As we head into the weekend, an update from South Florida misery. Power is back! Wifi is down. I don’t know which one is worse (I’m kidding, but it is close). Over the next few weeks, I want to examine and share with you my experience going through this storm. I wrote on my facebook that for the first time I felt like a climate change refugee with the primary mission of keeping my family safe, driving hours on end to get out of harm’s way. I came back to my County, completely destroyed thinking about the regulations that focused on important yet small (in comparison) priorities. Reading about number of workers brought in to fix the infrastructure, I start to think about the role, incentives and oversight of monopoly utilities. This includes Comcast, currently on my shitlist because I have to tether to my AT&T phone.
Time To Coal Off The Planet. Every coal plant should be turned off tomorrow. We’ve seen how resilient the planet is when we stopped doing stupid stuff like polluting rivers or destroying forests. Coal electrified industries but now coal is bad for people, planet and profit. The government should buy the plants and promptly shut them down. Seems abrupt but it’s necessary and urgent. If you think about it, there would be issues with power markets but I don’t actually think the grid would suffer except in pockets which would quickly be remedied by renewable power, cogen and energy storage.
Will California Go 100%? Well it doesn’t look like the 100% RPS bill will happen this year. Some corporations and PG&E came out against it. Surprisingly the electrical union came out against it as well, still thinking that traditional power could be bigger than renewables. My guess is that has more to do with the front office tenure than actual business strategy given that RPS in California doesn’t count distributed generation and most large scale is built by unions. Legislation never really dies, SB100 had a great session and looks that much better going forward.
September 22nd. A lot of talk from SPI centered around the 201 petition. Having spent the weekend in Atlanta, I kept going back and forth on reaching out to the Suniva people. I’ve said it before, they are good people and we’ve always had a good relationship. This 201 petition is stupid and I think they know that. On the 22nd, the commission will vote and a lot of bets are being placed on a 3-1 vote. This is really a 2-2 vote but since a tie prevails to the petition and only yes votes can vote on the remedy, a no will vote yes. That being said, a yes can flip and we could get a 3-1 vote against the injury. Let’s hope that the powers are pushing a yes to a no and we can put this thing into the past. Another speed bump on the solar coaster.
- Think Progress: Economic reality sets in for energy company trying to build new coal plant in Kansas
- NPR: California Lawmakers Debate 100 Percent Clean Energy Mandate
- Renewable Energy World: What SolarWorld Trade Case Could Mean for Downstream Solar Companies
- Utility Dive: Anheuser-Busch buys enough wind power to brew 20 billion beers a year
- GreenBiz: Clean energy buyers team up to reshape policy landscape
- Crains: Report – Solar power projects growing in Michigan
- Singularity Hub: Solar Power Is Getting Cheaper—But How Do We Overcome Its Limits?
- Greentech Media: An Update on REV in a New York Minute
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann