Anti-Solar Consequences. Solar forces behind The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC pushed and succeeded in helping Representative Ogles lose his primary race in Tennessee. There is a political price to pay for members of Congress that are anti-solar and it appears that this is true on both sides of the aisle. Pro-solar is pro-jobs, pro-business, anti-inflation and just makes common sense. Here is my new tagline for members, Keep your job and support solar!
232 Coming In. Last week came the 232 proclamation, with an enforcement date of December of this year. This gives limited time for folks to figure it out but a watchful eye on mass importation to try and warehouse inventory. I am getting some sense on where prices are going, would love to get your thoughts on how this develops and where the supply chain will try to expand asap. Certainly, projects will die and energy cost for solar will go up, net jobs will decline but we will have domestic manufacturing. Is 250% too steep a tax to pay for this? That is the political bet that has been made and we’re paying for.
A Political Merger. The Governor of Virginia has come out and is intervening in the Virginia review on the Nextera – Dominion merger. When folks asked me at the time what I thought of the merger, I didn’t answer with a business, strategy or other opinion except for saying that the two Governors (Florida and Virginia) had presidential ambitions and that would have some caveats.
- Politico: How solar donors helped take down a Trump-backed Republican
- PV-Magazine: Trump signs Section 232 tariffs, placing minimum import price on polysilicon imports
- Bloomberg: How the US Is Trying to End Solar Tariff Whack-a-Mole
- Utility Dive: $20B in federal climate grants unblocked by appeals court
- Wall Street Journal: Cuba Is Low on Oil. Now, It’s Counting on Solar, With China’s Help.
- New York Times: New Amazon Data Center Stokes Worry It Would Be the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.
- Axios: The future of the NextEra-Dominion megadeal
- PV-Tech: PV Chart of the Week: US solar cell vs module nameplate capacity imbalance
- Solar Power World: Heliene lays off nearly 100 workers at Mountain Iron solar panel assembly facility
- Energy Storage news: Fluence books first big data centre deals, but manufacturing ramp-up delays hit revenues
Opinion
Best, Yann