This is your SolarWakeup for January 17th, 2020
Social Media Action For Reefs. Former Miami Dolphins player, Jarvis Landry, caught me by surprise when his post included a call to action on climate change as it pertains to reefs. A new level of action for climate that solar should think about.
Two Investments, One Deck. Union Square Ventures is a well known, successful, early stage venture capital firm. This is a firm that did part of the series A for Twitter in 2007. Two new investments and 60 slides on why they are looking at climate tech as part of their thesis.
Forget Carbon Neutral. Microsoft is challenging its team to get to carbon negative by 2030, a leap from the carbon neutral goals set just a few years ago. Making this possible for its millions of customers would be a great next step. Here is their post outlining this.
We Knew. “Yeah, we knew. Everybody knew,” he said. “And somehow we all ignored it.” Those are the words of Shell CEO Ben van Beurden.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 16th, 2020
Back with Friday rundown tomorrow.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 15th, 2020
BlackRock’s Fink Speaks Climate. BlackRock’s CEO wrote his annual letter that outlines some philosophical points about business and climate change. By not stating the actual metrics, Fink is giving some space to company CEOs to outline their own view of this world. Company executives spend an outsized amount of their time doing what they think keeps them employed and well paid by investors. They rarely spend time doing what they think is right when they know investors will fire them for doing it. Fink coming out and saying that their investments will have a guide involving sustainability creates a new operating agreement. Looking at the largest BlackRock holdings, Exxon, Chevron and NextEra show up on the top of the list that are energy related.
A Trillion At A Time. The EU is going to investment at least $1Trillion euros to avoid a climate crash. What’s the best way to spend that and what does it mean for the industry?
Looking Inside A Mind. Dan Shugar of NEXTracker is one of the more interesting people in solar doing one of the more uninteresting things. Trackers were largely written off 15 years ago when cost would be able to catch up but with high-efficiency and bifacial modules getting traction, NEXTracker was able to build a billion dollar business and be acquired by Flex. This turned an unsexy idea into a great company and Dan does a good job opening up in this interview. Or maybe I have a soft spot for building aluminum hardware businesses in solar?
Coal Goes, What Follows? Coal is leaving stage left and now it looks like things are not going well in the world of natural gas. Too much supply and low market prices are seemingly hurting the financials of gas companies. There is still a lack of impact on gas generation, as that market expands in DG segments, but these tea leaves look to be indicating the start of a possible trend.
Oceanfront Property. Twitter is loving the words of the APS CEO, saying that the Arizona utility will not directly or indirectly fund regulator’s political races. I’m sorry to say that Arizona still does not have oceanfront property even if Mr. Guldner is trying to sell it.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 14th, 2020
Terraform Gets A Bid. Brookfield has placed a bid to the remaining shareholders at TERP to acquire the remaining parts of the company that it doesn’t own yet. Brookfield already owns 62% of the shares and sees enough upside to acquire the rest of the company for a price that is a premium of 11% from the prior night’s closing.
ACORE Has A Dream. Four of them to be exact. An RPS, a carbon tax, clean energy tax credits, and transmission investments are part of the plan to drive a cleaner grid in the future. ACORE is right about the plan, these policies would help the planet and our industries but I am too jaded to see the political path to make it happen.
Airports And Solar. An infrastructure fund that has a portfolio primarily in airport construction and operation is acquiring solar developer, Greenskies. Greenskies has been active in the solar market for sometime and has also been looking for partners like pretty much all solar developers. The interesting evolution is that there appears to be a growing value placed on the actual development platforms not just the projects. This was a hard value to find in the market in the past, maybe things have changed.
Million Solar Roofs. There is something happening in residential solar around the world. Governments are seeing the value and incredible value in residential rooftops that don’t yet have solar. Austria is looking to install 1million solar roofs by 2040, a goal that California just reached last month.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 13th, 2020
Disasters On Disasters. Every climate related crisis seems to layer horrific images and situations on our society. For some reason, the pictures of koalas holding our hands and kangaroos holding each other is especially sad. Imagine reading that 500 million animals have died, that’s an insane number that will create a generations hole in nature. This is a reminder that we have to be victorious in our work and regulatory expansion of our markets. We cannot fail in this endeavor as well as the work that needs to be done to expand the tent.
Hummer Comeback. The SUV that died due to being a gas guzzler, and relatively useless is making a comeback to your General Motors dealership. GM announced it will be releasing an EV Hummer in 2022 in time to compete with the Tesla Cybertruck, Ford F-150 EV and more. This is a category that should be interesting as it tests the purchase behavior of consumers that aren’t driven to EVs for environmental purposes given they drive SUVs and pickups now. I assume they will be successful which drives a huge increase of load for utilities across the Country and the need for more charging stations.
Puerto Rico Hit Again. Last week an earthquake struck Puerto Rico that knocked out a large part of the grid once again. Years after groups piloted onto the island to show them how their grid should be rebuilt, not much more than talk has occurred. Maybe a different approach should be taken up.
Being Smarter. Utilities have spent billions in ratepayer money to get smart meters onto the homes. What has that yielded those consumers? I am a PG&E customer and it still takes an engineering degree to download and review my consumption data. I’d like to see this data be more easily accessed and readable for consumers and their contractors so that saving energy can be smarter.
Watching BlackRock. BlackRock is one of the largest investors in the world and they announced they would be entering the Climate Action 100+. The world’s eyes and ears are now watching to see what this means and what, if any, changes to investment policies or voting policies occur.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 10th, 2020
The Wind and Solar Connection. What if anything is or should be the relationship between wind and solar? Does the growth of the offshore wind market create new opportunities or limit the market potential for solar?
Scaling Corporate Deals. With the expansion of mega solar deals, how do they grow beyond Facebook/Amazon/Google or companies like AnBev? Could the market get into the smaller corporations with different credit profiles and smaller solar or does that simply become community solar or retail choice?
Good For The Goose. The National Grid pension fund is investing new funds into renewables in the UK. I have not seen similar pension moves in the US but it would be interesting to see how 401k’s are changing within their energy portfolios.
Sanders, Reviews and Policy. The Sunrise Movement has endorsed the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders. Trump is looking to eliminate the environmental reviews for major projects. The House of Representatives is making moves that could set a climate plan in motion if the stars align.
A Climate Warrior Tribute. This SolarWakeup community is amazing, you donated with tremendous generosity allowing the organizers to double their goal for the children left alone. Read the story about Tyshaun and his tragic murder written by solar veteran Michael Healy and colleagues.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 9th, 2020
The #Solar1000. I’ve been thinking about the 2020 prediction that I wanted to share since I’m already on the record with saying the residential solar market will grow more than 25% in 2020 even with the ITC stepdown. Looking at data yesterday, I think there is a great chance that more than 50 solar installers will break through 1,000 installs this year. I tweeted the prediction with a timestamp, so you can hold me to it. This is a big step for solar installers, it’s not just running a solar company but actually building a massive business. #waittosee
A SunShot Challenge. When it comes to government programs in the innovation space the SunShot program has been remarkably effective and successful. I can personally vouch that several solar companies exist today thanks to the early help from SunShot when ‘climate tech’ wasn’t something investors were funding. So it’s great to see what appears to be a similar effort get into the storage side of things. I hope the program calls me when they need reviewers once again.
Can We Deregulate? Virginia has a bill filed that would allow for retail energy choice for consumers, breaking off some of the monopoly power held by Dominion. This is likely a legislative long shot but the argument has long been made that neither party should continue to prop up an idea that hinders competition in a free market.
Request For Help. New Columbia Solar from DC lost one of their team members over the holidays. A single father that trained through community groups to be a core part of the solar installers business was tragically killed a few weeks ago. The company is asking the solar community to help raise funds for Tyshaun’s daughters. Thank you for your help.
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 8th, 2020
Emissions Are Declining. Some good news are coming out of 2019, emissions in the US are anticipated to be down 2% largely due to the electricity sector, good job everyone!
Visual Change To Generation. In 2019, coal consumption in the US is down 18% to the levels of 1975. If you want to see how this change is happening, look at the graph from the UK below. You can see how king coal was everything for nearly an entire century but that is changing. In Texas the trend is similar, wind basically equalled the generation of coal and will overcome it this year.
Need For More. Now that the generation portfolio is changing to a better blend, we have to make sure that solar is in a position to take on the additional load caused by electric cars. Estimates are coming out but that will surely be understated. With every major OEM going electric, what will they do to work together with homeowners and power suppliers.
What This Decade Means. This decade has already been labels the Solar+ decade by the solar DC trade group. In order to achieve this we must put our differences aside and realize that as an industry we have to be uniform in our message. Homeowners that have or want solar need to get involved and it’s our job to activate them!
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 7th, 2020
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Yann
This is your SolarWakeup for January 6th, 2020
Welcome To 2020. I am flying back to San Francisco today after a week back in Florida. More content and coverage coming as soon as the routine kicks back off. Reminder that you can always email me by clicking reply any morning with news and information about your solar work.
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Yann