FERC Gets Nominees. Trump nominated two commissioners to FERC yesterday, both of which had clean tech Twitter giddy, including a thought bubble that he may be lobbying for votes in the clean energy industry. Allison Clements comes from the Energy Foundation and NRDC, serving as the Director the Sustainable FERC Project at the time. Mark Christie is on the Virginia SCC currently and will allow the Virginia Governor to nominate a new commissioner to fill the seat. Christie is described as a by the book lawyer and has years of experience in regulatory oversight.
Ponies At The Petting Zoo. Some utility dockets are dry and otherwise uninteresting to the solar market. And if it seems that sometimes there isn’t anything in it for our industry, you would be right. That doesn’t mean that turning that docket around gets pro-solar overnight but solar advocates have gotten really good at the incremental gain, a step forward. Duke was proposing a grid plan that had the opposition of our advocates and now will amend their plan to include climate change as a factor. A step forward and we get to see the ponies.
A Clean Grid. Speaking of a clean grid, UK grid operators are forecasting negative emissions in 13 years. National Grid is the utility that is active on both sides of the Atlantic and could be a quick leader in the US with their lessons learned in the UK. Over the next decade it shouldn’t be hard for us to decarbonize the grid, I follow this strange bot on Twitter that tweets out EIA data on an hourly basis and coal is almost always the top generating source. Coal still represents 15x solar in terms of generation and it is the low hanging fruit when it comes to fighting pollution. It’ll take everyone to get this work done.
Two Points. Two points that I’d like readers to consider on having solar as a major part of the solution. First, utilities that are monopolies should no longer be allowed to lobby. Regulatory capture is too real and merging that with a lack of competition in a non-free market has shown to be a disaster. Either they are monopolies or they play politics, not both. Second, regulators need to figure out how to bring more solar to C&I rooftops. The large warehouses don’t match energy load to potential capacity but represent a distributed location for GW of capacity that needs to be leveraged.
Innovating Trade Groups. COVID has made trade groups get creative on reaching out to members and the industry. With a natural bias, CALSSA has been raising the bar including hosting informative web-based content every week since the shutdowns began. This week that includes content on inverters that is useful to installers across the Country. You get to hear from all major inverter companies with expert moderation. At $50, this is a steal for the content you get. Register Here.
Oil Money Will Get Sunny. Solar investments are often merged inside portfolios that also invest in other fuel sources. Bankruptcies, headwinds and oil major losses mean that those portfolios need to diversify and realign their investments. Don’t be surprised if you start seeing oil and gas related funds interested in solar, just look at the solar stocks. Solar was expected to suffer a deep and long pullback but appears to have had a few week drop and will come out with a growth year in 2020. Solar is a safer investment, aligns with the future politics and has the best return on investment in the energy space.
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Take The Survey. SolarWakeup is hosting a survey on the current state of solar and the expectations for the rest of the year. 5 questions in 3 minutes. Survey closes at the end of today.
Hear The Results. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be joining Phil Shen from Roth Capital to talk about the results and a Q&A on the current state of the market. You can register for that call here.
7 For The Majority. A group of GOP senators wrote to the Majority Leader requesting the extension of clean energy tax benefits in the next stimulus bill. The list includes Senator Graham, who routinely plays golf with Trump. It also has at-risk Senators from Colorado, Arizona and Maine. Politically, Graham alone could make this a priority and get it done. The Majority Leader could also choose to help the senators in a tough political battle, we all know that solar polls well on both sides. Reminder, take action when you get those emails from your trade groups.
De-lobby The Monopoly. Last week we saw the indictment regarding HB 6, the coal and nuclear bailout bill, and the $61million bribe it took to get the billion subsidy passed. At first the governor said he didn’t want it to repeal it but later reversed course. Over the weekend, it also came out that First Energy was not alone in their involvement. Documents outlined by the Energy and Policy Institute show that AEP also got involved to the potential tune of $13million. This money apparently went to a dark money group that was involved.
Hook’em Ohms. Elon is bringing the cybertruck to Austin along with the 5,000 jobs that the factory will create. A big win for Texas and creates for interesting politics around clean energy for a state that politically has not been known for politics on the issue. That being said, Texas is one of the fastest growing solar markets for residential and utility scale and SpaceX has operations not too far from Austin.
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SolarWakeup Q3 Survey. A quick 5 question survey to check in on your solar business. How is Q3 and Q4 shaping up for your company? Survey closes on Monday.
Solar Market Conference Call. On Tuesday, I’ll be joined with other solar professionals to talk about the current state of solar. You can register (free) for the zoom call here.
The California Solar Jobs. California has a great opportunity which will not cost anything to build back jobs in solar with a simple legislative fix that the Governor can lead on. By implementing instant permitting across all municipalities, the Governor takes charge and helps create even more jobs in the State.
Earnings Calls Coming. With Tesla’s earnings behind us, we’ve got the other companies coming up. Those earnings calls should get us back to proper forecasting for the rest of the year and an understanding of the impact COVID had in Q2. One thing I’m watching is where factories are being set up. Seems that solar companies are closing US factories this year under the cover of COVID, more to come.
Corporate Procurement. It’s been a week for corporate action in solar, can’t wait for someone to figure out how to bring in smaller private companies into the market.
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Bailing Out Coal And Nuclear. Taking a step back from the crime committed in Ohio to analyze what it means for the energy industry. HB6 had three primary components, bail out nuclear power plants, bail out coal plants and kill the renewable portfolio standard. All of this to primarily benefit one regulated, incumbent monopoly. Ohio is a conservative State where national image plays a role so you would think that supporting nuclear and especially coal would be a positive for legislators. In this case, the monopoly had to resort to bribing the Speaker of the House to pass a bill to allow them to get what they want. This either means that clean energy/climate advocates had enough power to stop the bill if not for bribes or legislators realize that the $60million means nothing to a utility that gets to pass their costs on to ratepayers. If you believe that the second is true, that the House speaker viewed utility regulations as a quasi-slush fund, then what makes you think this is unique to Ohio?
What’s Next? Theoretically the law forbids a convicted criminal from profiting from the crime. A bank robber does not get to keep the cash. In First Energy’s case however, HB6 remains law regardless of the fact that it happened thanks to a $60million greasing of the wheels. Legislators are mulling a repeal but in what shouldn’t come as a surprise, Governor DeWine does not support the repeal of a billion dollar subsidy for the monopoly.
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