This is your SolarWakeup for September 30th, 2020

First In 12. Much to my surprise and many others, Chris Wallace went off script last night (there wasn’t much of a script at this point anyways) and asked a climate change question to Trump and Biden. This was the first climate change question in 12 years according to Grist reporting in a presidential debate. I won’t cover the answers, it ranged from raking the forest to weatherizing buildings and regulating methane. Biden did call out the SunShot success in lowering the cost of solar to record levels, a nice mention of our industry.

The Role of Labor. We don’t talk about this often, our industry is different, but it should also be part of the discussion. Many of the utility and oil infrastructure jobs are part of major labor unions. Labor has been one of the major political forces fighting solar policies in State capitols. The crush on oil, COVID aside, has very little to do with our industry that would fall more on the EV infrastructure and utility sector. The utility sector tends to take a very strong position fighting against labor unions. Solar on the other hand is largely silent but we shouldn’t be. I believe that I would be directionally correct in saying that 50% of solar capacity is installed in partnership with labor unions including large scale solar in California, many public projects across the country as well as DG projects in states like NJ, MA, NY and IL. I would love to hear your view on this, including data that may support or refute my thoughts.

No Congressional Acts Likely. Senator Whitehouse is holding out hope for the Senate to take up climate legislation. As much as I would love for the Senator to be right, he may have thought this to be true before last night’s debate.

EPA, SCOTUS, and What If. In the week’s leading up to and after the selection of Kamala Harris as the VP, we wrote about how she could lead the fight against climate change by taking on polluters with laws like the clean air and water acts. In reality, these laws are on more nuanced standing after the passing of Justice Ginsberg who wrote the opinion giving the EPA the power to regulate emissions. The case for regulatory overreach was often argued by Justice Scalia including as recently in 2015 in Michigan v EPA where Scalia wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority. If you recall, I quoted Justice Ginsburg’s 6-2 majority opinion from the EPA v EME Homer City in 2014 which gave the EPA more ability to regulate emissions across the Country. With the balance of the court changing, based on Judge Coney Barrett’s comments that Scalia’s views are her views, you can imagine some ability for a Biden/Harris administration having more difficulty executing on the pollution enforcement strategy I outlined just a few weeks ago.

Solar Market Update Call. The solar market can be considered complex and fast moving but if you join this monthly market call you can make sense of it. Register for the next Roth Capital solar market call on October 2nd at 10am Eastern.

Get The Power. Later this year, the residential solar market is going to get some major savings with most of their balance of systems when the shift to higher power solar modules really gets going. With power density going up more than 10%, those savings will trickle down to mounts, rails, inverters, labor and wire and hopefully into installers’ wallets. Make sure you are getting the best modules and pricing possible by joining the SolarWakeup Buyer’s Group. You can see the pricing on our price discovery page. 

Opinion

Best, Yann