Renewable Energy

Clean energy has become a dirty word in presidential politics….The candidates’ coolness to renewable energy comes at a time when the domestic supply of traditional energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, is at an all-time high. And yet this failure to make the promise of renewables a keynote in the debate is a huge missed opportunity. In particular, it ignores the dramatic reduction in the cost of photovoltaic solar power worldwide and the considerable benefits to U.S. consumers and the environment.

Strata Solar plans 15 industrial-scale solar farms for completion this year – including three in Wake and Chatham counties – each with a power capacity of about 5 megawatts. Strata Solar executives are closing in on a deal that would be the state’s biggest solar farm, at about 20 megawatts.

The pace of solar energy development is accelerating as the installation of rooftop solar water heaters takes off. Unlike solar photovoltaic (PV) panels that convert solar radiation into electricity, these “solar thermal collectors” use the sun’s energy to heat water, space, or both.

Swedish home-furnishings retailer Ikea will install solar energy panels on its 356,000-square-foot store in north Charlotte.

CEO of NRG Energy: The fundamental issue of our day [is] climate change…. The people who were opposed to climate change legislation used one of two tactics. They either said, “Well, we don’t believe it’s happening.” Which, of course, is just a bald-faced lie.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) companies manufactured a record 24,000 megawatts of PV cells worldwide in 2010, more than doubling their 2009 output. Annual PV production has grown nearly 100-fold since 2000, when just 277 megawatts of cells were made. Newly installed PV also set a record in 2010, as 16,600 megawatts were installed in more than 100 countries.