Forget Fracking: 2012 Was A Powerful Year For Renewables

Natural gas may have reshaped the domestic energy market in 2012, lowering energy prices and marginalizing the coal industry, but America's shale boom hasn't undermined renewables.In fact, while analysts were paying attention to fracking this year, a record number of solar panels were being slapped on roofs — enough to produce 3.2 gigawatts of electricity.That sounds like a lot, but solar is still providing just .05 percent of the country's total energy. Still, the solar industry keeps expanding. Roan Resh, who heads the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that's because solar panels are becoming cheaper to make and to install."Just to give you perspective," Resh said, "in Washington, D.C., where I live, when I installed solar on my house six years ago, the average install cost was about $14 a watt. Today it's about $4 a watt."
So if you're installing solar panels, business is good. But there's a flip side to that equation. Prices are low because of a global manufacturing glut. Solar manufacturers have the capacity to produce way more panels than consumers are asking for right now, and many panel producers are struggling.The bulk of solar growth is happening at businesses; companies are installing panels on roofs so that they don't have to buy as much energy from the grid. State and federal policies are making that an easy decision for companies. Businesses who install panels can qualify for grants and tax breaks, and laws in 38 states require a certain amount of electricity to be generated by solar, wind and other renewable sources.Wind was up this year, too.Solar Light Post Caps Make a Big Difference.The federal Energy Information Administration says the industry could add 1.2 gigawatts of capacity this year. Wind only provides a small portion of domestic power, about 3 percent.
Wind is on a strong streak with consumers as well, says Rob Gramlich, a vice president at the American Wind Energy Association. "Where we were serving the equivalent of 6 million homes at the end of 2008, we're serving 13 million today," he says.In three of the last five years, wind has been the fastest-growing energy sector. That was the case in 2012, but this year's totals leave a bit of a false impression. There's been a flurry of activity in December, and in fact more than half of new wind farms will likely come online this month."The single-most reason for that is the tax support system which we all rely upon is expiring at year-end," explains Jim Spencer, the president and CEO of New York-based EverPower, which runs wind farms in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and California. "We really accelerated projects that might otherwise have been built next year."