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Green technologies are often caught in the political crossfire.

Thanks to the antics of extreme environmentalists, solar power and batteries have become associated with soup-throwing, bug-eating, and big government. For those wary of the latter, such associations can breed feelings of skepticism and resentment that accompany every headline about, for example, plummeting solar costs.

That is a mistake. Subsidies and mandates aside, the technologies themselves are blameless. And, when considered as supplements to existing energy infrastructure rather than complete replacements, they can be useful.

One emerging niche for batteries is as a backup energy source during emergencies. The Atlantic recently reported that during Hurricane Helene, electric trucks equipped with bidirectional charging, or the ability to send power back to the grid, kept people’s lights and refrigerators on during the extended blackouts.

Solar panels are filling a similar role in places suffering from government mismanagement. In South Africa and Pakistan, for instance, where sunshine and blackouts are regular, private, solar-powered microgrids are mitigating the harm from corrupt and incompetent governance.

Other uses for solar panels and batteries will surely be discovered by the market. The physicist and entrepreneur Casey Handmer has argued that if solar costs continue to fall, some industries may adapt to the plentiful but intermittent energy source by learning to “throttle” their processes up and down. Such innovation could be useful for grand-scale desalination and even the synthesis of cheap, clean-burning hydrocarbon fuels.

If public policy is oriented toward freedom and human flourishing, green technologies can be tools of abundance rather than forced scarcity.

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