For the Future, Look to California!

California is the home of concentrating solar power. It was the place where, in the 1980s, the first concentrating solar power plants were built. Now, California is leading the world again with an aggressive rollout of concentrating solar power capacity.

Nearly 3,000MWs of new concentrating solar power capacity are
undergoing permitting in California
Source: California Energy Commission

This amount, coupled with a similar amount expected for Spain, is expected to drive the global installed capacity of CSP well past the 5,000MW level considered necessary to drive down prices to around US5c per kilowatt hour.

Roughly 6,000MW of concentrating solar power plant capacity is
expected to come on line in California and Spain by 2012
Source: Emerging Energy Research

That 5,000MW mark is what the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has considered necessary to halve concentrating solar power prices from their current level of about 11-12c/kwh..

Experts estimate concentrating solar power prices
will fall to US5c/kwh when global capacity reaches 2,000MW.
3,000MW of new capacity is planned for California alone.

And as this amount of new solar renewable energy comes online, it will join California's large absolute levels of geothermal and wind power already being generated in the state.

Wind and geothermal are California's two
largest renewable energy sources.
Source: California Energy Commission

All of this is expected to contribute to California employment growth, since economists in the state have determined that parabolic trough projects (studied because they were the most mature of the concentrating solar technologies) generates more revenue and jobs than fossil fuel power plants.

 

Parabolic trough power plants create more jobs
in California than equivalent fossil fuel power plants
Source: State of California