Strike Three in Juno Beach. I know it’s hard for many of you to say anything because Juno Beach is on your target customer list but NextEra is having a really bad year. First strike came when CEO, Jim Robo, wanted to buy HECO which was turned down by regulators and pushed back against by local. Two came when NextEra through its regulated utility, FPL, pushed an anti-solar amendment with millions of dollars. They went as far as using firefighters to lie about the amendment without their knowledge causing the ad to be pulled. Strike three comes yesterday when Texas regulators voted to reject the purchase of Oncor by NextEra. It seems to me that NextEra is suffering from an irreparable lack of trust with regulators. Management has shown that it is willing to do just about anything to get quarterly numbers to match. I’m surprised that shareholders haven’t asked why the continued failures are happening, after all Jim Robo is known for his lack of patience for failures.
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Get the PURPA out of here. Once there was a CEO at Duke, he loved coal and ratebase so much that when he retired he wanted to go back to his youth and become a solar entrepreneur. Now he sits on the board of SEPA. The culture at Duke has not changed at all, in many ways still living up to the normal way of doing business. Earlier this year, after extended pushback on solar applications for qualifying facilities, Duke made the case that solar contracts under PURPA should be much shorter, rendering them unfinanceable. Now, for the good of the consumer, Duke wants to spend $13billion, with a b, on new infrastructure. How about letting consumers put solar on their roofs and businesses; investors fund solar farms and generating revenues for North Carolina’s land owners? That way the infrastructure gets paid by the market or doesn’t need to get built at all.
Make sure you listen to the latest episodes of EnergyWakeup. Google is now at 100% renewables, how do they do it and what is next? Sam Arons talks to SolarWakeup. We also speak with OSEIA Director about Oregon’s solarmarket.
The EPA. Don’t take your eyes off of this. The EPA is being absolutely gutted. Touting jobs from a coal mine, Scott Pruitt is ignoring the solar jobs to move forward the rules that help coal companies. There is much more here that is very disheartening and not what Trump voters wanted.
- Utility Dive: Texas regulators reject $18B NextEra-Oncor deal
- Business Journals: Duke Energy – $13 billion spend would create 14,000 jobs over 10 years
- Greentech Media: Is Trump’s Rhetoric Working? More Americans Now Believe the President Can Save the Coal Industry
- EDF: Who Pays for the Hidden Costs of Coal?
- PV-Magazine: 20 MW of “grid-supply” solar capacity becomes available in Hawaii
- PV-Tech: Enel brings 42MW PV project online in Panama
- GreenBiz: Cultivating the coexistence of agriculture and solar farms
- Bloomberg: Investors Are Cherry-Picking the Assets of a Fallen Renewable Energy Giant
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann