More Tariff Trouble. My day was going fine, enjoying a nice weekend in Florida visiting my new nephew, when Trump comes across the Twitter and lets America know that he’s raising tariffs on more imported goods. This is potentially a big deal for solar if it actually goes into effect and gets worse. Remember, the negotiations were close to complete according to reports when he sent the tweet. Now China is thinking about calling off the talks altogether. We all know he likely sent the tweet with a wink, playing foreign policy chicken with American jobs. The reality is that American factories rely on robust supply chains that include on and offshore suppliers. Less offshore supply increases the price on domestic supply and therefore slows factory operations. Let’s hope this doesn’t drag solar down more, this may be tariff number 5 or 6 on our industry.
Inslee Goes 100. A big release by the Governor Inslee presidential campaign. His plan is called 100% Clean Energy For America and it knocks the roof off every State 100% RPS plan that’s been passed. I want you to read the highlights yourself by clicking here, but here is a teaser. No more coal pollution by 2030, 100% clean electricity by 2035 and a focus on front line and low income Americans impacted by climate change. This is the type of plan that we’ve been talking about in back rooms that we said we needed. We wanted the campaign that elevated climate change to the Presidential debate stage and make it an issue. We are there now and we need to grab the opportunity by the horns and turn it into action.
Tesla’s Vision To Standardize Solar. There is some out of the box thinking coming out of Tesla these days. Most of us that live solar every day would argue that it’s very difficult to standardize solar given that every house is different. Tesla seems to be saying that that want homeowners to buy solar in prepackaged quantities so that the logistics of the trucks and costs are repetitive in nature. You can go through the sales cycle on their website which gets millions of hits per month and may be a great sales funnel if they can figure out how to get those visitors to transact.
- CNBC: Dow futures drop more than 450 points as China considers skipping trade talks
- Vox: Jay Inslee promised serious climate policy and he is delivering
- Bloomberg: Tesla Has a New Plan to Revive Its Foundering Solar Business
- New York Times: PG&E Says S.E.C. Is Investigating Its Wildfire Disclosures
- GreenBiz: Arnold Schwarzenegger – Want to act on climate? Shift the message
- Greentech Media: First Solar Slips to Q1 Loss but Sees ‘Tremendous Momentum’ in Global Solar Market
- Utility Dive: NYISO – Decarbonization efforts could be slowed without new transmission
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann