As the Trump administration works relentlessly to dismantle climate and environmental protections and forwards a pro-fossil-fuel, climate-change-denial narrative, this year’s Index shows that states and cities are playing an outsized role in the expansion of clean energy, transportation, and energy efficiency.
California continues to dominate the Index, coming in first in the Technology and Policy categories, second in Capital, and no lower than second in any of the seven Index subcategories. The undisputed king of solar energy (and of geothermal energy) among the states, California received more than 27,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) of utility-scale and distributed solar power alone in 2016. That’s more than five times the amount generated in Arizona, the state with the second-most solar production, and enough to power more than four million California homes for a year. The nation’s most populous state has more than 1.2 million registered electric and hybrid vehicles, and garnered more than $9.5 billion in clean-tech venture capital in the last three years.