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Friday, May 6th, 2016

10 States Blocking the Power of the Sun

Author:    
Source:     Nation of Change/Center for Biological Diversity
Publication Date:     May 1, 2016
 Link: 10 States Blocking the Power of the Sun
Stephan:   One of the problems that arises in nations that have large expensive installed technologies is that those industries are very reluctant to give up on their installed base. Changing it is very expensive, and puts them between a rock and a hard place. As the old installation is being phased out profits drop, but costs go up to pay for the new technology. Not many companies do this well. Look at Kodak. Look at the centralized monopolistic carbon energy installed based. And since the U.S. is an oligarchy, those large old technology industries effectively own the government, and use their power through the government to do everything they can to slow down the conversion to new technologies. Here is a report that illustrates this point.
Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Some of the sunniest states in the country are actively blocking rooftop-solar development through overtly lacking and destructive policy landscapes, according to a Center for Biological Diversity report released Tuesday.

The 10 states highlighted in Throwing Shade: 10 Sunny States Blocking Distributed Solar Development—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin—account for more than 35 percent of the total rooftop-solar technical potential in the contiguous U.S., but only 6 percent of total installed capacity.

“Thanks to weak and nonexistent policies, the distributed-solar markets in these states have never been given a chance to shine,” Greer Ryan, sustainability research associate with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the report, said. “There’s room for improvement in solar policies across all 50 states, but it’s especially shameful to see the sunniest states fail to lead the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.”

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The report assigned a policy grade to […]

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