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For each year the industry continues without universal standards, powering every U.S. home and business with solar energy becomes more difficult.<\/p>\n
The Rocky Mountain Institute<\/a> (RMI) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory<\/a> (NREL) on Monday agreed the industry needed to “double down” on a unified effort to lower the cost of residential and small commercial installations. The two organizations issued the Roadmap to 2020<\/a> <\/em>report less than two months ago, but said Monday that some of its short-term goals might not be attainable if changes don’t take place. That became crystal clear after meeting with more than 70 solar developers, equipment manufacturers, researchers, installers and government staff at RMI and NREL’s Soft Cost Impact Forum <\/em>in Chicago, IL.<\/p>\n “As seen below, the summary roadmap charts scream in crimson red about the costs of installation labor,” RMI principal Dan Seif and senior associate Jesse Morris wrote in an update about the roadmap. ” It’s highly uncertain that installation costs in the U.S. can reach low enough levels to realize [U.S. Department of Energy] SunShot targets<\/a> by 2020, and the cost trajectory looks like it will hit some pretty rough waters in just three years.”<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_311679\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"688\"] The two organizations took the information from those breakout sessions to develop four suggestions for lowering the cost of going solar:<\/p>\n Visit EcoWatch’s <\/b>RENEWABLES<\/b><\/a> page for more related news on this topic.<\/b><\/p>\n![\"Graphic](\"http:\/\/ecowatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Screen-Shot-2013-11-11-at-2.11.42-PM.png\")
<\/a> Graphic credit: Rocky Mountain Institute and National Renewable Energy Laboratory[\/caption]\nDevelop an agency to ensure photovoltaic standards<\/h3>\n
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Create the solar industry’s version of Wikipedia<\/h3>\n
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Create a national solar database<\/h3>\n
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Define what solar-ready means through a standards campaign<\/h3>\n
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