Solar Energy

Denialists Keep Saying Wind and Solar make Electricity Expensive: Proof they’re Wrong from Australia

By Zsuzsanna Csereklyei | – Wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market have climbed significantly in recent years. The increase has coincided with a rapid increase in the proportion of electricity supplied by wind and solar generators. But that needn’t mean the increase in wind and solar generation caused the increase in prices. It might […]

Featured

Solar Growing by leaps and Bounds in India, fueling Irrigation and Jobs

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Solar energy is one of the fastest-growing energy sectors in the world, and has the great advantage of producing no carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is raising the average surface temperature of the earth. India is now for the first time in history investing more in solar energy than […]

Employment

Renewable Energy Employed 11 Million People last Year, 8% Growth Forecast

Clean Energy Wire

(Clean Energy Wire) – Eleven million people were employed in renewable energy worldwide in 2018, most in China (4.1 million), the European Union (1.2 million) and Brazil (1.1 million), writes the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in its latest annual review. In Germany, about 291,000 people were employed in the renewable energy sector – about […]

Solar Energy

Europe’s largest solar plant unveiled amid Spanish renewable rebirth

Climate Home News

€300 million [$340mn] investment plan comes amid buoyant optimism for Spain’s long suffering solar sector Spanish utility giant Ibedrola has laid out a plan to build Europe’s largest solar power plant in the country. The company is currently consulting the environment ministry over building a 590-megawatt solar farm in the Western region of Extramadurra, it […]

Climate Change

Should we cover the Sahara Desert with Solar Panels to Fight Climate Disaster?

The Conversation

By Will de Freitas |- You may have seen a variant of this meme before. A map of North Africa is shown, with a surprisingly small box somewhere in Libya or Algeria shaded in. An area of the Sahara this size, the caption will say, could power the entire world through solar energy: Over the […]

Featured

US hits milestone of 2 Million Home Solar Installations, to double by 2023

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) just released a report showing that there are 2 million solar home installations in the United States. That is enough to power 12 million homes. (There are 127 million households in the US, and about 64% of Americans […]

Democratic Socialism

The World’s Happiest People Already have a Green New Deal, and they Love It

George Lakey

(Waging Nonviolence ) – Green New Deal advocates in the United States should look to the Nordic countries for inspiration on how to overcome the 1 percent and address climate change. According to the latest report from the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the Nordics are once again in the top tier of the […]

Featured

Florida PL’s Huge Solar Battery will make as much Electricity as half a Nuclear Plant

Juan Cole

Solar and wind power are already here. By next year, Iowa is expected to get 40 percent of its electricity from wind. Nearly 20 percent of California’s electricity is generated by solar panels. The missing ingredient is energy storage, that is, batteries. Solar panels make electricity from photons, which the sun sends down on us […]

Costa Rica

Is Costa Rica’s ambitious Decarbonization Program a Model for the US Green New Deal?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last week, Costa Rica’s president, Carlos Alvarado, announced one of the more ambitious plans for a transition of a country to Net Carbon Zero proposed anywhere in the world. While many countries have made strides toward reducing their carbon dioxide production from electricity generation, Costa Rica is now addressing transportation, […]