When unpopular dumb dumb Donald Trump said “solar isn’t working so good” during one of his hateful spews, everyone and anyone who could read beyond a first grade level said to themselves that’s not right. Trump’s statements aped other conservative politicians who continue to lie to their constituents by telling them that the times aren’t changing—coal can still be king. Inside Climate News explains that 2016 shattered many people’s expectations of clean energy’s speedy growth and application around the world.
In 2016, almost two-thirds of new power capacity came from renewables, bypassing net coal generation growth globally for the first time. Most of the expansion came from a 50 percent growth in solar, much of it in China.
In the U.S., solar power capacity doubled compared to 2015—itself a record-breaking year—with the country adding 14.5 gigawatts of solar power, far outpacing government projections. In the first half of 2017, wind and solar accounted for 10 percent of monthly electricity generation for the first time.
Two reports from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) show that our country’s “predictions” on the growth of solar energy around the world were far too modest.
The numbers are far higher than the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted a decade earlier. The agency forecast in 2006 that solar power would amount to only about 0.8 gigawatts of capacity by 2016.
Instead, installed solar by 2016 was 46 times that estimate, the NRDC points out. EIA's prediction for wind power was also off—the agency predicted 17 gigawatts of wind power, but that figure actually rose nearly fivefold, to 82 gigawatts of capacity.
There have been numerous studies conducted that show that with proper support and a meaningful initiative, clean energy sources like solar can help us out right now—not tomorrow. So while little-known countries like India and China continue to pivot towards a greener future, our conservative administration desperately promises dozens of new coal jobs. As a result conservatives have been searching to find a way to slow down the growth of solar panel adoption in the U.S. You wouldn’t want all of those news jobs to be formed when you could tout twenty new mining jobs for 10-year-olds. The new plan is to greatly raise tariffs on solar panels coming into the U.S.
The US International Trade Commission on Friday decided 4-0 that foreign imports of solar panels and cells have damaged the business of two domestic solar manufactures, Suniva and SolarWorld. Now that the ITC has found injury, it will likely suggest a price floor or tariffs. The decision on whether to regulate these imports will ultimately fall to Trump, and evidence suggests he’s likely to do it. “I would place the odds of the president agreeing to some type of remedy at 90 percent,” an anonymous Trump administration official told the news site Axios.
Suniva has already proposed a price floor of 78 cents per watt and a tariff that would more than double the current panel costs. Solar Energy Industries Association President Abigail Ross Hopper’s statement Friday warned that such a proposal could hobble the industry.
If the natural disaster in Puerto Rico has a silver lining, it is that there is a real potential for making the country’s soon-to-be-planned and built infrastructure entirely green. The sun is doing its best to try to thwart Trump. We will have to do better.