Clean Energy Finance Forum

Could the United States decarbonize most economically by steering trillions in little increments to help homeowners solarize single sites? One model says so.

Debate continues to simmer in California as to what role community solar projects will play as part of the state's new building codes that require solar installations on all new homes, which went into effect at the start of this year.

Seven states – Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont – have enacted legislation to promote pollinator-friendly solar development. A new white paper by the Clean Energy States Alliance provides an overview of these state efforts and offers suggestions for what other states can do to promote solar while also creating or preserving healthy habitats for pollinators.

Now, in states from New York to California, the focus of the conversation has moved from: How can utilities weather the shift toward distributed energy without suffering big losses? to: How can utilities, their customers and the electric grid as a whole best harness the benefits of distributed energy resources?

In California, the nation’s most populous state, every newly-built home must now come with enough solar panels to satisfy its electricity needs. It’s a quiet revolution tucked into the building codes approved unanimously by the California Energy Commission in 2018.

In the Roadmap, the partners set a goal to move toward an additional 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and associated air pollution through accelerating transportation electrification by the time the world arrives in Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Early this month, three community-choice aggregators and one municipal utility serving much of California’s San Francisco Bay Area launched a 30-megawatt distributed energy storage-plus-solar solicitation. It breaks ground on multiple fronts.

Cities in California and Massachusetts are advancing what has become the newest trend in the local fight against climate change: bans on natural gas hookups in new buildings.