US Solar Power Booms Under Biden – CleanTechnica

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One of the core areas of focus of the Biden–Harris administration has been growing cleantech — getting more solar power plants build, getting more solar panel factories up and running in the United States, installing more EV chargers, selling more electric cars and trucks, getting offshore wind power going in the country, and much, much more. A report published today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie highlights how effective the administration has been in advancing solar power in the States, and especially solar panel production capacity.

The big headline: solar panel production capacity has almost quadrupled in the last two years, since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in mid 2022. Solar module production capacity has risen above 31 gigawatts (GW) a year.

Furthermore, solar power absolutely dominates new electricity generation capacity in the country. A whopping 9.4 GW of new solar power capacity were installed just in the second quarter.

Looking across those two years since the IRA was passed, the US has installed an extra 75 GW of electricity generation capacity from solar power. The shocker: that’s 36% of all the solar power installed in the country to date!

For those who think there’s not much of a difference between Democrats in power and Republicans in full power, it’s important to recognize that’s not the case. The IRA was passed when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House for a short time. The IRA provides massive support to the solar power industry. Without Democrats in power for those two years, there would be no IRA. Without the IRA, there’d be a lot less solar in the country and a lot less solar module production. It’s really that simple. The Republican Party is still heavily under the control of fossil fuel industries, all of which donate a lot of money to Republican political campaigns and organizations.

Since the IRA was passed, almost 1.5 million American homes have gotten solar panels installed on their roofs. It’s a staggering growth rate and has been creating countless jobs and economic activity in the land of stars and stripes.

“The solar and storage industry is turning federal clean energy policies into action by rapidly creating jobs and powering economic growth in all 50 states, particularly in battleground states like Arizona, Nevada and Georgia,” said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. “We are now manufacturing historic amounts of solar energy in America, and soon, we will have enough domestic module production to supply nearly all U.S. demand for years to come.”

We’ll be covering more details of the new SEIA and Wood Mackenzie report in the coming days, as well as how US policy has affected the solar industry, but it’s interesting how much SEIA is highlighting the help the IRA has provided the industry, and been willing to get a little political in an election year. Organizations like SEIA typically prefer to stay politically neutral, and that has been the organization’s tendency. However, given how much the IRA and the Biden–Harris administration have helped the US solar industry to grow, it seems SEIA and Wood Mackenzie felt compelled to highlight these benefits for more to understand.

All of this growth, by the way, is despite challenges to solar power growth in California as well as the decelerant known as high interest rates. The solar industry is expecting continued growth in the sector, and, by 2029, SEIA and Wood Mackenzie expect we’ll reach 440 GW of installed solar power capacity, double today’s total US solar power capacity.