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This is the third article in a three-part series titled Your Brain on Energy for ournew Energy and Environment coverage. For Part I, click here. For Part II, clickhere.

In San Diego, the solar rooftop market is booming. And no wonder: Electricity is expensive, but sunshine is plentiful and it doesnt hurt that California has shined itspolicy radianceon the solar industry. The city boasts more than 44,000 residential solar installations and most strikingly, theyre not all owned by liberal do-gooders.

Not by a long shot.

Instead, as solar has become more popular, it has increasingly tapped into a base of more ideologically conservative customers,according to the Center for Sustainable Energy, a local nonprofit supporting clean power.

When it was more of a fringe technology, you would see anatural gravitation towards the technology by people who are more liberal, says Timothy Treadwell, a director at the center. Now that solar is mainstream, that distinction, and that kindof self-selection, is pretty much gone from the market.

So what happened? Treadwell recently surveyed1,200 San Diego area solar adopters about their political beliefs and why theyhad installed solar. Liberals and conservatives were evenly mixed in the group. Their reasons for installing panels were verydifferent: While liberals were much more likely to do so for environmental reasons, conservatives held to hard-nosed economicones, like reducing their electricity costs.

The conservatives have come around, in Treadwells view, because they heard the right message. It wentfrom being viewed as a nice thing to do for the planet, and it turned into this very clear, understandable value proposition,he says. If youre paying hundreds of dollars a month for electricity, why wouldnt you do it?

Which may be the key to something of holy grail in the energy sphere getting political conservatives to participate in environmentalor energy conservation programs and behaviors to the same extent that liberals do.

The left, the right, and power

When it comes to saving energy, lets face it: Liberals and especially liberal environmentalists are already on board.Research has shownthey are (not surprisingly) more likely to buy Priuses and conserve gasoline, and appear to useless energy overall 10 percent less than those who are politically conservative and live in conservative communities.

More here:
The best way to get conservatives to save energy: Talk about money