Soalr energy is popular now because it does not produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct like fossil fuels. Therer are also no costs associated with the energy source, all you need are sunny days. There is some pollution associated with the production of the materials and systems that can collect the solar energy like solar panels and copper wire and batteries etc. However, over the lifetime of the solar power system, this is much muchsmaller than an equivalent fossil fuel plant.

A couple other reasons solar is more popular these days:

- the prices of electricity and natural gas have gone up a lot in the past few years. People are paying much more for electricity, in some cases 3 or 4 times more than they used to pay. By using solar energy they can save quite a bit of money on their energy bills.

- another reason is that there are now rebates and tax credits that help pay for the cost of the solar energy systems. For example, in California there is a cash rebate that pays for about 25% of the cost of a solar electric system. There is a federal tax credit that pays $2000 toward a solar electric system for a residence, and up to 30% of the cost of the system for a business.

Solar energy (harnessed from photovoltaic cells) has always been popular, because once the equipment is paid for, the energy is free. Since fossil fuels are no longer cheap in the United States, electricity from photovoltaic (PV) cells is becoming more economically feasible. Unfortunately, there was recently a report of waste (some type of acid) from the production of PV cells in China being dumped close to a village outside the factory gates. As you can imagine, that dumping area is no longer useful for farming. Cheap, clean energy is our goal, but we have to consider all the parts that go into producing that energy.