"To the south of the Monte Cristo mountain range and west of Paymaster Canyon, a vast stretch of the Nevada desert has attracted modern-day prospectors chasing one of 21st-century America's greatest investment booms. Solar power developers want to cover an area larger than Washington, DC, with silicon panels and batteries, converting sunlight into electricity that will power air conditioners in sweltering Las Vegas along with millions of other homes and businesses."
"China's vast production of solar panels and batteries has also pushed down the prices of renewables hardware for everyone else, meaning it has "become very difficult to make any other choice in some places," according to Heymi Bahar, senior analyst at the International Energy Agency. In 2010, the IEA estimated that there would be 410 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels installed around the world by 2035. There is already more than four times that capacity, with about half of it in China."
Falling costs of solar panels and batteries and large-scale manufacturing have made solar increasingly cost-competitive globally. In Nevada, developers planned a vast solar-and-battery complex but federal land managers revoked collective approval for the Esmeralda 7 projects, forcing individual reapplications and slowing development. China is rapidly scaling solar on the Tibetan Plateau and aims to double solar and wind capacity over the next decade. Massive Chinese production has driven down hardware prices worldwide, leading to far higher installed capacity than earlier IEA forecasts, with about half of current global solar capacity located in China. Many countries, including petrostates, are adopting solar.
Read at Ars Technica
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