Sunny California is prime real estate for solar energy, and a number of California rebates make home solar systems highly affordable for Golden State residents. The only downside to these programs is that some have limited funding. Homeowners interested in solar panels will want to act soon to take full advantage of all the savings. (more…)

San Jose added more residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems last year than any other city in California, according to the latest PV Solar Report, a quarterly analysis conducted by solar company SunRun.

San Jose’s number of home solar systems in 2011 was up 45.4% from just the year before, a dramatic (more…)

California regulators are expected to pass new rules today requiring that 15 percent of all new cars sold by 2025 be powered by electricity, hydrogen, or other reduced-emission sources.

The new rules proposed by the California Air Resources Board would also require a 75-percent (more…)

This week our friends at Environment California released a new report ranking California cities by the amount of solar they’ve installed. The good news?

“From Fresno to San Francisco and Clovis to Culver City, solar power is becoming a mainstream technology throughout California,” said Michelle (more…)

Duke University researchers have predicted that climate change in California will result in a declining percentage of rangeland. Such a change will have widespread impact on the state’s large cattle industry of California’s Central Valley. No matter if climate change will cause wetter or drier weather, available pasture will decline. Forage areas, known as one of (more…)

A series of recent policy-related developments within the biofuels industry may have set the stage for what could prove to be a significant shift in biofuel geopolitics over the next decade.

To recap: the European Court of Justice (ECJ) affirmed an earlier ruling that held the imposition of (more…)

For some, December probably meant eggnogs, football, relatives, etc. For the California solar industry, it meant a record month of rooftop, behind-the-meter solar. There were over 36 MW of customer-owned installations–the highest since the California Solar Initiative’s inception, and over 130 MW worth of incentive applications. Details on the California Solar (more…)

Vote Solar staff attended meetings last week with staff of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the nation’s largest publicly-owned utility, serving about 10% of California’s electrical load. California law now requires munis like LADWP to get 33% of their power mix from renewables by 2020, (more…)

As the investigation of the federal government loan guarantee to now bankrupt Solyndra of Fremont, California lingers, with critics looking for the company to come clean, it is may seem odd that California’s solar industry is in a celebratory mood this month.

The fact is that California – the leading market for (more…)

Element Power, a company that develops renewable energy products, has just finalized its plans for a hybrid solar-wind farm. The Wildflower Renewable Energy Farm Project will be located in California’s Antelope Valley. The Antelope Valley, part of the Mojave Desert that lies in northern Los Angeles County, is (more…)