“Everybody Ought to Be Rich! Borrow money now and get into the stock market before it’s too late!”
That was America in the 1920s, an era when speculation masqueraded as wisdom and greed was sold as opportunity. “Everybody Ought to Be Rich” wasn’t just a slogan – it was the headline of a real 1929 article in Ladies’ Home Journal promoting the idea that debt and investing, not frugality and saving, were the true path to wealth. Two months after its publication, the stock market crashed.
During the early years of the Great Depression, the Dow Jones lost nearly 90% of its value, and the country learned what happens when confidence outpaces comprehension. Fraud was rampant. Trust evaporated. Then out of that wreckage came reform. The Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934 established the Securities and Exchange Commission, bringing transparency and accountability back to Wall Street. In 1940, the Investment Advisers Act cemented a lasting standard of trust by creating fiduciaries, professionals legally bound to put their clients’ interests ahead of their own.
Nearly a century later, the same imbalance of knowledge and trust has returned, this time in energy. I’ve spent the last decade working in the power and energy sector, including the last four years focused specifically on residential solar and storage. I’ve seen the industry grow quickly and understand how urgently homeowners still need clearer, more trustworthy guidance.
The modern Energy Gold Rush
For nearly two decades, electricity use in the United States has been flat even as the population and economy grew. That era is over. Electricity demand is now climbing at roughly 1.7% per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And two independent forecasts from ICF and PA Consulting project that U.S. electricity consumption could grow by more than 50% by 2050.
Much of that surge stems from the global artificial intelligence race, which has triggered an explosion in energy demand. Extreme weather events are also increasing, leading to life-threatening outages across the country. And at the same time, our infrastructure is aging and struggling to keep pace.
Texas grid operator ERCOT now warns that demand-related outages will become more frequent as population growth, industrial expansion and record heat push the grid toward its limits. Texas may be the flashpoint, but the trend is national. Grid operators from California’s CAISO to the Mid-Atlantic’s PJM warn that demand is rising faster than new generation and transmission upgrades are currently being built.
Renewable energy is essential because it is fast to deploy, increasingly affordable and capable of being built close to where people live, which reduces strain on transmission systems and strengthens resilience. But every major shift brings new complexity. Federal incentives, from rooftop solar and battery tax credits to home-efficiency rebates, have created a maze of fine print. Each program carries its own eligibility rules, income caps and domestic content requirements. Add rapidly evolving technology, tariffs and creative financing models, and even industry professionals struggle to keep up. When complexity and urgency travel together, there is room for innovation but also for confusion and deception.
The energy transition now rewards those best equipped to navigate its rules. Manufacturers, financiers and large solar installers promote the technologies that best fit their portfolios, partnerships and margins. Financiers hire lawyers and consultants to capture every available incentive. And at the consumer level, public trust has eroded as some sales representatives have steered homeowners into long-term contracts designed to maximize commissions rather than to meet a family’s needs.
In recent years, attorneys general in Florida, Minnesota, Arizona and Connecticut have launched investigations or lawsuits against solar companies accused of deceptive practices, alleging everything from forged signatures to misrepresented pricing and projected savings. These are not isolated scandals. They reveal how misaligned incentives can warp an industry that millions of families are being urged to trust.
Corporations, utilities and financiers all have entire industries advocating for their interests. Homeowners are left to fend for themselves. They don’t have lobbyists or compliance teams. They don’t know the difference between net-metering and net-billing or between string inverters and microinverters. Yet they are expected to navigate a trillion-dollar transition based on the honor system.
Recent federal tax changes have only added to the complexity. For the 2026 tax year, the Section 25D residential clean energy tax credit expired for homeowners purchasing systems with cash or loans. In response, much of the industry is preparing for a stronger pivot toward third-party ownership structures built around capturing the commercial 48E credit.
For homeowners, this shifts the calculation. The decision is no longer just about producing electricity on the roof. It is about understanding contract terms, buyout provisions, incentive allocation and long-term cost. As financing grows more sophisticated, transparency cannot be optional.
Where homeowners get trapped
Nowhere is the imbalance clearer than in rooftop solar. Homeowners often begin the process believing the goal is to eliminate their utility bill. It feels intuitive. If electricity is expensive, produce all of it yourself. But the smarter question is, “How do I minimize my long-term cost of energy?”
The smartest system is not always the biggest. A well-designed array might still draw some grid power rather than overproduce during certain months. Yet salespeople paid by system size frequently present “bigger” as “better,” whether it truly serves the homeowner.
Even careful buyers rarely realize how limited their choices can be. Most solar companies restrict hardware options to simplify logistics and warranty management. This reduces overhead and risk for the installer, but it can also prevent the most appropriate technical solution from ever being presented.
Financing introduces another layer of distortion. “Zero-down solar” sounds like a bargain, but two households can install identical systems and pay dramatically different prices depending on how their agreements are structured. Lenders charge installers dealer fees, which can reach 25 to 40%. It is the solar equivalent of paying points on a mortgage, and those costs are often not clearly disclosed. A $20,000 system can quietly become a $35,000 or even $40,000 obligation once fees and interest are included.
Leases and power-purchase agreements promise “free installation” and “low monthly payments,” but it is the financier, not the homeowner, who claims the federal tax credit and long-term upside. Contracts can include annual price escalators that protect investors, not families. The panels on your roof may initially lower your bill, but the paperwork beneath them can limit the long-term benefits, especially when it comes time to move.
As direct homeowner tax credits diminish, third-party ownership models are likely to accelerate. Lease-to-own and prepaid structures often promise eventual ownership, but the fine print determines who truly benefits. How much of the federal incentive actually reaches the homeowner? Are there embedded or undisclosed fees? How is the buyout price determined? What happens if circumstances change and the homeowner needs to move?
Without clear, standardized disclosure, these agreements can transfer complexity and long-term risk to families while allowing investors to retain most of the structural advantages.
A new standard of trust
Our clean-energy marketplace now rewards salesmanship over stewardship. Even the most motivated families can feel overwhelmed by a system that demands fluency in tax law, engineering and finance simply to make an informed decision.
Thousands of people stand in line to receive 30% of their deposits during the National Banking Emergency of 1933. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)
What if families did not have to decode evolving tax law, layered financing structures and shifting incentive rules alone? What if there were clear fee disclosures, standardized comparisons and certified advisers legally bound to place homeowners’ interests first? As federal incentives evolve and ownership models grow more sophisticated, certified homeowner-first guidance is no longer optional. It is essential.
That is why the clean energy industry should take a cue from Wall Street and the fiduciary reforms that followed the last great era of misplaced trust. We need Energy Fiduciaries to guide households through the energy transition with clarity, honesty and care.
Every industry built on complexity eventually faces a reckoning of trust. After 1929, it took nearly 25 years for markets to recover. Confidence had to be rebuilt before prosperity could return. America now faces the challenge of expanding and modernizing its grid capacity by more than 50% in a similar span of time. That scale of change will require not only technology and investment, but also the confidence of millions of households making informed decisions.
Complexity has become the toll gate of progress, and homeowners should not need to be engineers or attorneys to pass through it. If the energy transition is to succeed, trust must become its next great innovation.
Joe Blake is a Sr. Product Line Manager at EG4 Electronics, working in residential solar and energy storage with a focus on product strategy and market intelligence.
