Last week was a good one for the solar and renewable energy industries. For instance, The Solar Foundation announced that 2 percent of all new jobs in the country were in the solar industry. That growth comes at the same time as US consumers are seeing the lowest energy costs ever, thanks to renewables.

DTE Energy has launched MIGreenPower, an opportunity for customers to buy more of their power from wind and solar farms, which the utility called: “two of the most affordable clean energy sources available.” The utility is offering the program to businesses, those in condos or apartments, and as an alternative to people installing solar rooftops while still giving them options. 

Rooftop solar power is taking hold in many states, often to the frustration of utilities that complain that rooftop solar customers aren’t paying their fair share of the grid’s use, particularly because they put energy back on the grid. This is leading to new and more nuanced discussions, policy actions and regulations in states where rooftop solar is well established, liked Arizona and those states just wading into the quagmire of solar policy, like Arkansas. 

Just a handful of residential solar companies have reached a point where they are able to bundle their residential solar loans and sell them as securities. With its $139 million, A-rated Mosaic Solar Loans 2017-1 transaction, Mosaic is the latest. 

The environment and renewable energy have made strong progress in last decade or so—with renewable energy on the rise and emissions down in the US—all while reducing energy costs. But it appears Republicans and the Administration would like to reverse that progress. 

In 2016 less than 4 percent of consumers’ spending was used to pay for energy, a record low for the country, thanks to energy efficiency, renewable energy and natural gas. That’s according to the  2017 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, which found retail electric prices fell 2.2 percent from 2015. The report was released today (Feb. 8) by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The company produced the report, the fifth annual, for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE).

Hold on to your hats, a 9 MW wind turbine off the shores of Denmark produced 216,000 kWhs in 24 hours—enough energy to power a US home for 20 years, or roughly 7,300 US homes for one day! The turbine in question is a Vestas V164 prototype that was upgraded from an 8 MW wind turbine to one capable of producing 9MWs by MHI Vestas Offshore, a partnership of Vestas and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. 

In its most stunning National Solar Jobs Census yet, The Solar Foundation found that solar power accounted 1 of every 50 new jobs in the US in 2016. The report found that last year the solar industry added more than 51,000 jobs reaching a total of 260,077 in 2016 and helps further cement the importance of the solar industry in the US economy. 

If big energy companies continue to undervalue the continuing falling costs of renewable energy and electric vehicles, they could face a world where the fossil fuel industry is dashed upon rocks of time. That’s according to a new report, Expect the Unexpected, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which found that growth in renewable energy and clean transportation technologies could halt growth in global demand for oil and coal as soon as 2020.

From virtually unheard of five years ago, community solar farms are becoming one of the most dominant forms of solar power in the US. A new report from GTM Research,  U.S. Community Solar Outlook 2017, anticipated that the US will install 410 megawatts of community solar farms in 2017, up from 218 MWs in 2016.