Our environment and solar power

Even though the U.S. is responsible for the largest share of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the country will not be able to take national legislative action on climate change anytime soon. The U.S. Congress seems content to let climate change languish as a priority.  As a result of this complacency around the globe, greenhouse gas pollution continues to rise and atmospheric concentrations have now reached 400 parts per million. Australia elected a climate skeptic as the prime minister who promptly repealed its carbon tax—and pollution has promptly soared this year. In fact, the world has dragged its feet long enough that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now suggests that methodologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will be necessary to prevent excessive global warming this century. Immediate action required to alleviate global warming. Drastic action on climate change is necessary and taking place in the U.S. “We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," Pres. Barack Obama noted back in June 2013. So his administration has moved forward without Congress as a result, through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan and the new pact to reduce pollution with China.

Clean Power Plants

More than a fifth of new, large power plants built in the U.S. in 2013 utilize sunlight to generate electricity. However, this does not include solar panels on people's rooftops, which added almost two gigawatts of capacity last year. Moreover, natural gas replaced coal as the largest source of new electricity generation. 
Although the U.S. is currently retiring more nuclear reactors than it is building, the same is not true in China. In addition to its 22 operating reactors, it has 26 under construction and plans for even more. That's because the Chinese leadership sees nuclear power as one of the key ways to reduce the country's coal burning, which is responsible both for its choking air pollution and swelling greenhouse gas emissions. The problem of storing nuclear waste has not been solved.
  
Local Action in favor of solar energy

In 2008 six states in the northeastern U.S. launched a regional effort to cap CO2 pollution from power plants in the region via the use of alternative sources and energy-efficiency programs. By 2014, the effort had grown to include nine states and had helped cut such greenhouse gas emissions in nearly half. In fact, the program has been so successful that the states agreed to lower the overall cap by an additional 45 percent starting this year. 

There has never been a better time to install a solar energy system!

If you want to move into the future and join the solar revolution, or if you want to find out what solar panels are right for you, go to HahaSmart.com and try our price checker tool. You can see how much a system will cost, and how much you can save over the next 
20 years. 

For more information relating to going solar, don't forget to visit our solar blog section for more handy guides and articles.