Once largely confined to the desert Southwest, solar power is making its way across the United States. Due to decreasing prices in installations, coupled with government incentives and increasing knowledge of energy harvesting capabilities, solar has recently found its way into places such as Idaho, Maine, Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska - with places like Georgia and Florida are looking to expand. Despite the pushback from the newest presidential administration, even cynics of the solar power movement are declaring it the most viable option.

In 2014, Apple reached a milestone by turning their Nevada data center into a 100 percent renewable energy-powered structure thanks to the implementation of solar farms. Just four years later, the company has just reached another milestone - all of its facilities are powered by renewable energy. This step is all part of their efforts to spearhead a focus on environmental initiatives in the tech industry.

The Atacama Desert in Chili is known to be so arid, that very little can survive the harsh climate. Despite its inhospitable climate, however, it is the world’s best place to produce solar energy. In fact, it's so ideal for producing solar energy, the Chilean Energy Minister Andrés Rebolledo claims that “we’re talking about an infinite fuel source.”

Turning a coal plant carbon neutral requires a community effort. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, community organizers from the Toxics Action Center and Neighbor to Neighbor, a local Latinx organization, succeeded in getting the coal plant in their city shut down and transformed into a commercial solar farm. Today, Holyoke’s electric utility uses the solar energy as part of a carbon-neutral plan.

Landfills can offer prime real estate for solar potential due to the lack of trees and access to direct sunlight, and Maine is taking advantage of this. Seen as a sustainable renewable energy project, this is just one more method the state is implementing in order to advocate for increased solar power as an environmentally-friendly strategy.

Dozens of states across the US are adopting programs that offer solar power for low-income communities in order to cut down on their utility costs and provide renewable energy that they previously would not have had access to. Some of these programs also incorporate other social goals into their programs, such as offering job training or developing sites of backup energy should there an outage. Solar development is currently one of the fastest growing industries in the US, and analysts predict that the nation will be able to hold over 2,000 megawatts of solar capacity this year alone.

The Ute Tribe’s reservation is building its first large-scale solar array with the end goal of transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. The reservation, spanning Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, has partnered with GRID Alternatives Colorado to implement this first installment, which will eliminate over 1,500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in just the first year.

“We’re in the midst of one of the largest solar expansions in the country,” says Alys Daly, a spokesperson for Florida Power and Light, the largest utility provider in the state of Florida. This statement represents a shift in which Florida has seized on decreasing costs of solar power and is working to increase its capacity tenfold. Power companies are helping residents save costs in an environmentally conscious way.