Solar Booming Nationwide (so why not here?)

While the Wall Street Journal says biomass is a money-losing proposition, Stacy Feldman notes in Solve Climate News that U.S. Solar Market Booms, With Utility-Scale Projects Leading the Way:
America could add 10 gigawatts of solar power every year by 2015, enough to power 2 million new homes annually, industry and market analysts have claimed in a new report.

The Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm, said the figures represent a tenfold surge compared to 2010, which is on track to set its own record.

A full gigawatt of solar may get installed this year for the first time, the report, U.S. Solar Market Insight, said—a roughly 150 percent leap from the 441 megawatts added last year.

One factor driving the boom is the ramp-up in large utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) setups.

We’d already heard from the director of the U.S. DoE’s National Center for Photovoltaics that:

“The solar market is the fastest-growing market worldwide, bar none.”
He said that in Buffalo, where solar business is booming, a thousand miles north of here.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles west of here, in Austin, Texas:

Investment firm PowerFin Partners LLC is offering to finance more than $100 million worth of commercial and utility-scale solar projects in the US and Canada.

A bit closer, Houston has successfully put solar on rooftops and refitted for efficiency and conservation inside houses. Houston, which has less solar energy on average than Lowndes County does.

Somebody remind me why the local Industrial Authority is promoting a money-losing polluting biomass plant when it could be putting in an industrial-grade money-making no-fuel no-emission solar plant? Or why the local municipal governments and school boards aren’t leading the way with solar on their rooftops and efficiency inside?

-jsq