San Francisco Live! Time to head to the West Coast, SolarWakeup Live! is coming to San Francisco on April 10th. Like the events before this, it will be an afternoon with great content and more networking. After each event, I’ve been getting great feedback on how to improve the events but the core remains with a focus on the timely, valuable content. Reserve your seat quickly, the venue will be smaller than New York and there are way more readers in San Francisco than in New York. Link here.
New Solar Pod. Alfred Griffin is the President of the New York Green Bank and he joined me in New York City to talk about the work the NY Green Bank is doing. Several years ago the Green Bank was a vision of a future where a billion dollars of NY tax dollars could push private capital into a growing solar market. Now the bank has over $500 million in active pipeline and is on the verge of paying for itself. Alfred also tells us about the future of how the NYGB can help other States follow in their paths. Let me know what you think of the interview and leave a rating on iTunes.
Another Trump Tax? This time it’s steel and aluminum. At the same time as the 201 case was started, Trump initiated a trade rule that hasn’t been used since 1981. This is insane disruption in a commodity that touches every sector of the economy including solar. Racking used to cost 50 cents per watt and today we are WELL below that. Increasing the raw commodity costs of the intake product means that the segment of solar that actually has US manufacturing is going to suffer. Racking and mounts are the number 1, 2 and 3 reasons why a customer gets upset with their solar installation. Is solar involved in this trade case too because this definitely isn’t in the budget…
Let’s Deal. It’s time for all this trade noise to get dealt away. The dealmaker has to stop creating chaos and make a deal. This can’t be something that anyone in either party thinks is going to create positive growth for the US economy. The republican party is the party of free trade and while Trump ran on no trade deals, I don’t think he ran on protectionism. Congress needs to get involved and stop the chaos.
Hoarding Modules. It’s no secret that the supply chain moved modules ahead of the tariff decision. That being said, not many people moved modules without a project to put them on. If they did, this was in defense for a decision that was far worse than the 30%. Like I said in New York, if the solar industry was given a choice the day after the 201 tariff was filed to accept 30% and stop the process, the solar industry would have accepted because the uncertainty is the major killer. Moving modules ahead of the decision was the same thing, a hedge to save projects.
- SolarWakeup Live: E037 – Alfred Griffin – President NY Green Bank at SolarWakeup Live! New York
- Vox: Trump might be close to escalating a trade fight with China
- The Hill: Solar case shows climate protection requires globalized economy
- Bloomberg: China Flooded US With Solar Panels Before Trump’s Tariffs
- PV-Magazine: Global storage growth of 4.6% in 2017 reflects patchy state of sector, finds BNEF
- CNBC: As technology transforms the energy sector, regulators look to keep pace
- Utility Dive: Federal judge blocks loan to Puerto Rico’s utility, threatening blackouts
- EDF: Clean energy – not natural gas – drove decarbonization in 2017
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann