US Solar Industry Keeps On Growing

The US solar energy sector just keeps on rolling along. In the second quarter of this year, the solar industry added 2,387 megawatts, the largest second quarter growth ever. Solar installations follow a seasonal pattern of increasing growth throughout each quarter of the year, with the fourth quarter usually seeing significantly higher growth than any other quarter.

Besides the usual suspects in the southern US sunbelt, the state of Minnesota was interestingly the fifth largest market. Texas added more capacity in this quarter than it ever had and is on track to become the 2nd largest solar producer in the next few years.

In the first half of 2017, 22% of all new electrical power that came online was solar generated. That makes solar the second largest contributor to new electric capacity after natural gas. And the prospects for the future also remain positive. Solar energy is expected to triple its capacity over the next three years.

In addition, solar keeps an adding new jobs at an enormous rate. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), solar added 51,000 new jobs in 2016, a rate about 17 times the national average. Those added jobs are nearly one-third of all the existing coal-related jobs in this country, and the total number of solar jobs is over 2.5 times higher than coal.

With climate change models predicting exactly the type of powerful storms like Harvey and Irma, it becomes harder and harder for the climate change deniers to hold their ground. A new study showed that over 50% of increased global warming comes from just 90 companies, predominantly in the fossil fuel industry. At the same time, the case that these companies understood the effects of their products on global warming but continually denied it continues to grow.

With all that in mind, it would seem that there would be nothing to stop the explosive growth of the solar industry here in the US. Except, of course, Donald Trump. Trump's lame attempts to signal to his coal industry supporters, such as rolling back Obama's stream protection rule, will neither add coal jobs or make coal any more competitive than it already isn't. It will simply increase coal company profits and needlessly add to environmental pollution and global warming. Where Trump could really hurt the solar industry is by imposing tariffs and import duties on the cheap solar panels that are coming from China. If that happens, the SEIA expects the solar industry to shed nearly 90,000 jobs in just one year. I'm not sure that would be making America great again.