Where solar goes: political context and the composition of rooftop deployment

Radical right parties oppose climate legislation, but whether this opposition extends to decentralized deployment is less clear. Rather than asking whether municipalities with stronger radical right support deploy less overall, this paper examines the composition of deployment across land-use zones and installation sizes within municipalities. Using Swiss solar installations commissioned between 2018 and 2024, scale-matched measures of roof potential, and municipality fixed effects, I compare deployment across three installation size classes. Industrial-zone deployment is lower where radical right support is higher at small and middle scales, but not at large scale. The change emerges between roughly 50 and 150 kW, a range containing a 100 kW federal support threshold below which realized installations bunch. This scale dependence is difficult to reconcile with either generalized opposition to renewable energy or municipal gatekeeping: the former does not predict a size-specific pattern, while most rooftop installations require notification rather than municipal authorization. The evidence is instead consistent with place-based judgments and differences in the resources and organization required to realize projects. The results suggest that political context may matter differently for discretionary adoption and more project-based development, even within the same technology.