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Tribal advocates keep up legal pressure for fair political maps; 12-member jury sworn in for Trump's historic criminal trial; the importance of healthcare decision planning; and a debt dilemma: poll shows how many people wrestle with college costs.

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Civil rights activists say a court ruling could end the right to protest in three southern states, a federal judge lets January 6th lawsuits proceed against former President Trump, and police arrest dozens at a Columbia University Gaza protest.

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Rural Wyoming needs more vocational teachers to sustain its workforce pipeline, Ohio environmental advocates fear harm from a proposal to open 40-thousand forest acres to fracking and rural communities build bike trail systems to promote nature, boost the economy.

Solar Energy's Now a Competitor in Sunny States Like NM

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Monday, January 21, 2013   

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Solar power has become cheap enough to compete in some sunny parts of the U.S, even without help from the government. A sharp, long-term fall in the price of solar cells has led The Economist magazine and others to conclude that, in sunny areas with high electricity prices, solar power is now cheap enough to compete without subsidies.

Rory McIlmoil, energy program manager for the environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies, says that applies to some sunny regions, but not the East Coast.

"In those areas, solar is competing with other sources of energy that have higher electricity prices, which makes it a lot more likely that solar can compete."

McIlmoil says solar power plants are nearing a point at which they would be competitive with building a similar-sized coal-fired plant. In New Mexico and West Texas, El Paso Electric (EPE) and Element Power signed an agreement late last year to provide electricity from the Macho Springs Solar Project near Deming to El Paso Electric customers at a competitive rate.

Although the solar industry still depends on significant federal subsidies, McIlmoil points out that, overall, the much larger fossil fuel industries receive more tax breaks. And new technology in power storage and flexible use of the grid are easing some of the issues with solar.

Thanks to cheap solar cells, McIlmoil says 2010 saw what was then a record level of solar power installed.

"Just one year later, twice that was installed. Roughly 80 percent of the solar power that currently exists in the United States was installed in just over the last three years."

The magazine also projects that, at current growth rates, wind power will surpass nuclear in 10 years. More information from The Economist is available at goo.gl/SIb0d.




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