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After a bloated, watered-down bill on climate change and energy narrowly passed in the House of Representatives before the July 4 recess, pressure may build for Senate action before the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark in early December.

The utilities see renewable energy standards as unfunded mandates, Presswood explained, so they pushed for the cheapest solutions, and wind is less costly than photovoltaics. Congress is reluctant to give enhanced benefits for PV at the utility level, so it is only providing for three credits instead of one for installations of under 4MW, and 5kW for residences. Thus, under this legislation, PV would not deploy at all for large-scale generation, he said.

Congress favors PV over solar thermal, Stanton explained. One reason is that it is seen as less costly and also provides more carbon reduction. But a bigger reason is that Congress likes to meter things, and it is difficult to meter solar thermal generation. Florida Power & Light was a leader in solar thermal until it saw that because of the way utilities are regulated it was not getting credit for its efforts. Attempts to get a utility-scale allowance for solar thermal have been unsuccessful because "Congress can't get its mind around it," Stanton said. Still, he added, Lakeland Electric in Florida does have some solar thermal with metering to replace natural gas.