OREANDA-NEWS. January 19, 2016. According to a recent article in Forbes, despite Congress extending the 30% solar investment tax credit (ITC), 2016 will still be a stellar year for solar projects in the U.S.

Although the tax credit extension is expected to push about 2 gigawatts (GWs) of solar installations to 2017, 9 to 11 GW in projects are still scheduled to be implemented in 2016. This is an impressive increase from 6 GW in 2014 and almost 7.5 GW in 2015.

And it is only looking up from there! The tax credit extension will actually help fuel the next phase of solar, driving growth into the 2020s.

“In short, the ITC extension is a game-changer and accelerates the timeline for the next stage of solar. We’ll hit nearly 100 gigawatts of cumulative solar by the end of the decade — after starting the decade with less than 2 gigawatts,” said MJ Shiao, GTM Research’s director of Solar Research, in a roundtable discussion following the tax-credit extension.

The Forbes article speculates the increase in solar installations will continue to be driven by the falling price of solar electricity, which GTM predicts will drop below \\$.04 per kilowatt hour over the next two years — cheaper than gas or coal.

Also, inexpensive utility-scale battery storage and the first plans for new carbon markets, which came out of the Clean Power Plan and Paris Agreement, will also help support solar and wind growth.

Check out the complete Forbes article for more details.

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This entry was posted on January 16, 2016 at 6:00 am and is filed under Renewables, Solar, Sustainability, Tax Incentives and Rebates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.