Welcome To 2018. Happy New Year! I hope you are enjoying or have come back from an exciting holiday. I will be spending this week at a trade show for my ‘side hustle’ (check out ttopbuddy.com). Next stop, Shark Tank! This week looks to be short on news as many reporters are still out of pocket, will have daily editions anyways just to catch up on the things that make me excited for this year.
New York. On January 31st, join me in New York City for SolarWakeup Live as we kick of 2018. The CEO of the NY Green Bank is joining us for a conversation about capital and how New York is thinking out of the box on getting more investments into the local solar markets. Alfred Griffin is a veteran when it comes to energy capital and it’s great to have him. More speakers are being announced soon on the conversation about REV and Blockchain as some of the highlights. Use WAKEUP25 to save 25% this week only.
Catch Up. Make sure you are catching up on all the podcast episodes, available at
Tariff Checkers. Every time Axios reports the inside conversation about White House tariff talk, I get nervous. My hope is that the tariff put in place is only the perspective of what the advisors show as the worst case not what Trump could actually do. This is the time to see if solar trade groups actually have the clout that we all expect them to have. Ball is on the court and the players have been chosen, game on.
Go Faster. I’ve talked about this here before, the biggest issue with storage for market development is the disparity between grid regulators’ version of fast start and what energy storage can actually deliver. Creating a market on milliseconds would destroy the current peaker market and therefore would be slow to be deployed.
My 2018. It’s been over a year since I left Conergy and I want to bring you up to speed on some of the work I’ve been focused on. One of the places is advising great companies that are established market leaders in solar with their corporate ventures initiatives. Matching corporate goals with new startups creates opportunities for 2 entrepreneurs to gain runway and traction by matching synergetic goals. Angel investing in solar is rather dry, corporate ventures are a great way for me to help the ecosystem.
- Axios: Inside the new trade arguments Trump is hearing
- CleanTechnica: Shenzhen Completes Switch To Fully Electric Bus Fleet. Electric Taxis Are Next.
- RenewEconomy: Speed of Tesla big battery leaves rule-makers struggling to catch up
- Think Progress: Trump says cold weather disproves global warming. His own White House disagrees.
- PV-Magazine: Cancer claims UNSW solar pioneer Stuart Wenham
- Greentech Media: How Corporations ‘Bypassed the Politics’ to Lead on Clean Energy in 2017
- GreenBiz: 2017 was the year that …
- Wired: The sunny optimism of clean energy shines through techs gloom
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann