This is your SolarWakeup for December 20th, 2016

Can Rex represent us all? We covered it in the EnergyWakeup podcast, Rex Tillerson may be the most qualified person in the US to be Secretary of State. He has only ever worked for one company and that is Exxon. As CEO and region President, he has traveled the world and made deals with many heads of state. The problem is that he represented Exxon for 41 years. An oil company that never even faked an interest in renewables, quite the opposite, they are under investigation for covering up their scientific knowledge of climate change. So after 41 years, can Rex Tillerson change his views?
The rural coops lead the pack. We have seen this across the country, coops that are governed by members, i.e. consumers. When shareholders are the consumers there is sometimes a bit more flexibility to change the status quo. This one example is from a smaller coop in New Mexico but with today’s pricing everything is modular.
Will the Paris agreement stand? One positive note on the Paris agreement is that even Bill O’Reilly said the new administration should leave it alone. It also seems to make little sense to unravel it because what would be gained given that the goals will most likely be met regardless due to economic conditions. The biggest problem with the article is that it highlights Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy and not Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, because it was an accord negotiated through the State department.
America made a choice in solar. It was SPI in Orlando, circa 2012 when Bill Clinton spoke as the Keynote. He said America needed to make a choice, do we want to have the development, legal, finance jobs or do we want the manufacturing. At that point this was already decided, China would drive the global price of solar down while the 200k+ jobs in the US would be high end install, development and professional services. So I disagree with the premise that China is dominating. This is a global market and we all benefit from each other’s expertise.
SolarWakeup gets Political Cartoon. The idea came and I couldn’t resist. Hope you like it, feel free to download and share amongst your networks.

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann