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  • Solar gets cheap fast

    Cross-posted from Climate Progress. There’s a joke in the solar industry about when “grid parity” — the time when solar becomes as cheap as fossil sources — will happen. Ron Kenedi, the former VP in Sharp Solar’s U.S. business liked to throw out random dates, telling me once “November 21, 2012” in jest. The truth […]

  • Smaller generation incites largest renewable energy gains

    While seeming counterintuitive, a focus on smaller-scale distributed generation enables more and faster development of cost-effective renewable energy. In April, I wrote about the illusion that we can “move forward on all fronts” in renewable energy development; rather, a bias toward centralized electricity generation in U.S. policy reduces the potential and resources for distributed generation.  […]

  • Nuclear power is expensive and uninsurable

    The world’s beleaguered nuclear industry continues to take a battering. The “nuclear renaissance” juggernaut that once seemed unstoppable now appears dead in its tracks. The cabinet of Germany’s conservative government on Monday voted to take the country out of nuclear permanently by 2022. Not to be outdone on the right, the country’s opposition parties say […]

  • Cuts to U.K. solar incentive may spread economic benefits more widely

    This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. A proposed revision to the United Kingdom’s feed-in tariff program may have created an uproar, but it may also help spread the economic benefits of solar more widely.  The proposed changes, announced in March, would reduce solar […]

  • U.S. finally catching up to rest of world on solar

    In the U.S., solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are, somewhat unexpectedly, suddenly the belle of the renewable energy ball — and their dance card is wide open. There is now more solar PV capacity planned for the immediate future than any other renewable you can name. Wind, solar thermal, geothermal — it's like they all showed […]