Million solar roofs6/30/2023 ![]() ![]() As predicted, costs had fallen, too: the cost of residential solar energy installations declined by 25% from 2007 levels. By that point – after just five years – the Million Solar Roofs program had helped California install more solar electric generation capacity than all but five nations. In 2011, Frontier Group’s Travis Madsen and Environment California Research & Policy Center’s Michelle Kinman and Bernadette Del Chiaro released Building a Brighter Future: California’s Progress Toward a Million Solar Roofs, celebrating the milestone of more than 1,000 megawatts of rooftop solar installations. Within a few years, it was clear that the concept behind the Million Solar Roofs program was sound – costs dropped as the market grew. Arnold Schwarzenegger and supported by our partners at Environment California, became law in 2006, setting a goal of installing 3 gigawatts of rooftop solar – enough to power 1 million homes – throughout the state within a decade. The Million Solar Roofs Initiative, championed by Gov. How we expected the Million Solar Roofs Initiative to work Our 2005 report Bringing Solar to Scale: California’s Opportunity to Create a Thriving, Self-Sustaining Residential Solar Market by Dave Algoso and Mary Braun, along with Bernadette Del Chiaro of Environment California Research & Policy Center, argued that by investing in rooftop solar energy for a few years, California could meaningfully reduce costs and help create the foundation of a self-sustaining solar market. With the right incentives and targets, the Golden State had the potential to make rooftop solar power a mainstream source of energy, lowering the cost along the way. One of California’s most important clean energy resources was on its rooftops. Working with CALPIRG and others, we made the case that within a decade, California could generate large amounts of energy from wind, solar and other clean, renewable sources. State leaders proposed increased investment in new natural gas-fired power plants, but we had a different vision, one with far more clean energy. It also set the stage for a clean energy revolution in California. The crisis bankrupted a utility and cost the state $40 billion in energy costs. Enron and other energy firms exploited California’s deregulated electricity market to create artificial shortages and jack up prices, resulting in rolling blackouts. In the winter of 2000-2001, millions of California homes went dark. ![]()
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