This is your SolarWakeup for December 3rd, 2020

Solar Is Female. Nasdaq announced a progressive and common sense requirement this week requiring companies to include at least one woman and person of color on their boards. Axios’ report from yesterday shows that boards with women are more prone to innovate on climate. When it comes to solar, I still believe it to be a women’s economy even though many of our trade shows don’t look like it. Women make a majority if not an almost decisive majority of decisions when it comes to home purchasing including home improvement. Polling this year showed that women and parents were a big increase in the demand from the consumer side. Solar doesn’t do it enough and maybe COVID creates the opportunity for women in solar to do more of the sales to consumers and explain why we’re on the path to put solar on every home in America.

The Orange Badge. Sungevity has been the household name since the inception of the iPad. On an iPad 1 is where I saw the concept of Google earth driving residential solar builds for the first time. In many ways, Sungevity is as alive as ever, building tens of thousands of solar homes in Europe and more importantly the orange backdrop on LinkedIn profile pictures across the solar landscape. The company may be gone but the people that created and built that business power many solar teams across the industry today.

Oil’s New Power Grab. Two things that oil majors will absolutely be doing aside from investing every possible dollar into renewable energy projects. One, every gas station will add fast charging for EVs. With prime real estate that has always outperformed inside the store, EV charging is better because it takes longer. It’s confusing me an oil major hasn’t acquired Blink/evGo/Chargepoint yet. Two, oil majors will continue to acquire energy retail companies. Many already provide trading platforms for them to acquire the electricity for the consumer, the customer-facing funnel will prove invaluable going forward.

Solar For Clubs. My friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) have seen an uptick in interest for solar PPAs from schools, country clubs, and golf courses, as these off-takers have been impacted differently than other C&I energy consumers during the COVID-19 crisis. Golf & Country Clubs have seen increased revenue from golf and other outdoor activities, while schools would install solar while students aren’t on school grounds. In both scenarios, savings from a solar PPA are extremely attractive. Click here to learn more about how their subscription-free, proprietary software, the SCF suite, can help to speed up your PPA pricing and transaction process.

Opinion

Best, Yann