Hilary Clinton unveiled her energy policy to combat climate change. In her Climate Change Fact Sheet, she announced two bold national goals: the U.S. will have more than 500 million solar panels installed across the country by her first term, and the U.S. will power all homes in the country by renewable energy within 10 years of Hilary Clinton taking office.

The current solar installation in the U.S. is about 20GW. 500 million solar modules equals to approximately 135~140GW of solar installation (estimated by high efficiency 275W PV modules). If the 135~140GW solar installation were achieved, the annual solar demand would be approximately 30GW from 2016, when Hilary Clinton were elected, to 2020. The volume also means a 700% increase from current installations.

The Fact Sheet wrote, the 140GW installation is equivalent of having over 25 million U.S. homes’ rooftops installed solar systems. According to EnergyTrend’s research, there are 120 million rooftops across the U.S., and 80 million ones are available for solar installation. In other words, the 140GW goal requires at least 20 pieces of PV modules installed on each of the 25 million residential rooftops. Yet it is believed that U.S. will continue building large-scale solar power plant for the goal so rooftops would not completely consume all the 500 million solar panels.

In addition, Hilary Clinton plans to add more power generation capacity to the grid than during any decade in American history, from a combination of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy.

Both of her advocacy will be backed by the Clean Power Plant to fight against the climate change, stated in the Fact Sheet. She will also launch a Clean Energy Challenge that forms a new partnership with states, cities and rural communities that are ready to lead on the clean energy. The Clean Energy Challenge will include: Climate Action Competition, Solar X-Prize, Transforming the Grid and Rural Leadership. Transmission investment, solar access, tax incentives and infrastructure will also be secured under the new policy, stated Hilary Clinton. 

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