This is your SolarWakeup for October 17th, 2018

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Clean Energy Voter’s Guide. Two takeaways from the AEE guide to clean energy policies in the upcoming election. The first, obvious and sad is that the republican party candidates still feel like clean energy is bad politics for their donors. Two, it does appear that access to renewable energy is an issue that both sides are agreeing on. Especially in Florida, this is a topic that I first discovered in my interview with State Sentator Jeff Brandes.

States Matter. In case it isn’t obvious, State policy is disproportionally important when it comes to energy policy due to the State by State regulatory oversight. The politics of this get interesting because energy and climate change has become an issue in Congressional races even though those representatives don’t have much influence at the State. That’s why we, as a solar industry, need to do more to solarize the education of the electoral funnel. A county commissioner should know that voting solar is good for the race for State House and the votes in the House are good for the Senate and so forth. The opposite is also true, voting against solar should feel a campaign to stop the politician from moving up the ranks.  

Bailing Out On Bail Out. It seems that the Trump administration is bailing out on the nuclear and coal bailout. Frank has the complete story but the note from PJM that coal and nuclear generation could shut down without issue must have played a role in the decision. It’s a good decision. 

Rubio Digs Deeper. More on the interview from Sunday, Senator Rubio, whom I first met when he was the Speaker of the Florida House, said that moving to “all solar panels and did all that stuff, which is not realistic.” The message now is that climate change is too big to deal with and the assumption is that it would cost too much money and destroy the economy. Those are the talking points we need to educate the party with. 

Pass On Gas. Vote Solar’s Adam Browning highlights the technical case for a future without natural gas in order to keep the planet from warming too much. This tweet storm courtesy of Jonathan Gaventa of E3G. 

Opinion

Have a great day!

Yann