 50 per­cent annu­al­ly. In the Unit­ed States, solar pow­er now costs less than 20 cents per kilo­watt hour — less than many Amer­i­cans pay for elec­tric­i­ty. Per dol­lar invest­ed, solar ener­gy is also the high­est job-pro­duc­ing com­po­nent of the coun­try’s ener­gy econ­o­my. The U.S. solar indus­try has already pro­duced more than 100,000 jobs — a dou­bling since 2009 — and anoth­er 25,000 are expect­ed over the next 12 months.

Cal­i­for­ni­a’s gov­ern­ment has been mak­ing smart invest­ments — includ­ing the one that Rankin cred­its with sav­ing his life. The Cal­i­for­nia Solar Ini­tia­tive is devot­ing approx­i­mate­ly $2 bil­lion in util­i­ty ratepay­er funds by 2016 to install solar sys­tems. So far, it has helped pay for solar pan­els on more than 112,000 homes, mak­ing Cal­i­for­nia a nation­al leader in this cost-effec­tive strat­e­gy, which reduces peak ener­gy costs and water demand, improves air qual­i­ty, and puts thou­sands of peo­ple back to work.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inspir­ing is how many of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s new megawatts have been qui­et­ly improv­ing the lives of peo­ple, like Rankin, who until recent­ly have been left on the side­lines of the glob­al race for green ener­gy. Low-income fam­i­lies spend more of their earn­ings on elec­tric­i­ty than do the well-to-do but lack the cap­i­tal to cut those costs with effi­cien­cy upgrades, such as solar panels.

Since 2007, Cal­i­for­nia has been mak­ing solar more afford­able to peo­ple like Rankin with rebates, inno­v­a­tive financ­ing pro­grams and “net-meter­ing” options that allow sys­tem own­ers to sell pow­er back to the grid. In a first-of-its-kind solar pro­gram, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sin­gle-fam­i­ly Afford­able Solar Homes project pro­vides incen­tives for low-income home­own­ers to go solar, while also devel­op­ing liveli­hoods for peo­ple like Eduar­do Huer­ta, a father of five, who got work installing solar pan­els after los­ing his job as a stuc­co plas­ter­er dur­ing the reces­sion. “I’m proud to have work again, and even more that it’s work that helps my com­mu­ni­ty,” says Huerta.

The solar homes project is admin­is­tered by an Oak­land non­prof­it, GRID Alter­na­tives, which installs solar elec­tric sys­tems exclu­sive­ly for low-income fam­i­lies, mak­ing green ener­gy easy by design­ing the sys­tems, obtain­ing build­ing per­mits, and sub­mit­ting rebate paper­work. GRID Alter­na­tives has helped save res­i­dents approx­i­mate­ly $50 mil­lion on their elec­tric­i­ty bills, reduc­ing green­house gas­es by 171,000 tons over the next 30 years, and trained more than 9,000 peo­ple in solar installation.
These days, some in Con­gress are still try­ing to make the case that gov­ern­ment sup­port for solar pow­er is a los­ing propo­si­tion. Yet there’s plen­ty of evi­dence that it’s now time for the rest of the coun­try to fol­low Cal­i­for­ni­a’s lead. Smart invest­ments and mod­els like GRID Alter­na­tives can bol­ster Amer­i­ca’s com­pet­i­tive­ness world­wide and bright­en the futures of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans like Elmer Rankin and Eduar­do Huerta.

Daniel M. Kam­men is the dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of ener­gy at UC Berke­ley in the Ener­gy and Resources Group and in the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy. From 2010 to 2011, he was the chief tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ist for renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy at the World Bank.