This is your SolarWakeup for January 20th, 2020

Mops And Buckets For Climate Change. Building a wall around Manhattan drew the ire of Trump on Twitter, get your buckets ready New York.

Tech Helps The Fight. We’re entering an era where action has a technological and financial capability of success. Here’s Jeff Bezos showing off the new electric rickshaw that Amazon will use in India.

The Trade Deal. Phase one of the trade agreement with China was signed last week, amongst which was promising outlook for the silicon sector. As details come out, there will be plenty of opportunity to assess how this could help the solar space. It does leave in place all other tariffs on solar related items like inverters, aluminum and other commodities.

Looking Ahead. A few weeks ago, SEIA elected a new board Chair. In a quiet contest between Swinerton CEO, George Hershman and Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai, the board elected Hershman. The Swinerton CEO has been a leading voice in tariff fights which leads the expectation that SEIA will continue to focus a large amount of time and resource on the topic. It has yet to be seen or heard how SEIA plans to move forward after the ITC loss including the discussion on the next step-down at the end of the year. I continue to wish and hope for SEIA to do public outreach to groups that could view this election as a double down on utility scale solar, away from DG and the regulatory policies that enable that segment. 

Opinion

Best, Yann