Bernie Sanders:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate’s green jobs subcommittee, today introduced legislation with nine cosponsors to encourage the installation of 10 million solar systems on the rooftops of homes and businesses over the next decade.

“At a time when we spend $350 billion importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries every year, the United States must move away from foreign oil to energy independence,” Sanders said. “A dramatic expansion of solar power is a clean and economical way to help break our dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, improve our geopolitical position, and create good-paying green jobs.”

Here is the legislation:

END10088 –

I don’t like the looks of this:

Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy (DUK), wants to own every piece of the smart grid, all the way down to the energy portals in customers’ homes and the solar panels on their roofs.

After all, the utility is developing the technology to make all those systems perform at optimal levels – and Duke Energy has access to more capital than a family trying to save for sending their kids to college, after all, Rogers said Wednesday at the GreenBeat conference in San Mateo, Calif.

So instead of relying on customers to buy their own home energy systems, “I’m going to own the batteries, I’m going to invest in the homes,” he said. “I’m going to redefine the boundaries of the business.”

That’s one of the ways that Duke, which plans to spend $1 billion over five years on smart grid projects, is bucking predominant trends among utilities in the United States.

While Duke is definitely one of the more environmentally friendly old-school energy companies, I’m still not comfortable with the approach they are taking. Part of the appeal of distributed power generation is the ability of consumers to own the means of generation themselves, in order to stop paying exorbitant rents to corporations.

With that being said, I’m glad Duke is making significant investments in smart grid technology and renewables.  I just hope they modify their approach a bit as these efforts scale up.

Update — A friend emails to point out that utility ownership of rooftop solar installations is the only realistic way these types of installations can scale in the near-term, given cost barriers. Point taken.

Howie Klein has the goods on the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, which the House of Representatives easily passed yesterday. Every single Democrat voted for the bill. They were joined by just 66 Republicans.

Howie explains:

With China– as well as several other countries– pulling way ahead of the U.S. in alternative energy development, you would think supporting this kind of legislation would be a no brainer. And, indeed every Democrat and 63 Republicans voted yes. It passed 310-106. The Republicans with no brains… well, generally speaking the Republicans sticking with their obstructionist leadership on this– John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan all urged no votes– were the dimmest lights in the House, knee-jerk anti-everything fanatics like Michelle Bachmann (MN), Paul Broun (R-GA), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), John Culberson (R-TX), Mary Fallin (R-OK), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve King (R-IA), Tom McClintock (R-NC), Patty McHenry (R-NC), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), and John Shadegg (R-AZ), the real knuckle-dragging bottom of the barrel community; Limbaugh’s crowd.

Full text of the bill is embedded below.

(Via David Dayen)

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Green Inc:

The cost of going solar fell last year, resuming a decade-long decline after several years of flat prices, according to a new study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The report found that the installed cost of residential and commercial photovoltaic systems in the United States dropped 30 percent over all from 1998 to 2008. But prices had become relatively stagnant from 2005-7, as demand spiked and solar module makers ramped up production.

The global economic meltdown, however, along with a resulting oversupply of modules, led the cost of installing a solar system last year to fall from $7.80 a watt to $7.50 a watt, though the actual cost to homeowners actually increased slightly as state incentives for installing solar arrays fell faster than module prices.

Greenpeace:

Kenya, Kogelo 19 August 2009 – Mama Sara Obama, the U.S. President’s grandmother holds a solar panel while posing for a group photo with Solar Installation trainees from the Kibera Community Youth Program in Kogelo Village, Kenya.The solar installations are part of a 20 day renewable energy workshop hosted by Greenpeace’s Solar Generation with 25 participants from the Kibera Community Youth Programme (1) and community members of Nyang’oma Kogelo.

For more photos go to Greenpeace on Flickr.