The renewable energy industries have remained strong despite continued efforts from the Trump Administration to push for coal and fossil fuels. That’s despite the fact that renewable energy is cheaper, cleaner and more popular than ever, and Trump’s efforts seem to fight a tide of cheaper energy.

Consolidated Edison (Con Edison) has completed the purchase of a Sempra Energy subsidiary and gained 980 megawatts of renewable energy projects, bringing its total to 2,600 MWs of solar farms across 17 states. The company said that makes it the second largest solar energy producer in the US. 

The tariffs on imported solar panels imposed by President Donald Trump (R) had a big impact on the solar industry in the latest quarter, as overall solar installations fell during the quarter. That’s according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report for Q3 of 2018, which found that the US installed 1.7 gigawatts (GWs) of solar PV in the quarter, a 15 percent compared to the same quarter in 2017 and a 20 percent decrease from the previous quarter.

While President Trump’s Administration was proposing coal power at COP24, the United Nation’s climate change conference, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) revealed that the Energy Department is currently sitting on $600 million in congressionally approved clean energy funding for 2018. 

President Donald Trump’s (R) Administration was at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) where it was pushing for coal-fired power, but fewer people are buying it. In fact a global group of 415 investors managing $32 trillion in assets called on governments to end coal energy and tax carbon.

All in all, it was a good week for renewable energy. Already 35 percent of the world’s existing coal-fired power plants could be replaced with renewable energy for less money, according to one new report. Almost echoing the report’s sentiment Xcel Energy announced that it is the first major, multi-state utility committing to carbon free energy in the US. Another study found that installing solar on all new US homes could triple the amount of solar installed in the country.

The largest solar development announced to date in Georgia will provide 200 megawatts (MWs) of energy to power Facebook’s Newton Data Center. The datacenter will be 100 percent powered by three new solar projects being built for the Walton Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) by Silicon Ranch and Strata Solar. 

As California formally adopts rules requiring all new homes to have solar power starting in 2020, Environment America introduced a new report showing that if the country adopted similar requirements, the US could triple the amount of solar it has installed already. In just six years, the report found, the US could install as much solar on new homes as it has installed across the country.

Utilities are one of the main sources of pollution in the US and while many are greening their energy supply, they’re still using fossil fuels. That may be changing and multi-state utility Xcel Energy is leading that charge. Yesterday (Dec. 4) it announced that it will reduce emissions by 80 percent in the next decade and produce 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050 as it moves to wind and solar power.

A deep study of the world’s coal-fired power plants finds that the electric generating technology of yesteryear is increasingly more costly than wind and solar power. The new study from Carbon Tracker analyzed the profitability of 6,685 coal plants worldwide and found that 42 percent of them are already operating a loss and it would be cheaper to replace 35 percent of coal plants with renewable energy.