Cooler Planet looked at the solar photovoltaic (PV) installation data from the California Energy Commission and made it visual to show just how it is growing. A static view of their data is at the right, but go to the site and move the slider to see the growth from only 1,675 grid connected photovoltaic installations in 2002 to 29,628 installations in 2008. According to SolarBuzz,

In 2006, 112 megawatts of solar photovoltaics were installed in the US Grid Connect market, up from 80 megawatts in 2005. Demand was led once again by California, which accounted for 63% of the national market. Notwithstanding funding program bottlenecks, New Jersey saw very strong growth in 2006, representing 17% of the national market.

Why would California and New Jersey, with only 12% and 2.9% of U.S. population respectively, account for such a large fraction of PV installations? Perhaps incentive programs (most recently the California Solar Initiative and the New Jersey Clean Energy Rebate Program) and other policies are working.

Internationally, Germany (8.8— U.S. in 2006 MW installed) and Japan (2.6— U.S.) are the leaders in PV installations, with California a “distant third” according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Most places where PV is economic have some combination of the following (but usually not all):

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Those rabble-rousers at Greenpeace have done it again:

I had nothing to do with this! Here is the press release:

GREENPEACE TURNS NATION’S MOST ICONIC LANDMARK INTO MEMORIAL TO FAILED BUSH LEGACY ON CLIMATE

Bush Plan Portrayed as a Disaster on Eve of U.S-Led Climate Change Meeting

WASHINGTON– Responding to the Bush administration’s continued obstruction of international efforts to address global warming, Greenpeace activists turned one of the nation’s most iconic symbols into a memorial to Bush’s failed legacy on climate change. Greenpeace projected on the Washington Monument the message: U.S. Global Warming Plan: Hell and High Water accompanied by an image depicting rising sea levels at the base, a predicted consequence of global warming.

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I happen to be on an email list with one of the country’s leading systems thinkers: John Sterman, Director, MIT System Dynamics Group, Sloan School of Management. Part II will discuss the Group’s important contribution to demystifying the greatest single source of confusion about avoiding catastrophic climate change. But this post will give Sterman’s comment on the SOTU:

Bush’s SOTU reference to climate is small beer indeed. I think [Climate Progress] has it mostly right — it’s more delay and doubletalk. Yes, he dropped the sound science part (because the scientific case is now so clear he’d be a laughingstock), but the underlying policy hasn’t changed. It’s still about creating the potential, not doing anything, and, worse, still framed as “slow, stop, and eventually reverse” the growth of emissions. By phrasing in terms of emissions growth he can use words like slow and stop, which in fact mean emissions continue to grow (although not as fast). Emissions peak when the growth stops, and fall only when that growth is reversed. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise even if emissions peak and will peak only when emissions fall to CO2 removal, something like 50-80% below current levels by 2050; warming continues long after concentrations peak, and sea level rise and other impacts continue long after that. So the SOTU still reflects deliberate and careful use of language to make delay sound like action.

Precisely.

Part II is here.