Last week (June 3) Business Insider published an article by Rob Wile titled “How Solar Will Destroy The Power Companies, In 5 Easy Steps.” Yesterday American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) Executive Director Steven Nadel came out with a sort of response in a blog “Utilities are frightened of a 'death spiral.' They shouldn’t be.” 

One of the world’s most respected investors “The Oracle of Omaha”, Warren Buffett, appears ready to double down on his investments in the wind and solar industries, reports are saying. Through Berkshire Hathaway and its companies like MidAmerican Energy, Buffett has already directed $15 billion in wind and solar power investments, supporting some iconic projects like the online 290 megawatt Agua Caliente project, which it co-owns with NRG Energy, and the 579 megawatt Solar Star projects, which are partly online even as construction continues. 

A new report out from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today (June 9) finds that utility-scale concentrated solar projects add up to 6 cents per kilowatt hour in value, particularly in CSP systems with energy storage. The added value comes because the systems can produce electricity much more like a conventional generator system.

Amazing, right? Just about seven years ago less than 10 gigawatts of solar was installed worldwide. Now it’s booming with more than 150 gigawatts installed and operational, according to NPD Solarbuzz Quarterly’s latest figures. 

Soon the world’s skies will know another traveler—Solar Impulse 2, the first plane designed to fly across the world for days at a time using only the power of the sun. Earlier this week the plane, like a giant Estes Glider, took its first flight in Switzerland ahead of the team’s plans to fly around the globe in 2015. 

Today Sungveity announced that it partnered with E.ON in Amsterdam to expand its business model in the Netherlands on a co-branded basis before expanding into other countries. 

Today the U.S. Commerce Department immediately imposed countervailing duty tariffs on solar panels made in China ranging from 18.56 percent to 35.21 percent, including on PV panels made in t Taiwan with Chinese parts. The move could increase the cost of solar power in the U.S. since China is the largest manufacturing of solar panels. 

It's a big “Yes!” for the environment, clean energy and, well, everyone who will hopefully soon be able to breath easier. Yesterday morning (June 2) the Environmental Protection Agency announced sweeping new plans designed to reduce the amount of air pollution spewing from that nation’s roughly 600 coal-fired power plants and other fossil-fuel based power plants, which currently produce roughly 40 percent on the U.S.’s carbon pollution. The rules would reduce U.S. carbon pollution to 30 percent of what it was in 2005 by 2030. 

On the heels of the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA’s) and GTM Research’s release of the first quarter results for new solar installations across the U.S. the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a new report that looks at how rooftop solar is growing in markets that are gaining steam. In “Rooftop Solar Adoption in Emerging Residential Markets” CAP explores the residential solar markets in Maryland, Massachusetts and New York. These are states with quickly growing residential solar markets that are starting to grow despite being much smaller markets than Arizona, California and New Jersey, which boast the largest shares of residents with solar panels.

Fully 232 megawatts of residential PV were installed in the first three months of 2014 compared to 225 megawatts of commercial solar installed in the same period. It’s the first time that’s ever happened in the U.S. It’s even more significant because the report stated that more than one third of residential PV installations came online without any state incentives.