Author Archives: Frank Andorka

Solar, Wind Capacity Reaches 1 TW – Are We Only Five Years Away From The NEXT TW?

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

It took forty years for clean energy – solar and wind specifically – installations to reach 1 TW of installed capacity. BNEF says we’re only five years away from reaching the next TW.

Talk about an accelerated adoption speed.

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BNEF says the global solar and wind industries reached 1 TW of installed capacity sometime in the middle of the year, which if it all was in the United States could power the entire U.S. electric fleet.

Albert Cheung, BloombergNEF’s head of analysis in London, offered this exciting insight:

Hitting one terrawatt is a tremendous achievement for the wind and solar industries, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s just the start. Wind and solar are winning the battle for cost-supremacy, so this milestone will be just the first of many.

According to Cheung and the rest of the BNEF team:

The findings illustrate the scale of the green energy boom, which has drawn $2.3 trillion of investment to deploy wind and solar farms at the scale operating today.BloombergNEF estimates that the falling costs of those technologies mean the next terrawatt of capacity will cost about half as much – $1.23 trillion – and arrive sometime in 2023.

The majority of the new capacity has been in Asia, with 44% of new wind and 58% of solar being built there. One-third of those installations are in China. Which is somewhat depressing, frankly, given how much capacity could be added to the U.S. grid.

54% of the first terrawatt was wind, but by 2020, solar is expected to catch wind, BNEF reports. But here’s one of the most interesting tidbits from the article:

More than 90 percent of all that capacity was installed in the past 10 years, reflecting incentives that Germany pioneered in the early 2000s that made payouts for green power transparent for investors and bankers alike.

Here’s to an industry that is on the rise, and I can’t wait to see what the next five years brings.

More:

Green Energy Producers Just Installed Their First Trillion Watts

Could Oklahoma Be A Solar Boom State? New AG Opinion Says Maybe

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Baby steps.

That’s what you could call the Oklahoma Attorney General’s recent opinion that says third-party solar contracts – PPAs, leases and loans – would not result in solar installers or consumers being considered utilities.

This is a debate that has swept the country, and most recently occurred in Florida, where a decision similar to the Oklahoma one has led to a flood of residential solar companies into the state, including some of the nation’s largest solar companies with names you know like Sunrun and Vivint.

Could Oklahoma be next?

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Probably not, according to an article at NewsOK, but solar advocates in the state certainly see the attorney general’s decision as a step in the right direction.

Solar advocates told NewsOK:

“It has been viewed forever and ever that you couldn’t offer (those types of agreements) in Oklahoma,” said Tyson R. Taussig, president of the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Council.

“I view it as casting a glimmer of sunlight on this issue,” Taussig said. “If the opinion gets backed up, it will be a huge development because it will allow motivated, creditworthy individuals in our state to buy their own rooftop solar systems at a really reasonable price. It would open up a whole new market.”

It certainly shouldn’t be viewed as a done deal by any stretch of the imagination, of course. After all, Oklahoma is the heart and soul of oil and gas country, and a fight with traditional utilities and fossil-fuel interests is bound to ensue before solar gets too far off the ground. Plus, electricity rates in Oklahoma are dirt cheap.

(Longtime solar advocates will recognize these arguments from Florida, where cheap electricity and powerful utilities scotched solar for decades.)

But the fact that this decision could start a serious conversation about a significant solar market here is, in and of itself, newsworthy.

Mike Teague, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Energy and Environment, told NewsOK:

“Our goal is to find the right ways to do this,” adding that the task force deliberately includes all interested parties in an attempt to avoid future legal entanglements or other issues. He said he expects its work to continue for years.

“This is how you get progress without turning it into a fight, and I think that is what we need,” he said.

More:

Oklahoma attorney general opinion energizes solar enthusiasts

California Assembly Considers SB 100, Should Pass It Posthaste

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

California’s Assembly has a huge opportunity before it right now, and they should seize it posthaste.

Before them is a bill to move the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 100% by 2045. It would match the most aggressive RPS in the nation (Hawaii) and put the world’s fifth (or sixth, depending on who you believe) largest economy on a path to 100% renewable energy. And it would be a huge step forward for the United States because, as everyone knows, solar and renewable energy trends start in California and then make their way to other states in the country shortly thereafter.

Have I mentioned the California Assembly should pass this bill immediately if not sooner?

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Bill McKibbon, founder of 350.org, wrote on the subject in The New York Times and said this:

If any place on earth can handle this transition, it’s California, home to some of the planet’s strongest sunshine and many of its finest clean-tech entrepreneurs.

McKibbon speaks the truth. The state has long been home to the most burgeoning solar industry in the country. And despite new challengers emerging each year, California remains atop the Solar Energy Industries Association’s list of Top Solar States year after year after year.

Its grid had already absorbed more solar and wind energy (though it is mostly solar in California, let’s be honest) than any other grid in the United States, and they are well on their way to transitioning from net metering to whatever the next compensation plan for solar users is. And the results have been staggeringly positive.

It’s the perfect laboratory to show what happens when utilities stop fighting the Solar Revolution and embrace it instead, and they’ve shown the path toward rooftop solar coexisting with utility-scale solar and beyond. Why not take the opportunity to give it one last push over the finish line?

The vote could come as soon as this month, and if it passes it could be historic. Let’s make sure the California assembly knows we’re behind them. Let’s make sure they pass this law – and make solar history.

A Confederacy Of Dunces: America First Energy Conference Insist On Anti-American Energy Policy

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Sometimes, the dumb is so breathtaking it’s hard to put into words. Such was the America First Energy Conference, which Reuters reporter Collin Eaton dutifully reported on this week from New Orleans.

If Reuters doesn’t provide him some hazardous duty pay for locking himself in a room with these people for a day, then there is something seriously wrong with the system.

I’ll let Eaton’s lede stand on its own because, whoa boy, it sorta sums it all up:

Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply “dumb”.

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Honestly, it’s amazing the attendees at this conference can dress themselves, let alone navigate New Orleans.

Based on Eaton’s reporting – and I must admit I’m not sure I could do what he did – 40 speakers took to the podium to bash renewable energy, pimp for coal and expound on any number of insane theories about how climate change is fake and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will actually lead to a greener planet, all the while dismissing actual scientific consensus that climate change is not only real but is having a deletrious effect on the United States and its people.

The worst part of the whole thing is that this gathering of cranks and crazies was attended by actual members of the Trump Administration, though they clammed up when asked by reporters whether they agreed with some of the nuttier theories at play.

And then there were the jokes. So many with the jokes. Here’s what one attendee had to say about wind and solar (and while I recognize this person is just testing out material for his second career as a stand-up comedian, I’m here to tell him, in true concern-troll fashion: Don’t quit your day job.):

“The deep state is real,” said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. “They’re certainly anti-fossil fuel.”

Higgins joked about renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, saying there is probably a conference somewhere in the United States where people are talking about “how the future of the world’s engine will be provided by rainbow dust and unicorn milk.”

A member of the House of Representatives from your state, Louisiana. Seriously, what is wrong with you?

Eaton does an excellent job in his reporting of contrasting all the climate-change denial with the fact the Louisiana – New Orelans in particular – is investing like crazy in technology to combat climate change because, well, you know, Hurricane Katrina proved that New Orleans is going to bear the brunt of increasingly violent storms engendered by climate change. It’s certainly worth reading the whole thing, although I suggest hip waders and respirators, ’cause it gets deep in there.

Fortunately, the rest of the country recognizes this cranks and kooks for what they are and are bravely ignoring their attempts to march us back to the 19th Century. The Clean Energy Revolution, with solar in the vanguard, is moving forward apace – and it will manage to keep this planet alive and well even for those who attended this conference.

I’ll leave you with one last killer quotation from someone Eaton spoke to outside of the conference, which brought a little reality into an otherwise unreal piece:

“It’s a nice world they live in,” said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees of the America First Energy Conference. “It’s not the world we live in.”

More:

At ‘America First Energy Conference’, solar power is dumb, climate change is fake