Name: Report ranks Virginia fourth among states for 2020 solar installations - Virginia Mercury
Brand: virginiamercury.com
SKU: virginiamercury-com-171
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Report ranks Virginia fourth among states for 2020 solar installations - Virginia Mercury

preview

0:58BriefDominion Energy’s Whitehouse solar farm in Louisa County generates 20 megawatts on a 250 acre site. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is imposing more stringent stormwater regulations for solar development. (Dominion Energy)Xby Sarah Vogelsong, March 16, 2021by Sarah Vogelsong, March 16, 2021Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia topped almost other states in solar installations in 2020, ranking fourth behind only California, Texas and Florida.&nbsp;According to findings from the analysis released Tuesday by the Solar Energy Industries Association and energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, more than 1.4 gigawatts of solar were installed in Virginia last year. For comparison, that’s slightly more output than , which began service in April 2016 and powers approximately 340,000 homes.&nbsp;Virginia’s ranking jumped 15 places in the Wood Mackenzie/SEIA analysis between 2019 and 2020, with installations increasing by a factor of more than 10.&nbsp;Most of the state’s solar growth — just over 1.3 gigawatts of capacity — came from large-scale solar farms.&nbsp;“Virginia saw incredible growth in the utility-scale sector in 2020, which accounted for the majority of its new capacity additions last year,” said Will Giese, SEIA’s Southeast policy lead, in an email. “Corporate procurement was a major driver of that growth.”&nbsp;Giese said it was “a bit too early” to see the effects of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a landmark piece of environmental legislation committing the state to a carbon-free electric grid by 2050 that passed the General Assembly in 2020.&nbsp;However, he added, “Virginia is projected to see similarly strong growth in its solar market over the next decade.”&nbsp;Solar has been on the rise nationwide, especially as concerns about climate change increase. In 2019, for the first time in more than 130 years. Tuesday’s Wood Mackenzie/SEIA report forecast that “the next decade will see the total operating solar fleet more than quadruple.” By 2030, said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper in a press release, “the equivalent of one in eight American homes will have solar.”&nbsp;Earlier this year the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that together, added in 2021.is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: . Follow Virginia Mercury on and .Copy to clipboard1RepublishOur stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.

0:58BriefDominion Energy’s Whitehouse solar farm in Louisa County generates 20 megawatts on a 250 acre site. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is imposing more stringent stormwater regulations for solar development. (Dominion Energy)Xby Sarah Vogelsong, March 16, 2021by Sarah Vogelsong, March 16, 2021Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginia topped almost other states in solar installations in 2020, ranking fourth behind only California, Texas and Florida.&nbsp;According to findings from the analysis released Tuesday by the Solar Energy Industries Association and energy...

public

Sarah Vogelsong

virginiamercury.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

Report ranks Virginia fourth among states for 2020 solar installations - Virginia Mercury

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS