A Note To Adam. As many of you may have seen and read, Adam Browning is stepping down from his role as Executive Director at Vote Solar. Vote Solar was my first touchpoint into the world of solar policy in 2007 when the organization, as it had prior and many times after, fought for net metering and interconnection in Florida. The Sunshine State still benefits from their work in 07/08. Mind you, as I started to develop opinions about solar policy, I didn’t always agree with the organization and questioned why Vote Solar was fighting things like new natural gas plants in Michigan. I don’t think this is overstepping my relationship with Adam but one time Vote Solar agreed to a truce in Arizona where solar gained fairly little and I called Vote Solar out on it. Adam, the professional that he is, reached out and taught me an important lesson that he learned from his grandmother; “if you want ponies, go to the petting zoo.” The real world isn’t a straight line to everything you want and I still think of those ponies when I’m presented with a situation that I don’t love either result of. That’s the lesson I think about when I reflect on Adam’s 20 year leadership at Vote Solar. So thank you to Adam for your part of getting us to over 50% of the population with 100% clean energy targets and defending solar across the Country, you can be proud of the work you did and I can’t wait to see what’s next, somehow I doubt it involves a petting zoo!
The Senate Budget. The legislative bodies are working on the budget and we’re back to ‘all eyes on Synema and Manchin’ to see what they are going to do with the budget. They know that this will likely cause the bipartisan infrastructure bill to fold if the budget doesn’t satisfy the progressives in the House. Synema has said that she won’t support the $3.5trillion price tag and more will likely not support the pay fors and tax increases that some have proposed.
Look At Gas Prices. Natural gas prices are up over $4/mmBTU, blowing up every fuel cost projection in rate based natural gas power plants. So I remind you once again, rate based natural gas plants are the most subsidized power plants in the entire energy market today.
FERC Changes. Biden is about to have a FERC commission that has a majority coming from the democratic party, prioritization on issues related to climate and resilience but what dockets make it to the top?
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What’s At Stake. If you missed the news yesterday, the team at FlexGen announced a $150 Million equity commitment from Apollo. This very well could be one of the largest private market equity commitments to an energy storage integration platform but it also signifies the importance of the energy transition. Adding more renewable energy and enhancing resiliency means building a grid that is reliable and intelligent. With this addition of capital, it allows FlexGen to accelerate our support of the energy markets from development through operations. The best in class integration and packaging services are matched with the leading software platform in the energy storage market today. In ClimateTech, like energy storage, it is the software that allows the hardware to operate to maximum efficiency and maximum profitability for asset owners.
A Personal Addition. Thank you all for the personal notes. Over the past 9 years, we’ve built a digital relationship that has become a part of my everyday life and I’m happy to be able to share these great events with you along the way. FlexGen is advantaged by our dialogue and if you share our vision and believe in the mission, we are hiring. Our team is looking for the best and brightest across the org chart, from engineers in systems, hardware and software but also in operations and business development.
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