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These New Renewable Energy Stats Will Blow Your Coal-Powered Mind

Clean technology took over in 2012. And it's still rolling.
This dude gets solar. Image: Nola

The last couple of days have brought a whirlwind of brain-busting news from the energy sector. And for once, most of it's good. No giant nuclear catastrophes, no new coal-gobbling gargantuans. Instead, we've got word of major milestones in worldwide solar and wind power expansion, landmarks in nationwide clean energy generation, and some rosy specs about the future of cleantech investment. If you put aside word of Japan's potentially climate-destroying methane hydrate discovery, it'd be enough to recover some of your no-doubt waning faith in humankind.

Almost. Over the last month or so, the flurry of news has come from industry reports, government studies, financial analysis, and blah, blah, blah. We just want a picture of how clean energy is progressing in a world owned by oil and coal, how cleantech is beating onward after a bad year. We want the stats. So here they are, pure and simple. This is renewable energy in 2013.

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According to a new report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association:

-16 million solar panels were installed in the United States in 2012

-There are now 3,133 megawatts of solar power installed in the U.S. That's enough to power nearly 3 million homes.

-The solar industry grew 76% in 2012 alone.

-The average cost of solar power fell 27%, from $4.10 per watt in 2011 to $3.01 per watt in 2012.

Wind is also killing it. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance:

-13 gigawatts of wind power was installed in 2012. 5 gigawatts was built in a single month, in Decemeber. That's another 10 million houses or so, running on clean energy.

-6% of the United States, in other words, is now running on wind power.

-The price of wind power has plummeted 21% since just 2010.

So how does all that stack up against dirty power? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shows us:

-Renewable energy made for nearly 50% of all new installed electricity generation in 2012, which is a major record. The other half was mostly natural gas, along with some coal.

-After being the nation's predominant source of energy for over a century, coal sunk to its lowest share ever last year. By the beginning of 2012, coal supplied only 36% of the nation's power—down from about half just years earlier.

All encouraging stats for those who would prefer that we generate our energy from clean, non-climate obliterating sources. But what of the future? Much of the boom has been driven by falling manufacturing and installation costs—China's solar panels are cheaper than ever, and more wind turbines means cheaper wind turbines. Yet cleantech investment stalled out some in 2012, flagging for the first time in three years. Then again, investment in everything stalled out some last year—cleantech kept pace with most other areas of investment, according to Clean Edge: Clean Energy Trends 2013:

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-Cleantech accounted for 20% of all venture capital investment in 2012.

-Investment in solar, wind, and biofuels is expected to double over the next ten years.

-By 2022, clean energy will be worth $426 billion worldwide: cleantech will be half-trillion dollar industry.

It all looks pretty good, and this is absolutely the direction we need to be heading if we hope to keep average global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius, as scientists and rational people everywhere urge we do. But it's still not enough. The planet is warming faster than even many scientists predicted: ice-free Arctic summers and epic 10-year droughts are right around the corner as it is.

So the U.S. must price carbon and shut down its nastiest coal plants. China and India have got to stop building new ones. Japan and Germany must not turn to coal, either. We've got to make sure government incentives for clean energy remain strong—in the U.S., many are set to expire at the end of the year. We've got to spend even more on energy research, direct even more resources towards international partnerships like the U.S.-China clean energy hubs. Finally, we can't get distracted by cheap natural gas—it's cleaner than coal, sure, but the already too-high carbon concentration of our atmosphere won't wait while we fool around with another carbon-based fuel.

Basically, we need all of the combined figures above. But even more of it. Faster.