New Mexico also boasts a world-renowned national lab. Developing nuclear weapons may have made Los Alamos National Laboratory famous, but these days it's working on fuel cells, carbon storage, smart grids, and a variety of other cutting-edge energy technologies (They're hiring, by the way).
The sun-drenched state's installed solar capacity is the nation's fourth-largest, according to the EIA. Capacity more than doubled between 2010 and 2011, jumping from 43 megawatts to 116 megawatts.
New Mexico's Renewable Portfolio Standard requires that 20 percent of all electricity sold by investor-owned electric utilities, and 10 percent sold by cooperatives, come from renewable energy resources by 2020. In 2011, 6.5 percent of electricity generated in-state came from renewable energy.
