The State of Texas has a climate change denying Governor. The state is leading oil driller producing 5.7 million barrels of oil daily in the Permian Basin in 2023. Yet, at the same time, Texas has installed 15 gigawatts (15,000 Megawatts) of new solar capacity. More solar than the U.S. installed in 2019.

In 2023, as the solar boom accelerated, Texas produced more solar than all previous years. In 2023, Texas had invested almost $22 billion in solar, creating over 10,000 jobs. From 2024 to 2034, Ruby Red Texas is planning to lead the nation with 100 gigawatts (100,000 megawatts) of new solar capacity, a staggering amount.

As a solar developer, my design engineer tells me that licensing requirements in Texas are both straightforward and sensible. Texas is an energy supportive state. It’s a leader not only in solar but wind and EV growth. The solar boom is driven by the plunging costs of solar power and the weakness of the Texas power grid, which has been plagued by winter freeze problems and high grid prices with limited out of state interconnections. Solar is to continue growing fast under the Texas sun.

Meanwhile, Deep Blue MA has installed a grand total of 3.9 gigawatts (3,900 megawatts.) MA has only modest plans for increased solar development. MA has declared much of the state’s land forbidden for solar development for “ecological” reasons. MA commitment is much more focused on wind projects whose development moves with glacial speed facing ongoing opposition from fishers, shore dwellers and Donald Trump. MA has decided that nuclear plants are now considered ecological as green energy. Meanwhile, solar is a threat more dangerous than nukes. The State limiting and strangling solar. Towns permitted to block substantial solar development by themselves.

Red states powering the solar boom

The Niskanen Center reports that it is the Red States driving the solar and wind boom. It’s not just Texas in the lead.

  • The 5 states with leading utility solar capacity are (alphabetically): California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas.

  • The 5 states with highest ratio of solar generation to electric sales: Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah

  • The 5 States with highest wind generation ratio to electric sales; Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wyoming

  • The 5 states with highest wind capacity: Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas

Red states making up for lost time

Many Red States had been late for the solar and wind party. Florida, the Sunshine State, for example, had been notorious for a lack of solar development.

But by 2023 Florida was aggressively installing solar,17,808 gigawatt hours (17,808,000 megawatt hours) an increase from 361 megawatt hours in 2014.

Florida is now installing more solar than California and Texas also one of the fastest growing residential solar markets nationally.The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) projects that Florida will install nearly 5.5 gigawatts of solar capacity over the next five years.

As a good example of the usefulness of solar in Florida, the solar powered community, the Babcock Ranch also successfully designed to resist strong hurricane force wind and floods. Local building codes prevented all but minor hurricane wind and flood damage and channeling heavy rain down pours into nearby lakes.

Reducing green house gas emissions

The rapid growth of solar and wind in many red states unfortunately has not led to a reduction of greenhouse gases as a matter of policy. Utility natural gas is generally the first place for expansion to meet new utility loads. California, for example, is choosing solar plus large amounts of energy storage to replace natural gas peaking plants. Solar plus energy storage is cheaper and environmental friendlier than NG.

New developments in storage, like the Form Energy iron-air flow batteries, will replace lithium in fixed storage batteries where weight and size is not a major issue. Lithium is still useful for things like EVs where weight matters. But new and far less expensive technology like sodium ion batteries are both far cheaper than lithium and far safer. And beyond sodium-ion storage are solid state batteries becoming commercialized in the next few years. Solid state will represent a further quantum leap in battery tech.

Solid state batteries use solid electrolytes such as inorganic oxides and sulfides, or solid polymer salts and gel polymers. Solid electrolytes reduce dendrite structures that cause battery failure, as well as having lower fire risk, higher energy density, and faster charging.

There is ongoing and ceaseless development in solar, wind, and batteries that are reducing costs, improving efficiency, and using cheaper, more common, and less toxic materials. There is a global welter of engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, scholars, universities, corporations and their cohorts working as hard and as fast as they can to transform the industrial word toward ecological ends.

In the long run there will be a fundamental change from fossil fuels and nuclear to renewable energy for reasons of cost, utility, ecological and social benefit. But time is not on our side to the extent that businesses, banks and politician delay the renewable transformation. The forces of global warming push us toward ecological catastrophe. Geophysical forces unleashed by climate change may persist for 170,000 thousand years like the Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55 million years ago. A 6 degree C temperature increase was unleashed by enormous volcanism that flipped the global temperature balance. This melted all the ice, led to mass ocean extinction, global flooding and turned that Arctic into warm lake. This thermal maximum persisted until huge matt of small plants reduced carbon to normal levels and the temperate dropped.

What’s a necessity today is more than building solar, but a real yearly percentage reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This is a matter of humanity's choice while we still have time to prevent ecological catastrophe. We can embrace a journey of ecological transformation or watch hell on earth unleashed as we watch Los Angeles burn. What the future holds is up to all of us, individually and collectively.

We face the most crucial choice for the health of all life on earth. As we come closer to the brink of self-destruction, we can pretend this is not happening as global temperature continues to rise and ecological consequences become daily, senseless, and brutal suffering. Now is the time for global healing while all of us still have a chance.