Treehugger profiles CleanPath, an investment firm with a new $800 million fund that plans to finance 1 gigawatt of solar in the US in the next 5-8 years. While this is certainly laudable, it is absolutely not – much as Treehuggger would like it to be – “large-scale solar power.”
1 GW is 1,000 megawatts. That’s what one medium size coal plant generates. There are 126 coal plants in the US that generate 1 GW or more. 1 GW of solar energy created in 5-8 years is, by comparison, no more than a blip. For renewable energy to truly be grid scale, it needs to be installed on a far more massive scale that is being planned now. We need terawatts, not gigawatts.