While the drill-baby-drill contingent was bitching about reliance on foreign oil, that hacky-sack full of smelly Nancy-Pelosi-electing hippies known as California quietly installed more solar in 2010 than any other state, ever.

The numbers:

  • Californians installed 194 megawatts of solar in 2010, 47 percent more than they installed in 2009. Granted, 2009 was kind of a crap year, economically. But so was 2010!

  • This power is distributed: California now has nearly 1 gigawatt of solar spread across almost 10,000 sites.

    • Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one.

    To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How

  • The cost of distributed, small-scale solar in California has fallen 18 percent since 2007, and almost 30 percent for large projects.

  • Applications to California's solar subsidy program indicate that 2011 will be an even bigger, more record-breakinger year. The ultimate goal is 1,940 MW of solar capacity by 2016.