I am on my way to Los Angeles to continue the Energy Storage road show, which means I will learn how badly the Elon Musk tunnels are needed as I sit in traffic.
We Know, But It’s Time to Educate. Over the weekend, I read more than the usual article of “what does it mean” articles about the President’s decision to leave the Paris agreement 3 years from now. One of the things that solar does poorly is explaining the issues to people outside of our industry. To explain my point, why do most Floridians still ask why Florida doesn’t have more solar? I’ve been getting the same question for a decade. We need to put more effort in explaining the complex energy markets that we encounter to the population. That means articles, infographics, viral Facebook videos that go to the heart of our fight. We all understand why the GOP fights the topic of climate change but the fight on solar is ahead for us. We still have 80% approval, let’s use that to make sure politicians don’t go against us because our grassroots are educated and armed with information.
China Is Winning? One of the major takeaways from the Paris announcement is that China and India are the winners as they step up and become the technological leaders. Europe will take the moral leadership role in my opinion, in many ways they already have. The key data point for me is that it doesn’t pencil to build coal anymore. It doesn’t matter where you are thinking about doing it. Come 2020, after natural gas has put the big hurt on nuclear, the solar and wind plus storage decade will be upon us. Fixed pricing and shaped energy curves will be the one-two punch that nobody will be able to ignore, certainly not ratepayers.
Is the Saga Over? We’ve been keeping you in the loop about the NV legislation merging solar rights and net metering. The Assembly had sent a bill over to the Senate a few weeks ago that has now passed. It will make a quick stop at the Assembly for approval and then on to the Governor where it is expected to get signed.
- New York Times: How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science
- Think Progress: While Trump’s America isolates itself, Europe and China forge new climate partnership
- NBC: Nevada Senate unanimously approves bill establishing renewable energy rights
- PV-Magazine: California pushes forward with storage support (Read the bill here)
- PV-Tech: Intersolar Europe 2017: Industry offers defiant response to Trump’s Paris snub
- Washington Post: EPA head Scott Pruitt defends Paris exit
- ILSR: How States and Cities Can Unlock Local Clean Energy
- Vox: The 5 biggest deceptions in Trump’s Paris climate speech
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann