Husk’s expansion is an example of the solar boom taking off across Africa. The continent holds 60% of the world’s best solar resources; while it accounts for just 1% of global installed solar photovoltaic capacity, the tides are gradually turning.

Africa added 54% more solar capacity in 2025 than the previous year, according to the latest Africa Market Outlook for Solar PV released by the Global Solar Council. This is the highest annual deployment Africa has ever recorded, led by South Africa, which added 1.6 gigawatts of new solar capacity. Nigeria followed with 803 megawatts, and Egypt with 500 megawatts.

The immense potential that solar holds has “hit everybody” on the continent, says professor Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, executive director of Consumer Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation, an advocacy organization that works on the energy problem in Nigeria.

Ndukwe-Okafor contends that African countries are looking for ways to increase the productivity of their economies and recognize affordable energy as essential to that goal. “To have a productive society, there [must] be an enabling environment,” she explains. “And an enabling environment means you have to have constant and affordable power.”

The Global Solar Council report found that solar installations on the continent are being driven by both large utility-scale projects, which feed electricity directly into national grids, and distributed solar systems, which include rooftop installations and mini-grids to meet the energy demands of households and businesses.

Distributed systems are rapidly increasing even in off-grid African communities. Last year, for example, Ghana and Switzerland jointly launched a $200-million National Clean Energy Programme to develop 137 megawatts of rooftop solar photovoltaic capacity across approximately 4,000 installations.

Solar power “reduces the cost [of energy] to the community while improving their ability to become more productive,” Ndukwe-Okafor says.

RELATED STORIES

Solar energy is good for the planet, but it could be bad for birds

Pakistan’s solar boom is China-powered but people-led

As darkness falls on Cuba, solar provides a lifeline

Meanwhile, investments in solar power are increasing on the continent. Between 2020 and 2025, Africa invested US$34 billion in clean power technologies, out of which 52% was allocated to solar energy, according to the State of African Energy 2026 Outlook Report. These investments were also possible because of policy reforms and the support of governments, including in Nigeria, where its Nigeria Electrification Programme initiative deploys mini-grids, rooftop solar and other solar solutions to people without access to electricity. Since 2018, the private-sector-driven program has helped at least 5.9 million Nigerians access electricity services, in part through the commissioning of 180 mini-grids.

Despite the boom, Africa still lacks adequate financing and investment, which could limit the continent’s potential to generate at least 300 gigawatts by 2030, a goal set by the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. Besides, the capital costs for solar projects in Africa are three to seven times higher than in developed countries.

This financing gap widened after U.S. President Donald Trump ended Power Africa in February 2025. The Power Africa program was launched during the Obama-led administration in 2013 and aimed at providing electricity to millions of households in Africa. Before it ended, the program “contributed to 14,300 megawatts of capacity reaching financial close”  and “facilitated over 41 million new or improved connections for homes and businesses.”

Nevertheless, Ndukwe-Okafor believes that “Africa is a huge [solar] market” with existing policies that can attract the right investment to the solar sector.

Saint Ekpali is a Nigeria-based journalist who covers the environment, health and energy in Africa.

The post Solar energy is taking off across Africa appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In June, the iconic home-furnishing store announced it was launching solar panels for apartment balconies. “Small system, big impact,” Ikea writes on its German-based website, touting its “DIY solar solutions that help you generate your own solar power and become more independent from energy price developments.” 

For now, the “balcony power plants” are available only in Germany, which recently simplified rules about solar installation, removing grid operator registration for homeowners and allowing plug-in panels on balconies, like the ones now offered through Ikea. 

Solar is key to the energy transition. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says it is set to become the largest renewable-energy source by 2030, which as a whole will account for nearly half of global energy production by the end of the decade. Buoyed by its flexibility, portability and rapidly dropping costs, roughly 100 million households will rely on rooftop solar energy by 2030, according to the IEA, up from around 25 million in 2022. Solar will account for 80% of renewable-energy growth by 2030, the agency says. “To fully decarbonize the electricity sector, solar PV will have to be installed everywhere possible, starting with buildings. Households are essential in this development,” the IEA said in a report. 

The Ikea panel kits are produced by Swedish energy company Svea Solar. Three packages are available through Svea: the smallest and most suited to single-family homes comes with two panels, an inverter and AI app assistant, at a cost of €449 (roughly $724). A level up, for a three- to four-person household, includes four panels and an energy storage device at a cost of €1,280 ($2,065). Or you can customize the package and buy any number of panels required. 

Ikea estimates that a typical balcony power plant can save users between €200 and €600 per year and generate between 860 and 2000 kilowatt-hours per year. 

In many parts of the Global South, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, the surge in affordable Chinese-made solar panels has fuelled a natural transition to the renewable-energy source. China itself is driving this shift within its own borders, accounting for 60% of all renewable-energy expansion by 2030, according to the IEA. 

Solar energy is also booming in Europe, which has adopted policies aimed at decreasing its reliance on fossil fuels from Russia. Its initiatives include speeding up the rollout of photovoltaic solar, in part through new rooftop rules. 

For industry watchers, the Ikea move matters. “When generating clean electricity becomes as simple as assembling furniture, we’re looking at a fundamental shift in how people think about power generation,” wrote Javier Gascón Araujo, founder of a Madrid-based AI solutions firm for climate companies, on LinkedIn. 

“We need regulators to accelerate plug-in electricity permits to make this accessible Everywhere!!!” María Mendiluce, CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition, added on LinkedIn. 

Ikea was ranked 17th in Corporate Knights’ first ranking of the 25 most sustainable private-sector companies in the world this year, committing to halving its value chain emissions by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Investigations by environmental groups such as Greenpeace have raised questions about some of the company’s supply chains, specifically around working with manufacturers that source wood from old-growth or protected forests. The company says it has shrunk its total climate footprint by 22% compared to 2016 and that it is focusing on using only “responsibly sourced renewable or recycled materials.” 

The post Ikea makes a power play with solar panels for apartment balconies appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the United States, there are now around 5,700 large-scale solar farms operating, according to data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey. Globally, there are more than 75,000. While the harm to wildlife inflicted by the petroleum industry has generated reams of research, the ecological effects of solar are poorly studied.

While comprehensive impact studies are lacking, it is clear that both migratory and resident birds are commonly killed or stunned by these novel features in their environment. One hypothesis suggests that the shimmering arrays of photovoltaic panels that most people envision when they think of a solar farm read as bodies of water to birds from the air.

Because of the so-called lake effect, birds may attempt to land on the panels or drink from them, either dying on impact or perishing on the ground after colliding with what appears to be a liquid surface. This is particularly concerning for migratory waterbirds passing over photovoltaic facilities, which could appear as tempting oases and not the fields of unyielding glass and silicon they really are.

Small, ground-dwelling birds may be disoriented by the panels as well, crashing into them as they forage the swarms of invertebrates attracted to the polarized light that they reflect.

Impacts on bird habitats

“Habitat loss is the greatest potential impact, obviously correlated to the size of a single project, and the cumulative effects of neighboring projects,” says Andrew Jenkins, owner of Avisense Consulting, a South African firm that conducts birdlife impact assessments for energy installations, in an email.

It often takes several years to get a solar installation up and running. Aside from regular human activity, vegetation is frequently shorn or removed entirely to create space for the structures, resulting in habitat destruction. “Utility-scale installations often replace native habitats such as grasslands, deserts or wetlands, disrupting breeding, foraging and nesting areas,” says Crystal Anderson, a wildlife biologist with the James C. Kennedy Waterfowl and Wetlands Conservation Center, in Georgetown, South Carolina, in an email. “This is particularly damaging for ground-nesting birds and area-sensitive species that require large, contiguous habitats.”

Non-native bird species and native species well adapted to man-made environments may move into the vacuums created by solar farms – though they too sometimes meet their ends cruising into glittering solar arrays. Both native house finches and non-native Eurasian collared doves quickly dominated the Macho Springs Solar Facility established in New Mexico in 2012, for example. These species are known for their adaptability to human disturbance.

Solutions are still being developed

A variety of bird deterrents have been proposed: chemical substances that create aversive scents or tastes, recorded predator sounds, flashing lights and objects to prevent birds from landing.

“Incorporating bird-friendly design features such as non-reflective panel coatings, reduced artificial lighting and buffers or corridors of native vegetation can mitigate some of the most pressing risks to avian species,” Anderson says.

“The disturbance impacts of construction are probably unavoidable, except by minimizing the durations of the construction period, timing the construction to avoid sensitive seasons and working to minimize noise and activity-related disturbance,” Jenkins adds.

Situating new solar plants on “brownfields” – sites such as former mines, landfills and fossil fuel facilities – may also be a way to avoid damage to vulnerable habitats. These sites are already wastelands. Placing solar plants there obviates the harms of development.

Special challenges at concentrating solar power sites

While photovoltaic systems are dominant in solar, another related technology is once again making inroads after years of skepticism. Concentrating solar power (CSP) sites use mirrors to direct solar energy toward towers that contain various substances that then generate electricity. Despite its high costs, CSP has the advantage of being able to store power overnight, helping it stage a comeback. Last year, for example, Botswana announced that it would build a 200-megawatt concentrated solar-thermal power plant. 

In 2014, the Associated Press published an alarming account of birds going up in smoke as they passed through beams of concentrated sunlight at a CSP facility in the Mojave Desert. These “streamers,” as they were called, plummeted to the ground after igniting. Later research suggested that the phenomenon was more likely attributable to insects passing through the beams rather than birds, though some observers contest this.

Surveys of similar CSP farms have turned up numerous dead birds with singed feathers. Birds may not be incinerated mid-air as the original report suggested, but they certainly get burned.

These beams may reach 1,000°C. “This can cause severe injuries or death, particularly among high-flying birds like raptors,” Anderson says.

Reducing the solar flux – the amount of solar energy reaching a certain location – for solar thermal energy systems has proven helpful in several cases. Both the Ivanpah and Crescent Dunes projects in California have reduced solar flux and seen reduced bird deaths.

Solar installations increase biodiversity, and some birds benefit

While solar facilities may pose a danger to birds, they can also be beneficial to other wildlife and even some types of birds.

Several studies have found increased species diversity at solar sites in comparison to nearby arable land, likely due to the way in which solar farms contribute to more diverse plant species and structures for shelter. These increases favour birds that forage on the ground and eat insects. Conversely, birds with more specific habitat requirements will be negatively affected. “Endangered species may suffer population-level consequences from even localized disturbances,” Anderson says.

As solar energy deployment grows – it will account for a majority of renewable growth capacity in the remainder of the decade per the International Energy Agency – examination of its unintended negative effects on wildlife will be crucial.

Richard Pallardy is a freelance writer based in Chicago. He has written for such publications as Science, Discover, Live Science and National Geographic.

The post Solar energy is good for the planet, but it could be bad for birds appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Right now, U.S. manufacturers do not produce enough solar panels to meet the nation’s demand, but industry investments and federal tax incentives have been making progress, though recent federal moves have created uncertainty.

In 2024, U.S. installers put up enough solar panels to generate 50 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power New York City for a year. But U.S. manufacturers produced only a small fraction of that – 4.2 GW of solar modules in the first half of 2024. That was a big boost, though, representing a 75% increase compared with the same period in 2023. And the prices were roughly three times the cost of imports.

U.S. solar imports vs. domestic production

In 2024, the U.S. imported far more panels than the country needed, suggesting that developers may be stockpiling panels for future projects.

Most of those imported panels were made in Asia, particularly Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. In fact, nearly all of the U.S.-made panels used at least some components from overseas. China currently makes about 97% of the world’s supply of photovoltaic wafers, which are building blocks of solar panels.

The effects of proposed U.S. trade policies on the solar industry remain unclear. Through 2024, manufacturing continued a yearslong ramp-up to take advantage of government policies favouring domestic manufacturing. And imported panels seem slated to suffer from ever-increasing tariffs, which drive up costs.

Since 2010, U.S. solar panel production has increased about eightfold. But U.S.-made panels are more expensive than imported alternatives. In 2024, U.S.-made panels typically cost 31 cents per watt, but imported panels, even including tariffs that existed before President Donald Trump’s second term, cost about one-third of that: 11 cents per watt.

Related

The rooftop solar revolution is accelerating — and all eyes are on Asia

Can Mark Carney fight climate change while supporting oil and gas?

How China’s energy transition engine is driving change in the Global South

But domestic manufacturers are bringing costs down by ramping up production while relying on the government to maintain or increase tariffs on imports, which may make U.S. panels more competitive domestically in the future.

The distorting influence of tariffs

Despite that increase in domestic production, U.S. demand for solar panels has grown even faster. To meet demand, the U.S. imports a substantial portion of its solar photovoltaic modules.

Tariffs, including a 30% tariff on solar cells and solar panels starting in 2018, aimed to boost domestic manufacturing. But those tariffs and falling global prices made solar installations more costly in the United States than in the rest of the world. The average global cost of installed solar systems dropped from $1.15 per watt in 2012 to $0.72 per watt in 2016, nearly half that of U.S. installations.

The 2018 tariffs, as well as earlier rounds in 2012 and 2014, have shifted the source of U.S. imports of solar panels from China and Taiwan to Malaysia and South Korea. Manufacturers are also building solar panels in Singapore and Germany to maintain access to the U.S. market. And Chinese companies are even investing in U.S. solar manufacturers to take advantage of federal incentives and avoid tariffs.

Trump’s proposal for new tariffs on foreign-made solar goods, including panels and components, particularly target Chinese-owned companies in Southeast Asia. They could include a potential 375% tariff on Thai products – nearly quadrupling prices – and a 3,500% tariff on products from Cambodia.

In contrast, U.S.-made solar panels will be cheaper. But a reduced supply of solar panels will raise prices even of domestic-made panels, at least until U.S. manufacturing can catch up with the demand. Some developers have begun to delay or cancel solar installations to address rising costs.

U.S. solar manufacturing capacity is growing

Due in large part to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, the U.S. solar panel industry has seen significant investments.

Since the law’s enactment, more than 95 GW of manufacturing capability have been added across the solar supply chain in the United States – including new facilities that in a year can construct enough solar panels to produce nearly 42 GW. This growth in manufacturing capabilities is located largely in Texas and Georgia.

Still, the new administration’s shifting priorities and trade policies make the landscape uncertain. Before Trump began discussing various solar-related trade policies, the industry projected it would install an average of 45 GW of solar panels every year for the next decade.

Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti is an associate research scientist at the University of Michigan. As a scholar who studies the sun, as well as an entrepreneur who is working to harness its power here on Earth by creating new designs for generating solar electricity, he has studied market trends and manufacturing capabilities in the United States and abroad.

This story first appeared in The Conversation. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

The post The growth of U.S. solar manufacturing can’t keep pace with soaring demand appeared first on Corporate Knights.

A system increasingly loaded with wind and solar will require customers to send power back into the system. If the traditional grid centralized generation at power plants, experts believe the system of tomorrow will be more distributed, with power coming from what they call the “grid edge” – household batteries, electric cars and other gadgets whose relationship with the grid has been one-way. More people, for example, are installing solar panels on their roofs backed up with home batteries. When electricity demand increases, a utility can draw power from those homes as a vast network of backup energy.

The big question is how to choreograph that electrical ballet – millions of different devices at the grid edge, owned by millions of different customers, that all need to talk to the utility’s systems. To address that problem, a team of researchers from several universities and national labs developed an algorithm for running a “local electricity market,” in which ratepayers would be compensated for allowing their devices to provide backup power to a utility. Their paper, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, described how the algorithm could coordinate so many sources of power – and then put the system to the test. “When you have numbers of that magnitude, then it becomes very difficult for one centralized entity to keep tabs on everything that’s going on,” said Anu Annaswamy, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the paper’s co-author. “Things need to become more distributed, and that is something the local electricity market can facilitate.”

At the moment, utilities respond to a surge in demand for electricity by spinning up more generation at power plants running on fossil fuels. But they can’t necessarily do that with renewables, since the sun might not be shining, or the wind blowing. So as grids increasingly depend on clean energy, they’re getting more flexible: giant banks of lithium-ion batteries, for instance, can store that juice for later use.

Yet grids will need even more flexibility in the event of a cyberattack or outage. If a hacker compromises a brand of smart thermostat to increase the load on a bunch of air-conditioning units at once, that could crash the grid by driving demand above available supply. With this sort of local electricity market imagined in the paper, a utility would call on other batteries in the network to boost supply,  stabilizing the grid. At the same time, electric water heaters and heat pumps for climate control could wind down, reducing demand. “In that sense, there’s not necessarily a fundamental difference between a battery and a smart device like a water heater, in terms of being able to provide the support to the grid,” said Jan Kleissl, director of the Center for Energy Research at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

Along with this demand reduction, drawing power from devices along the grid edge would provide additional support. In testing out cyberattack scenarios and sustained inclement weather that reduces solar energy, the researchers found that the algorithm was able to restabilize the grid every time. The algorithm also provides a way to set the rates paid to households for their participation. That would depend on a number of factors, such as time of day, location of the household and the overall demand. “Consumers who provide flexibility are explicitly being compensated for that, rather than just people doing it voluntarily,” said Vineet J. Nair, a PhD student at MIT and lead author of the paper. “That kind of compensation is a way to incentivize customers.”

Utilities are already experimenting with these sorts of compensation programs, though on a much smaller scale. Electric buses in Oakland, California, for instance, are sending energy back to the grid when they’re not ferrying kids around. Utilities are also contracting with households to use their large home batteries, like Tesla’s Powerwall, as virtual power plants.

Building such systems is relatively easy, because homes with all their heat pumps and batteries are already hooked into the system, said Anna Lafoyiannis, senior team lead for transmission operations and planning at the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit in Palo Alto, California. By contrast, connecting a solar and battery farm to the grid takes years of planning, permitting and construction. “Distributed resources can be deployed really quickly on the grid,” she said. “When I look at flexibility, the time scale matters.”

All these energy sources at the grid edge, combined with large battery farms operated by the utility, are dismantling the myth that renewables aren’t reliable enough to provide power on their own. One day, you might even get paid to help bury that myth for good.

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

The post Utilities may soon pay you for your power appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“My parents and grandparents were in manufacturing, and they were the ones saying, ​‘Don’t do it,’” Nash recalled.

Nash disregarded their advice, embarking instead on a long career in manufacturing — first in textiles, followed by stints in aviation, automotive, and steel. Now she’s helping to bring higher-tech, higher-paying factory work back to the corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga.

Nash is the general manager of the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton, a town of 34,000 located 50 miles up I-75 from her hometown. It opened in January 2019, after the Trump administration imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese-made panels. The Korean conglomerate Hanwha owns Qcells, and initially planned to hire several hundred people at the site, Nash told me on a recent visit to the factory. By the end of 2019, it employed more than 800.

Then, in 2020, Georgia helped elect President Joe Biden and sent two Democrats to the Senate, clinching a thin majority. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got to work crafting detailed policies to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, which China had dominated for years; they wanted solar panels and batteries made in America — specifically Georgia — instead of in China, a geopolitical rival.

Those measures made it into the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 — two years ago this week. The legislation created the nation’s first comprehensive policies to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. Qcells broke ground on a second facility in Dalton in February 2023. Completed that August, the expansion added two football fields’ worth of manufacturing space with four new production lines — which produce 1.5 times more solar panels than the original three lines, thanks to technological advances. Now the whole complex employs 2,000 people full time and makes 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels a year, more than any other site in the U.S.

Politicians have been promising for decades to retrain American workers and revive long-lost manufacturing, with little to show for it. Now, though, the U.S. has entered a new era on trade: Leaders of both parties have rejected the long-standing free-trade consensus and its penchant for offshoring jobs. Biden married that reshoring impulse with a desire to boost clean energy production, to both stimulate the economy and fight climate change.

This grand experiment remains in its infancy, and the success of the clean energy manufacturing revolution is by no means guaranteed. Cheap imports could outcompete even newly subsidized American products.

And if Republicans win the presidency and retake Congress, they’ve threatened to stop subsidizing low-carbon energy resources and instead double down on fossil fuel production. House Republicans — including Dalton’s representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have voted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the domestic manufacturing incentives in the IRA. (Greene’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“Donald Trump and his Republican allies promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he’s reelected, so there’s a lot at stake here,” Representative Nikema Williams, who leads the Georgia Democrats, told me.

Since the IRA passed, Georgia has received $23 billion (all figures in USD) in clean energy factory investment, much of it flowing to northwest Georgia. I wanted to see what impact this is having on communities formerly hit hard by industrial decline, so I followed the money trail to Dalton earlier this summer.

I found a population that seems to like having advanced solar manufacturing in their backyard. Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life. In November, voters will weigh two very different visions of America’s energy future on the ballot, but Dalton is already reaping the rewards from slotting solar into its storied history of industrial production.

From carpets to solar

Both CSX and Norfolk Southern run Class I rail lines through Dalton, a testament to its industrial legacy, and freight trains bellow day and night.

That legacy harks back to 1900, according to local historians, when Catherine Evans Whitener sold a hand-tufted bedspread from her front porch for $2.50. The cottage industry took off in this land of forested ridges and stream-crossed valleys, and over time, local factories consolidated into global carpeting giants Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries.

“The carpet industry was born here,” Carl Campbell, executive director of economic development at the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, told me when I visited the Chamber. The New Georgia Encyclopedia states that 80% of America’s tufted carpet production happens within 100 miles of Dalton.

The conference room where we spoke sported large-format aerial photographs of the major factories nearby: the largest Shaw site, 650,000 square feet; and the new Engineered Floors colossus, 2.8 million square feet.

“You feel like there’s enough carpet in that building to cover the whole world,” said Campbell, who grew up in Dalton.

Dalton employment numbers peaked at 80,200 in 2006, per the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But the Great Recession crushed the homebuilding industry, cratering demand for Dalton’s carpeting products.

Dalton ​“was a ghost town in 2011, nothing going on because everybody was hurting,” Campbell added. From June 2011 to June 2012, Dalton notched the dubious distinction of most jobs lost of all 372 metro areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By that point, one-quarter of Dalton’s pre-recession jobs had vanished, and unemployment surged to 12.3%.

Since then, the industry has recovered somewhat. Engineered Floors, Mohawk, and Shaw still dominate local employment, with some 14,000 jobs among them, Campbell said. Those companies have had to adapt to evolving consumer tastes, shifting from wall-to-wall carpets to hardwood and other flooring materials. They’ve also automated aspects of production, reducing the number of workers needed.

In the wake of the Great Recession, local leaders sought to diversify Dalton’s industry. The county acquired an undeveloped lot south of town, and Campbell later pushed to clear and level the site, so it was shovel-ready for some future tenant. When Trump’s solar tariffs kicked in, Campbell’s counterparts at Georgia’s Department of Economic Development sent Qcells his way.

Qcells showed up in February 2018, looking to spin up its first American solar-panel factory in less than a year. ​“Suddenly, we had exactly what they needed,” Campbell said.

Thus Dalton managed to bring in new industry to balance out its base of carpets and flooring. Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Campbell said.

“They did it in three months,” he added. ​“In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”

Domestic solar manufacturing, by humans and robots

When I asked folks around town what they thought of Qcells, they kept mentioning the dozens of air-conditioning units arrayed on the factory roof, like a field of doghouses, easily visible from I-75. I later learned that Qcells brought in helicopters to install those units, which made for a bit of small-town spectacle. Still, it struck me as a surprising detail to dwell on for a business that somehow turns the sun’s rays into cheap, emissions-free electricity.

Once I crossed Qcells’ sizzling parking lot and stepped indoors, it started to make sense. Georgia gets hot, and carpet factories get hot, but the vast floors of the twin solar factories are quite literally cool places to work.

The climate control is not unique to assembling solar panels, but it is required for the sensitive, precisely calibrated product. The air conditioners are but one sign that high-tech manufacturing has arrived, and that it makes for pretty comfortable work.

I met my two tour guides, Wayne Lock and Alan Rodriguez, in the factory lobby, and they quickly confirmed the physical appeal of Qcells jobs. Lock, now a quality engineer at Qcells, previously worked in carpet manufacturing; he had to wear special heat-resistant gear to handle carpeting materials that would otherwise deliver third-degree burns. Rodriguez, an engineering supervisor at Qcells, used to apply the coating material underneath carpets.

“You’re sandwiched between the steamer and the oven, so it gets quite hot,” Rodriguez told me. Attending to those machines exposed him to temperatures that could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even more than Qcells’ air conditioning, though, people I spoke to kept bringing up the pay.

By offering more for zero-skill, entry-level positions than the other factories in town, Qcells started attracting workers and pushed up wages across Dalton, Campbell said: ​“Competition brings everybody, so everybody’s had to kind of equalize to keep employees.”

Now Qcells hourly wages for non-experienced hires start at $17.50 to $22 — that amounts to $36,400 to $45,760 a year for full-time work. Workers with experience in robotics and manufacturing can take home much more than that. Employees can raise their pay through a variety of on-the-job training, most of which involves handling and troubleshooting the in-house fleet of robots.

Lock, Rodriguez, and I walked into the newest factory, past meeting rooms with names like Naboo and Mandalore, Star Wars locales where quirky robots coexist with all manner of creatures. As we strolled across the floor, squat wheeled autonomous vehicles rolled past us down pathways marked by tape on the smooth floor, ferrying bales of materials or hauling out hulking boxes of finished panels.

“We try to stay out of their way, and if we don’t, they yell at us,” said Lock. ​“It’s fun.”

As we stood talking, I noticed that one such robo-buggy was waiting for us to move. Barely discernible over the background drone of machines, a female voice intoned, ​“Robot is moving. Please look out.” When humans hold up more time-sensitive deliveries, Lock explained, the voice switches to male and gets louder.

Other robots remain fixed in place, carrying out repetitive precision tasks. I stared, mesmerized, at one machine that split wafer-thin silicon cells in half, first scoring them with a laser, then slicing them with a concentrated jet of water. A taller machine grabbed nearly 8-foot metal frames and sliced them through the air like a master swordsman in a Kurosawa film, to slot them around glassed-in silicon panels.

Throughout the process, cameras scan cells and use artificial intelligence to shunt defective items off the line for manual correction.

In the 2019-era factory next door, humans carry out many of these tasks. Lock, though, didn’t see the robots as competitors — he said they were taking on more physically demanding jobs so the humans could step into higher-skilled roles tending to robots.

“The ergonomics are better for you,” he said, and the new lines are more productive.

Hiring local, spending local

When Qcells was first staffing up, it relied on Quick Start, a Georgia state program that funds worker training for new factories before they open — a major draw for executives deciding where to locate their factories.

Qcells still recruits to meet ongoing staffing needs, and it has been paying special attention to high schoolers who are graduating and looking for employment. Nash speaks passionately about Qcells’ recruitment efforts; she’s seen the civic fallout from decades when local families encouraged kids to avoid manufacturing.

“Small communities cannot thrive with kids graduating and leaving those communities to live elsewhere, to get high-paying technical jobs,” Nash said. ​“That’s what’s happening across the country. Bringing manufacturing back, and bringing highly automated manufacturing, is offering job opportunities where now these students are staying here.”

Some 56% of Dalton-area students enroll in postsecondary education within 16 months of graduating high school, said Stephani Womack, director of education and workforce development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. For the remainder, the chamber wants to make sure family-supporting jobs are available.

For two weeks in June, Womack helped run Project Purpose, a crash course in how to start and navigate careers that pay living wages. Recent high school graduates prepped for interviews, shopped for professional clothes, and toured housing options and downtown hotspots — the kinds of places they could frequent once they join the workforce.

But the centerpiece of the program amounted to professional speed dating, as Dalton’s major employers offered tours and entry-level jobs. Last year, Dalton’s first time running Project Purpose, seven young adults completed the program, and Qcells hired one of them. This time, 18 finished, and Qcells hired 12 of them to start on July 1.

“Next year, we hope to double that, or more,” Nash said.

RELATED:

• When red states go green
• With Inflation Reduction Act, U.S. is on the cusp of ‘biggest’ economic revolution’ in generations
• Nine million green jobs could be on the way as U.S. Senate passes $369-billion climate bill

Several participants came in knowing about Qcells, betting that the intensive crash course would increase their odds of landing good roles there, Womack told me over a table at Garmony House, a downtown coffee shop that draws lines for its statuesque strawberry cupcakes and coffee-glazed cinnamon rolls.

“Qcells is providing a diverse set of options for our students who need to go to work but want to stay in our community,” Womack said. ​“They see a climate-controlled facility with entry-level opportunities — that’s exciting for them. … Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be.”

For younger people to stay in town and build a life, Dalton needs more housing, and now it’s getting its first large apartment complex in over two decades, Campbell said. In total, 900 apartment units are slated to come online from last August through this November — not enough to catch up on a long-running housing deficit, but a step in the right direction.

That renewed real estate activity is reflected in downtown Dalton’s bustling core.

Locals pack the booths at the Oakwood Cafe, perhaps the only place in America that sells a platter of egg, sausage, toast, and grits for just $3.65. Multiple microbreweries beckon, as does a plush cocktail bar, the Gallant Goat, which stocks fresh mint by the fistful to garnish its drinks. Down the road, diners can sample ceviche of shrimp shipped in from coastal Mexico, succulent chicken wings, and high-end Southern cuisine.

This spring, the plush Carpentry Hotel opened across from the Oakwood Cafe, decked out with vibrant textile art to commemorate the town’s carpeting heritage.

“That’s been big for us, getting that hotel in downtown. That’s indicative of a robust local economy that people are coming to participate in,” local real estate agent Beau Patton told me as the late afternoon sun streamed into the Gallant Goat. Patton works with Qcells employees who want to buy homes in the area. He sees the factory’s decision to locate there as ​“very mutually beneficial” for Qcells and Whitfield County: ​“What you hope is Whitfield County grows with it, and it grows with Whitfield County.”

From Dalton to towns across Georgia

Dalton got in early on the national clean-energy factory revival, and has already seen its solar factory push up wages, enable high school graduates to stay and start careers, and inject money into a reinvigorated downtown. Many more communities in Georgia are following close behind with their own cleantech factories, seeking a similar economic jolt.

“There is a palpable and intense sense of excitement across the state about how these manufacturing and infrastructure policies are supercharging Georgia’s economic development,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat who authored the IRA manufacturing incentives that Qcells is tapping into. ​“And I would add, it’s not just the primary industrial facilities; it’s all of the secondary and tertiary suppliers and vendors and service companies and the financial services firms needed to support them.”

Qcells is building an even bigger factory compound down in Cartersville, which won a conditional $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy on August 8. This facility will take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to onshore more steps of the solar supply chain: slicing silicon wafers, carving them into solar cells, and assembling finished modules with even newer robots than the ones I saw in Dalton. Until now, those high-value precursors to solar panels were shipped in from overseas. Workers in Dalton complete just the last step: assembling modules. Cartersville promises to bring the dream of American-made solar a bit closer to reality.

To achieve that dream, the industry has a few other challenges to confront. For one, 97% of the glass that encloses solar panels comes from China. Besides the geopolitical implications of that dependence, glass is so fragile and heavy that its shipping costs make domestic production enticing both economically and environmentally.

“We need domestic glass to have an efficient supply chain,” said Suvi Sharma, founder and CEO of solar recycling startup Solarcycle. His company is breaking ground on a combination solar-panel recycling facility and solar-glass factory in Cedartown, some 70 miles southwest of Dalton. Sharma expects to invest $344 million in the community and hire 600 full-time employees.

Compared with Dalton and Cartersville, ​“Cedartown is more off the beaten path — this would be the first large-scale factory going up there,” said Sharma. After years in which the population declined and young people looked elsewhere for jobs, ​“this enables them to keep people and bring in more people. There’s a cascading impact.”

Solarcycle will use its rail spur to ship in low-iron silica from a mine in Georgia, plus soda ash and limestone. Over time, it will supplement those raw ingredients with increasing amounts of glass the company will pull from decommissioned solar panels, including those made by Qcells. The goal is to produce enough glass for 5 gigawatts of panels per year; Solarcycle will ship the glass to nearby customers. At that point, workers in northwest Georgia will have a hand in all the major steps of solar-module production except the processing of raw polysilicon. Hanwha recently became the largest shareholder in REC Silicon to secure access to domestic polysilicon from the Pacific Northwest.

Georgia also nabbed a hefty chunk of the electric-vehicle factory buildout catalyzed by IRA incentives. Hyundai is dropping nearly $1 billion on its ​“Metaplant” near the deepwater port of Savannah and building an adjacent $4.3 billion battery plant with LG. Kia erected a new EV9 SUV manufacturing line at its plant in West Point, about halfway down Georgia’s border with Alabama. The first EV9 rolled off the line in June — less than two years after the IRA was signed into law.

Dalton, then, is a leading indicator of the industrial invigoration that clean energy factories are bringing to cities and towns across Georgia. People broadly appreciate it — if not for the role in combating climate change or countering China’s industrial might, then for high starting wages, comfortable working conditions, and opportunities for advancement.

But for this nascent factory boom to endure, the policies that triggered it need to stay in effect. The people of Georgia played a decisive role in spurring this manufacturing revival; this November, they’ll have an outsize role in deciding if it continues.

This article by Canary Media is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

The post How a small city in Georgia became a solar manufacturing hub appeared first on Corporate Knights.

To make renewable energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind available when it is most needed, it’s becoming more common to use batteries to store the power as it’s generated and transmit it later. But one thing about the Cuyama facility, which began operations this week, is less common: The batteries sending energy to the grid once powered electric vehicles.

The SEPV Cuyama facility, located about two hours northeast of Santa Barbara, is the second hybrid storage facility opened by B2U Storage Solutions. Its first facility, just outside Los Angeles, uses 1,300 retired batteries from Honda Clarity and Nissan Leaf EVs to store 28 megawatt-hours of power, enough to power about 9,500 homes.

The facilities are meant to prove the feasibility of giving EV batteries a second life as stationary storage before they are recycled. Doing so could increase the sustainability of the technology’s supply chain and reduce the need to mine critical minerals, while providing a cheaper way of building out grid-scale storage.

“This is what’s needed at massive scale,” said Freeman Hall, CEO of the Los Angeles-based large-scale storage system company.

Electric vehicle batteries are typically replaced when they reach 70 to 80 percent of their capacity, largely because the range they provide at that point begins to dwindle. Almost all of the critical materials inside them, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are reusable. A growing domestic recycling industry, supported by billions of dollars in loans from the Energy Department and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, is being built to prepare for what will one day be tens of millions of retired EV battery packs.

Before they are disassembled, however, studies show that around three quarters of decommissioned packs are suitable for a second life as stationary storage. (Some packs may not have enough life left in them, are too damaged from a collision, or otherwise faulty.)

“We were seeing the first generation of EVs end their time on the road, and 70 percent or more of those batteries have very strong residual value,” said Hall. “That should be utilized before all those batteries are recycled, and we’re just deferring recycling by three, four, or five years.”

Extending the useful life of EV batteries mitigates the impact of manufacturing them, said Maria Chavez, energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The whole point of trying to deploy electric vehicles is to reduce emissions and reduce the negative impacts of things like manufacturing and extractive processes on our environment and our communities,” Chavez told Grist. “By extending the life of a battery, we reduce the need for further exploitation of our natural resources, we reduce the demand for raw materials, and we generally encourage a more sustainable process.”

Just as batteries have become crucial to reducing emissions from transportation, they’re also needed to fully realize the benefits of clean energy. Without stationary storage, wind and solar power can only feed the grid when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

“Being able to store it and use it when it’s most needed is a really important way to meet our energy needs,” Chavez said.

The use of utility-scale battery storage is expected to skyrocket, from 1.5 gigawatts of capacity in 2020 to 30 gigawatts by 2025. EV packs could provide a stockpile for that buildout. Hall said there are already at least 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV packs sitting around in the United States that could be deployed, and that the volume of them being removed from cars is doubling every two years.

“We’re going from a trickle when we started four years ago to a flood of batteries that are coming,” he said.

B2U says its technology allows batteries to be repurposed in a nearly “plug and play fashion.” They do not need to be disassembled, and units from multiple manufacturers — B2U has tested batteries from Honda, Nissan, Tesla, GM, and Ford — can be used in one system.

The packs are stored in large cabinets and managed with proprietary software, which monitors their safety and discharges and charges each battery based on its capacity. The batteries charge during the day from both the solar panels and the grid. Then B2U sells that power to utilities at night, when demand and prices are much higher.

Hall said using second-life batteries earns the same financial return as new grid-scale batteries at half the initial cost, and that for now, repurposing the packs is more lucrative for automakers than sending them straight to recyclers. Until the recycling industry grows, it’s still quite expensive to recycle them. By selling or leasing retired packs to a grid storage company, said Hall, manufacturers can squeeze out more value out of them.

That could even help drive down the cost of electric vehicles, he added. “The actual cost of leasing a battery on wheels should go down if the full value of the battery is enhanced and reused,” he said. “Everybody wins when we do reuse in a smart fashion.”

B2U expects to add storage to a third solar facility near Palmdale next year. The facilities are meant to prove the idea works, after which B2U plans to sell its hardware and software to other storage-project developers.

At the moment, though, planned deployment of the technology is limited. B2U predicts only about 6 percent of decommissioned EV batteries in the U.S. will be used for grid-scale storage by 2027.

“People are skeptical, and they should be, because it’s hard to do reuse of batteries,” said Hall. “But we’ve got a robust data set that does prove reliability, performance, and profitability. We’re at a point where we really can scale this.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/ev-batteries-stationary-storage/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post ‘Retired’ Honda and Nissan EV batteries get second crack at life on California solar farm appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It was a closed dump,” said John Kinch, the solar company’s executive director. “There was grass and some flowers and weeds growing there. “

As part of the project, Kinch and his colleagues restored the land around the newly installed panels.

“We took all the junky grasses and things that were not native, got rid of it all and planted all native prairie and wildflower species to Michigan,” he said. “It’s a beautiful sight right now.”

But one day, Kinch was out there admiring the work, when a thought entered his mind: “Holy cow, when we’re done with this project, am I going to remove a thousand solar panels from a landfill and go put them underground in a landfill somewhere else?”

The world is seeing a huge push for solar power. But what happens when those panels wear out?

About 12 years ago, a woman named Annick Anctil was working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. She was researching the environmental impact of solar, and she became interested in making this renewable energy more sustainable.

At her next job, she decided to go further: “The first thing I did when I started in academia after my postdoc was to write a proposal about looking at the end of life of solar modules and the need for recycling and sustainability.”

But, she said, other people weren’t on board.

“The response to that proposal was just, ‘Well, that’s not a problem. And it’s not going to be a problem for a long time. So we’re not going to fund that,’” she recalled.

Anctil submitted another proposal a few years later, and was rejected again.

Around that same time, interest in solar waste was starting to pick up. The country was installing panels at record rates. And in 2016, the International Renewable Energy Agency released a big report, saying that in the next few decades the world could see up to 78 million metric tons of solar waste. To put that in perspective, that’s about 5 million school buses.

That estimate has fluctuated over the years as solar has advanced. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory now estimates waste could reach between 54 and 160 million metric tons.

By 2021, Anctil’s research was finally funded. And she’s been working on that ever since as an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University.

As soon as we start thinking about a product, we should think about what’s going to happen to them when we’re done with it.

 

– Annick Anctil, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University

“Looking at the waste part, for me, that’s part of the full life cycle of the solar panels,” she said. “As soon as we start thinking about a product, we should think about what’s going to happen to them when we’re done with it.”

To understand solar recycling, it’s helpful to know where the panels begin.

Most solar panels are made in China. Those blue rectangles that convert sunlight to electricity are covered in big sheets of high-quality glass and plastic polymer. Those rectangles are usually made of silicon, which is basically a pure form of sand. Panels can also contain copper, silver and other metals. An aluminum frame holds it together.

The solar life cycle is intertwined with human rights. There have been charges of abuses in mining and manufacturing for solar that gets shipped to countries including the United States. And a report by the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre said the U.S. is among the countries that have failed to provide environmental and labor safeguards for the workers doing the mining, allegedly leading to a slew of violations, like polluting drinking water.

Last year, Reuters reported that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol had seized solar equipment shipments because of concerns about ties to slave labor in Uyghur detention camps in northern China.

“There’s a lot of illegal mining,” said Anctil, who co-authored a Science Direct report on the carbon footprint of silicon production last year. “There’s also concern that some country might import high quality sand from another country using illegal mining.”

Most solar has been installed in the last decade, and that pace is expected to continue, as it becomes cheaper due to federal incentives, new technology and higher demand. Many of those panels are meant to last for at least 25 to 30 years, and could produce power for much longer. Eventually, that will pile up and we’ll need to dispose of them.

But there are no federal requirements for recycling solar panels, and states have different regulations for what to do with them. Panels can also contain small amounts of heavy metals like lead, which makes getting rid of them more complicated. The vast majority of panels are thrown away in landfills — only about 10 percent are recycled. And people who are recycling are dealing with a patchwork system with a lot of organizations.

Solar recycling companies are part of that configuration. Some are in the Great Lakes region, but panels are also shipped to big facilities thousands of miles away.

Jesse Simons helped found the California recycling company Solarcycle last year, and is the company’s chief commercial officer. He said the first step is sending out a team to determine whether panels can be reused instead of recycled at their facility in Texas.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/where-go-solar-panels-when-they-die/.

It was made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan. 

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Solar energy is booming. What happens when the panels die? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Specifically, there is a real concern among some in the party and the general public that industrial solar will displace farming and raise food prices as well as create end-of-life problems with potentially abandoned equipment.

Luckily, we can have our cake and eat it too, with a new concept of agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics is the simultaneous placement of food crops and solar photovoltaic systems that produce electricity directly from sunlight — while also producing a beneficial micro climate. Covering crops with solar panels may not seem intuitive, however, dozens of studies from all over the world have shown that many crop yields increase when they are partially shaded from solar panels.

This is good news for everyone, but especially for Alberta’s ruling Conservatives, as it provides a seemingly simple solution to a potentially complicated land-use debate between agriculture and energy generation within the province.

Alberta and energy

Alberta’s energy portfolio is changing rapidly. Low-cost solar energy is now growing so fast as to be a “gold rush” in Alberta.

In fact, much to Ontario’s shame, Alberta has taken on the leadership role in solar development in Canada, generating millions of solar dollars and creating thousands of solar jobs for Alberta’s energy workers.

Solar companies have grown so fast precisely because there is profit in offsetting costly fossil-fuel electricity. However, many in Alberta are worried that this new boom will lead to higher food costs, scarred landscapes and a repeat of costs from cleaning up after the oil and gas industry.

This particular land-use conflict between solar and agriculture has been a concern for solar researchers like myself for some time. However, our research in the United States has shown that agrivoltaics provide higher economic productivity, energy and food yields. So much so that the U.S. Department of Energy is now investing millions of dollars to ensure America’s dominance in the field.

One of the studies in the U.S., for example, observed pepper production shoot up by more than 200 per cent while other crops like wheat in Germany were more reserved with a few per cent increase — but they still produced more wheat.

Not surprisingly, agrivoltaics is slated to grow to a $9.3 billion market by 2031.

Agrivoltaics in Canada

Agrivoltaics is happening right here in Canada already (mostly with sheep grazing between panels on marginal land). Last year, we held the first agrivoltaics conference anywhere in North America at the Ivey Business School.

The trade group made up of farmers and solar companies called Agrivoltaics Canada has formed because agrivoltaic farming can help meet Canada’s food and energy needs all the while getting rid of our fossil fuel reliance and greenhouse gas emissions (and the associated emissions liabilities).

Agrivoltaics will allow Alberta’s farmers to keep farming, make more money, drop energy costs, and help protect the environment for all of our children. To take advantage of all the profit that agrivoltaics represents for the province, our team completed a study that showed the changes to Alberta’s regulations would actually need to be relatively modest.

The simple trick is to install solar systems that enable conventional farming, so farmers do not need to change anything. By spacing solar rows out far enough that combines/tractors can drive between them using vertical racks or tracker systems, agrivoltaics are out of the way when the farmer needs to farm. We did a study that looked specifically at Alberta’s agrivoltaic potential, which was second only to Saskatchewan in Canada.

Moving forward together

Agrivoltaics really has broad appeal. Farmers love it as it increases yields and provides steady incomes and so do solar developers and environmentalists. Even most Americans support solar development when agrivoltaics protects farm jobs. It is thus not surprising that agrivoltaics is exploding on the world market.

Eighty-nine per cent of Alberta’s electricity came from fossil fuels, yet we published an article this year that showed that agrivoltaics on just one per cent of the current agricultural land would eliminate the carbon emissions entirely. Less than one per cent of Alberta’s farm land dedicated to agrivoltaics, cuts all harmful emissions from Alberta’s electricity sector while making more food.

This is a win-win for the farmers, and consumers alike. As Alberta’s Conservatives are now able to lift the renewable energy ban knowing that the environment and the food system will be protected, they should ensure that large-scale solar in the province is encouraged to be agrivoltaic. Then all of us, regardless of party, can enjoy the conserved beauty of nature, lower-cost electricity and more food produced per acre. Whether or not this will result in lower costs at the grocery store checkout is a question yet to be answered — but we can hope.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Joshua M. Pearce is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation and Professor, Western University.

The post ‘Agrivoltaics’ could launch solar revolution that Conservatives love appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In a few billion years, the sun will begin turning into a red giant, which will make Earth uninhabitable, but in the meantime, solar technology is getting cheaper and more efficient every year and bringing more and more jobs along with it.

Here are eight reasons why solar is a great long-term investment.

1. It’s an essential climate solution for the new industrial age

Unlike oil, solar power doesn’t create smog, devastating spills and war. In fact, the Ukraine war and bans on Russian fossil fuels are propelling the world toward greater use of solar and other renewables, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of a solar energy system are 25 to 100 times less than they are for fracked gas, which produces 325 grams of GHGs per kilowatt-hour (kWh) from burning the gas, plus all the methane emissions that escape during fracking. The energy return on investment of a solar power system is such that over its life it will produce nine to 10 times more energy than is needed to make it.

2. It’s on a roll

In 2020,  the global production of solar PV energy increased by 22%, mostly in China, Europe and North America. If this acceleration continues, by mid-century it could provide a quarter of the world’s electricity, becoming the second largest source after wind. That acceleration is driven by the falling price, increasing efficiency and a better return on investment. In 2010, the levelized cost of utility-scale solar PV was 38 cents/kWh. Natural gas, by contrast, currently costs 27 cents/kWh due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Australia, where solar costs 3.2 cents/kWh, the Renewable Energy Agency wants to lower it to 1.5 cents by 2030.

3. It’s a safe investment

If you live in Ontario, a 4-kW rooftop system will cost you $2.50 a watt, or $10,000, and generate 4,664 kWh a year, about half of the average household use. (In New York, a similar 4 kW system will cost you US$3.21/watt, or $9,500 after the federal tax credit.) Over 30 years, your system will lose efficiency at 1% a year, so it will generate 120,000 kWh, costing you an average 8.3 cents/kWh (all numbers are for Ontario). Compared to grid electricity at 14 cents/kWh, rising by perhaps 2% a year, each solar kilowatt-hour will save you six cents now, rising to 17 cents in 30 years, or an average of 11.5 cents/kWh, totalling an average of $460 a year, earning an average 4.6% on your investment, if you did not need to borrow the capital. With PACE financing (property-assessed clean energy), you can borrow the money for a solar system with no down payment. The loan will be attached to your property title, and if you sell your home, it will be transferred to the new owner. Ottawa has a PACE financing program, but the rest of Canada is dragging its heels. American studies show that a home with a 6-kW system costing $15,000 will have an increased value at sale of between $22,000 and $30,000.

4. Community solar is an even better investment

A solar installation on top of a factory in Ontario will cost less per kilowatt-hour . A utility-scale solar plant in Ontario, costing $1.60/watt and generating power for 4.6 cents/kWh, will bring a 6.8% return on investment. Ordinary people can share the bounty and help solve the climate crisis by pooling their funds to invest in community-owned solar, including renters and people who live in high-rises, such as Solshare in B.C. and the Métis village of Green Lake, in Saskatchewan. In Germany, 100,000 people are buying power from a community solar co-operative such as Elektrizitätswerke Schönau, while similar initiatives are happening in Switzerland, Italy and France. In Brazil, where it’s known as “solar by subscription,” an investment of US$10,000 to $16,000 will generate solar energy to supply a family of four and take four to six years to pay for itself from savings on the electricity bill.

5. There are creative places to install it

In India, solar power is being used to cover canals. The panels are more efficient due to the cooling effect of water, and they reduce evaporation from the canals. In various countries, “floating solar” is being installed on hydro reservoirs, with production estimated to reach 10 gigawatts (GW) by 2025.

In France, the government is requiring all larger parking lots to be covered with solar systems within five years, and farmers are installing them suspended on cables above their crops. The panels follow the path of the sun to maximize solar gain. They can shift vertically to let the rain pass through and move horizontally to limit damage from a hailstorm, or to make the soil temperature rise or fall. In Turkey, the soccer club Galatasaray installed a 4.2-megawatt (MW) system with 10,400 panels on the roof of its stadium. It saved around €385,000 between January and August 2022, when grid electricity costs rose due to the war in Ukraine. Plans to build solar farms on land devastated by Turkey’s open-cast coal mines could generate power for seven million people.

Solar panels are coming to cars, too. Putting solar on the roof of an EV can generate around 10% of the power it uses. The American company Aptera is taking orders for a two-seater solar EV with a 1,000-mile range that can do 40 miles a day on sunlight. Students in Holland have built a solar-powered camper van that does 700 kilometres a day on sunlight.

6. It provides more jobs for women

The IEA recently declared that the world was entering the “dawn of a new industrial age” and estimated that jobs in clean-energy manufacturing will grow to 14 million (from six million) by 2030.

Globally, the solar industry employs 4.3 million people, 40% of whom are women. While this still isn’t enough, only 22% of workers employed in oil and gas are women, and only 21% in wind energy. The solar workforce breaks down to 47% women in manufacturing, 39% in service provision, 37% in development, but only 12% in installation, where men from the construction industry still rule the solar roost. The Florida company Women in Solar, the American organization Solwomen, and Solar Energy International’s Women in Solar Power program are working to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive solar workforce.

7. It works well in remote communities

In Inuvik, the Indigenous-owned and operated Nihtat Energy is developing a 1 MW solar farm that will generate 1,435 MWh a year while reducing the risks from ocean-shipped diesel, and the GHGs and air pollution caused by burning it. In Fort Severn, Ontario – 850 kilometres north of Thunder Bay – the Cree First Nation has built a 300 kW solar farm, permitting a 20% reduction in their use of flown-in diesel, saving up to $360,000 a year. As a bonus, when sunlight is reflected off adjacent snow, the yield from a solar panel can increase by as much as 50%, as measured in winter on a solar system in the District of Highlands in B.C., near Victoria.

8. We can regulate our way to solar success

The European Union once bought as much as 40% of its gas from Russia, at a cost of more than US$110 million a day. In response to the invasion of Ukraine, the EU is speeding up its energy transition, requiring that solar panels be installed on all new buildings by 2029 – commercial, public and residential. Its goal is to install 20 GW of solar PV by 2025 and 60 GW by 2030, making it the largest electricity source in Europe, with more than half coming from rooftops.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, every province that generates coal- or gas-fired electricity should make PACE financing available to everyone and require solar rooftops on every new building, and on every large car park, starting in 2024. Governments could create a 100% solar tax rebate in those provinces to encourage owners. The price is right, the need is great, the time is now to regulate.

The post 8 reasons why solar power is a good investment appeared first on Corporate Knights.