By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) report that the United States could produce 80% of its electricity needs with solar and wind power, as long as the nation commits to building the grid to accommodate them, including up to 12 hours of battery storage. Someone should tell Rick Perry and the president, because they seem to have missed a memo somewhere along the line.

SolarWakeup’s View: Honestly, this isn’t news to anyone in the solar industry, is it? Or the wind industry? After all, employees wouldn’t be flocking to an industry they didn’t believe was sustainable. That much seems obvious.

But what the scientific study does it get that news into the hands of a public that, as ThinkProgress reports, believed renewables could never produce more than 20% to 30% of the nation’s electricity.

The key, of course, is electricity storage (the study focused an awful lot on batteries, but as well all know, that’s not the only storage technology out there). The solar industry has already shown that solar is cost competitive, and battery storage prices are coming down, too. One can quibble about whether they’re coming down fast enough, but no one can legitimately say they aren’t coming down at all.

Let’s be blunt: The solar industry has shown the path forward to reaching the 80% mark laid down by UCI and is developing more sustainable ways to move electricity to the grid with bankable offtakers. Now we just need to force state and federal legislators to remove the regulatory obstacles—put in our way by the entrenched electricity-production interests—out of our way. Once that happens, the solar industry will lead the way to 80% because we’ve already shown we can.

More: 

Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States (UC Irvine)

Solar and wind power alone could provide four fifths of U.S. power (Think Progress)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: President Tariffs…er….Trump announced last week his plans to impose 25% tariffs on imported steel and 10% on aluminum. And we are not kidding: The entire world appears to be gearing up for a trade war of epic proportions. The European Union is threatening to impose billions (yes, with a “b”) of retaliatory tariffs. Canada (yes, Canada) is threatening to retaliate.

Then there’s China, of course, which has probably had tariff plans in its pocket for years and is thrilled it may get a chance to finally use them. And the WTO can’t process trade complaints against the United States over the solar tariffs fast enough. Heck, even the U.S. oil and gas industries are angry.

And the stock market doesn’t seem to like the idea any more than the rest of the world. The Dow fell on Friday and economists are not supportive of the tariffs, to say the least. As we write this, the Dow is down in early trading this morning.

The situation is so dire that Forbes is calling on Congress to take away the president’s power to unilaterally impose tariffs..

SolarWakeup’s View:
Well, we tried to warned you. Tariffs are not the way grown-up countries deal with trade disputes. Negotiated agreements work best, especially if you have a savvy negotiator at the helm (and wasn’t that supposed to be one of Trump’s strengths?).

The racking-and-mounting segments stand to lose the most if this new round of tariffs is in fact implemented, after already being damaged by the 30% solar-specific tariffs Trump imposed in January. Last year, as the Section 201 tariff case wound its way through the process, they begged and pleaded with the U.S. International Trade Commission to find against SolarWorld and Suniva, ultimately to no avail.

And now they are reaping what the Section 201 (solar) terrorists sowed.
The steelworkers must be waking up this morning terrified, too, despite throwing their support behind Suniva and SolarWorld last year. After all, despite being the last successful group to have Section 201 tariffs imposed, it didn’t lead to a steelmaking renaissance in the United States. In fact, just the opposite happened.

Here’s what the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition (CITAC) Foundation’s “The Unintended Consequences of U.S. Steel Import Tariffs: A Quantification of the Impact During 2002,” showed:

• 200,000 Americans lost their jobs, representing approximately $4 billion in lost wages from February to November 2002.

• More American workers lost their jobs in 2002 to higher steel prices than the total number employed by the U.S. steel industry itself, proving once again the harsh law of unintended consequences.

• Every U.S. state experienced employment losses from higher steel costs. Sixteen states lost at least 4,500 steel consuming jobs each over the course of 2002 from higher steel prices.

Those are just a few of the reasons Forbes called for taking away President Trump’s (and, they’re quick to note, all future president’s, though we know who they’re really talking about) powers to impose tariffs unilaterally. It’s a radical solution, but these are radical times – and the president has to be stopped before he continues to wreak havoc in the solar industry with his tariff-imposing rampage.

More: 

Trump’s tariffs strain oil ties (Axios)

Here’s what happened the last time the US was reckless enough to try a steel tariff (Business Insider)

Forbes: Time To Take Away The President’s Power To Impose Tariffs

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: This story isn’t so much a “what” as much as it is a “who.”The New York Times uncovered someone you’ve never heard of (if you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade): Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party founder who believes utility monopolies are stifling rooftop solar across the United States. Her stance on solar, which she says is completely consistent with both her free-market principles and her commitment to save the world “God created,” appears to puzzle The New York Times reporter who wrote the profile on her.

SolarWakeup’s View: Sometimes you get the feeling that the reporters and columnists at The New York Times don’t get out of their offices much. That, or they think of themselves as sociologists who venture out to discover new tribes of people no one else has ever seen before.

How else do you explain their seemingly incredulous profile today on Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party founder who supports solar energy? To anyone who has been awake for the past decade and pays attention to solar policy fights, Debbie is not an unknown quality. I actually did a series of two podcasts for SolarWakeup before joining the team with Debbie, in which we discussed at length the battle over solar in Florida. That was a rough and tumble battle in which Dooley found herself squarely in the middle and, thanks in large part to the mobilization of conservatives she led, pro-solar policies prevailed.

What was decidedly odd about the Times piece was their seeming consternation and confusion about the very idea that conservatives could support solar, even though Barry Goldwater Jr. (scion of an early founder of the modern conservative movement) has been doing it for years.

If you can see past the childlike “wonderment and awe” tone of the reporting, however, the Times’ piece does serve an important purpose: It puts the idea out into the world

that conservatives can support solar without sacrificing their conservative bona fides – and that’s important, especially in today’s toxic political atmosphere.

The solar revolution is coming, but it’s going to need as much support as it can get from everyone, including conservatives. And while solar warriors like Debbie and Barry have waged the fight for years, more must be done to build these coalitions in all 50 states – and that effort has to start with you.

More: A Gun-Owning Trump Fan’s New Crusade: Clean Energy (NY Times)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)rolled out an aggressive four-point plan to broaden its base and launch a new era within the association. Their plans, according the website, include:

• Ensure that existing solar markets remain open and robust, while opening new ones;
• Reform electricity markets to better enable solar use at highest values;
• Represent solar nationally, including as the voice of and market research center for the industry; and
• Ensure SEIA continually evolves to offer value to its members and grow revenue to support its activities.

“The solar industry is going on the offense,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president & CEO. “We will do whatever needs to be done in order to ensure fair competition among energy sources. As a trade association, we will conduct ourselves commensurate with the largest source of new energy in a trillion dollar electric power industry.”

SolarWakeup’s View: A step forward! Over the past few years (at least as long as I’ve been in the industry), the ongoing conversation in the hallways of the conferences was this: Why isn’t SEIA more involved in the broader solar industry, working for the small companies as well as the large? It has been a particular issue as SEIA was in growth mode, but some people were still asking the question after Abigail Ross Hopper took the reins a little more than a year ago.

It appears, however, that SEIA has been like a duck – calm on the surface but furiously paddling underneath.

This new vision is SEIA’s attempt to start with a clean slate, and I, at least, am willing to give them a chance to execute on it. If they do, then a new day could be dawning at SEIA, and the solar industry will be better for it.

More: SEIA’s Strategic Vision (SEIA)