Australia has the world’s highest uptake of rooftop solar systems, with around 3.4 million installations in use on the roofs of 37 per cent of the nation’s free-standing dwellings. But there is one distinctive group that refuses to join this ‘planet-saving’ party. It is made up of the Green-dominated inner-suburban seats close to our major cities – and the six Teal former blue-ribbon Liberal seats lost to a populist environmental cause at the last federal election.

Those who voted Green and Teal, supposedly to protect the environment from the ‘disaster’ of climate change, have largely spurned the government-prompted rooftop solar boom that has resulted in half the dwellings in Queensland and South Australia, 40 per cent in Western Australia, 31 per cent in NSW and 26 per cent in Victoria having solar, according to the latest statistics from the Clean Energy Regulator. These are the voters who bravely (?) put their ballot paper where their mouth was in their ‘urgent’ need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but whose own roofs are sacrosanct.

What this means for the future of the Teals is moot. Will voters in the traditionally safe Liberal seats that went Teal in 2022 stick with what is now shown, for most of them, to have been only a hypocritical gesture? The latest official statistics, revealing how many Australian dwellings (by local government areas, state electorates, and post codes) have solar panels on their roofs, make it clear that for most Teal (and Green) voters, this was merely a conscience-abating alternative to actually doing something that really does reduce the use of ‘evil fossil fuels’. But going solar would not only disturb their graceful roof lines but could also indicate that they may have needed the subsidised economic benefit involved.

The statistics indicate not only that the rooftop solar installation rate in every one of the six Teal seats is lower than its state average, but in some cases significantly so. In Sydney’s Wentworth, where the NSW solar roof average is 31 per cent, the polling booth in trendy Paddington voted 63 per cent Teal but only six per cent of its houses have solar panels – less than one-fifth of the state’s average. Leafy Woollahra’s 58 per cent Teal vote contrasted with less than 10 per cent solar installations, with a similar outcome from the exclusive 2027 post code covering Darling Point, Point Piper, and Edgecliff.

In North Sydney, where a Teal won narrowly despite getting only a quarter of the first preference vote, North Sydney, Kirribilli, and Neutral Bay (2060, 2061, 2069) failed to exceed a low 10 per cent rooftop solar average, while the ‘planet-saving’ Tealdom of the Northern Beaches LGA (including ‘Independent’ Zali Steggall) failed by one-third to match the NSW average.

But things are even worse in the Green-oriented inner-suburbs where  Glebe and Forest Lodge (2037) score only 7 per cent solar rooftop use, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills (2010) have a dismal 7 per cent while Ultimo, home of the ABC, hits rock bottom with 3 per cent. Compare this with the outer-suburban reality of Leppington, whose 2,590 homes have 84 per cent solar, Catherine Field with 43 per cent, and Camden, where I live under my solar panels, has 34 per cent.

The story is similar in Victoria. The state average of only 26 per cent is heavily influenced by the inner-suburban trendies. Carlton has a solar panel installation rate of only 7 per cent, equalled by Toorak, while North Melbourne’s eight per cent, and South Yarra, Caulfield, Port Melbourne, and Prahran with 9 per cent, are in striking contrast to outer suburban Kardinia with 79 per cent and Lynbrook’s 55 per cent. In Teal Goldstein, voters in Brighton and Highett had a higher solar percentage, but it was still less than half the Victorian average. In Kooyong, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Balwyn, Kew, and Surrey Hills where booths all provided a Teal majority, the rate of solar rooftop installations was about 40 per cent below the state average.

In Western Australia’s Teal electorate of Curtain, well-off post codes like Peppermint Grove (27 per cent) and Scarborough (20 per cent) had a solar installation rate of only a little more than half the state average of 40 per cent, repeating the pattern of Teal voters not matching their electoral passion for climate change policies with installing solar panels on their rooftops.

The Greens’ success in Queensland’s Ryan (defeating the LNP) and Griffith (defeating Labor) underlines Queensland’s lead in rooftop solar installation, with the state average of 45 per cent exceeded in Ryan only by new developments in The Gap, while the rest of the electorate ranges from 37 per cent at Indooroopilly to 39 per cent at Toowong. The pattern in Griffith is much the same. Most post codes had solar installation rates in the high 30s, just below the state average. It is only in the outer suburbs of Brisbane and in the rest of the state that installations reach over 60 per cent.

Despite the reluctance of Teal and Green voters to put their money where their vote is by going solar domestically, the record numbers of Australian dwellings with solar has lifted its share of Australia’s current electricity generation to around eight per cent. However, there has been a dramatic fall in installations in recent years in line with reduced government financial incentives, confirming that economics rather than environmental zeal prompted the household solar boom. In Western Australia, there has been a 38 per cent fall in new installations over the past two years along with 35 per cent in Victoria, while Queensland and NSW are both down by about a quarter.

The huge differences in the proportion of houses with solar between the states indicate not only the variations in state incentives but also weather patterns; the local climate is clearly a factor in Tasmania where less than 20 per cent of dwellings have rooftop solar installed.

So what does this mean for the prospects of the Coalition winning back Teal seats? And Ryan? Now that their (roof) cover has been blown, the six Teals in the House of Representatives may find their self-interested constituents, whose concerns about the environment did not extend to installing rooftop solar, will be more concerned with other matters that affect them directly. Can the Teals hope for another middle-class women’s revolt prompted by former prime minister Morrison’s foolish sacking of Australia Post boss, Christine Holgate? This served to highlight the manufactured perception that the Liberals had a problem with women.

The way political winds change these days, Teal survival will depend on finding another set of agendas to regenerate the remarkable groundswell of enthusiasm (and millionaires’ cash) that carried them to victory in 2022. For most Teal MPs, their parliamentary performances – and the way they have voted – will not work to their electoral advantage. Selling climate catastrophe as the world eases up on the rush to decarbonise will be even harder than getting their constituents to save the world by installing rooftop solar panels – and voting Teal again.