TIME

A moment of reckoning for a soaring solar industry

A solar facility on Navajo Nation land along the Arizona-Utah border

IT WAS A FEAT OF AMERICAN ingenuity that created the world’s first operational solar panel in the mid–20th century at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. The U.S. maintained its pace-setting role in the development of solar technology in the half-century that followed, driving down its cost and helping turn it into a growing source of power for utilities and consumers around the world.

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