By Michael J. Coren | Quartz
On the stroke of midnight this New Year’s Eve, the American dream will get a makeover. In California, the nation’s most populous state, every newly-built home must now come with enough solar panels to satisfy its electricity needs.
It’s a quiet revolution tucked into the building codes approved unanimously by the California Energy Commission (CEC) in 2018. Solar panels are installed on just 20% of new homes in the state. That figure will rise to 100% for every home under four stories tall (with a few exceptions; pdf). The CEC expects this to add 74,000 new solar installations in 2020. By comparison, there were 127,000 residential photovoltaic systems installed in 2017, many on existing homes. Community solar programs approved under the new mandate will add even more.
