The Fossil Fuel Booyah. If you’ve watched CNBC over the past decade, you’re probably used to Joe Kernan’s never ending climate change denial. The enthusiastic Jim Cramer is less focused on the soft issues but calls it how he sees it. That’s why his comments on Friday caught be by surprise. He’s not calling for fossil fuels to go away, his follow up tweets say as much but he does say that investors should get out now. Which makes this the proverbial canary in the coal mine. If fossil companies lose shareholders they lose stock value, losing the value makes it harder to run the company with the capital flexibility it has today. That being said, there is still plenty of cash in the coffers so this isn’t a tomorrow thing..
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The Corona Impact. With the coronavirus impacting larger areas of China and some cases spreading around the world, the supply chain teams in solar are starting to look into the impacts that this could create to the booming solar industry in the US. The Chinese new year has been extended in some areas of China which means some delays could occur if the virus continues to spread..
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Scale To Drive Retail. Now that early adopters have shown that EVs are viable, additional scale will drive the price down for EVs to be the first, second and third choice. It took 20 years from plasma TVs to go from $10k for a 42” to $1500 for a 75” LCD and now we will see corporate fleets 10x the annual volume of electric vehicles and make scale drive down the cost for the rest of the market. Consumers will not only like the price but they will find any anxiety comforted if they see their UPS, Amazon and USPS vehicles running on batteries as well. (solar powered electricity)
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Yann
Have a great weekend! See you next week in San Diego’s Intersolar. Shoot me a note if you will be there, if there are enough folks we will do a SolarWakeup happy hour.
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PG&E Story Gets Interesting. One year ago I wrote that the PG&E bankruptcy was a political move by the monopoly that would try to back the newly inaugurated Governor into a corner. Yesterday, while the company was in bankruptcy court, the Governor found his voice and said that the monopoly either comes out a different company focused on being the safest, cleanest and cost effective utility of the future or the State would take over. About damn time and good for him! This is an opportunity to build a better utility, a monopoly is a gift by the consumers and it’s time it aligns its goals and execution with where the State wants to go.
The Climate Tech Era. I don’t think that Axios’ reporter Dan Primack is off directionally that VCs are still hesitant when pitched by clean tech companies. There is a shift in the weather though, climate tech is now a thing in Silicon Valley. It’s being talked about at the biggest venture firms, on Kara Swisher’s podcasts and in angel investing networks. Investors are also seeing capital being raised by startups and investors like TJ Rodgers and John Doerr being successful with their investments in recent times. Founders that were successful in non-climate startups are coming into the investment space with a focus on climate tech.
24/7 Renewables. Corporate PPAs are largely disconnected from the geography or use profile of the company. You can imagine corporate renewables in a 3 phase approach. Step 1 is buying enough RECs or actually contracting for the same amount of electricity that you are consuming on a cumulative basis without regard to where or when you are using the energy. Step 2 is procuring those credits within the same transmission system as the energy consumption, i.e. in the same geography. The last step is actually matching the geography and the timing of consumption, where and when it is being used. If you can’t colocate the consumption with the generation, this is the ultimate step in corporate procurement.
Don’t Hate The Game. I have’t gotten into the details of the Tesla earnings but I have some thoughts on the polarization of the company/Elon. First, the stock was training up about $70 from where it closed after hours, nearing $650 per share, well over $100billion in valuation. Second, no matter what you think of Elon, the company is mission aligned with my goals in the solar space. Building electric vehicles and using the scale of battery manufacturing to also scale battery storage in their solar unit. Without much marketing, from what I can tell, Tesla installed over 50MW last quarter. So maybe you can hate the player but don’t hate the game.
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Yann
In Person Wakeup. Come see me next week at Intersolar in San Diego and in Boston in a few weeks for Solar Power Northeast. More commentary tomorrow right here on SolarWakeup. In the meantime, we will be relaunching The Wakeup Podcast in a few months with exciting new guests, send your ideas for interviews and storytellers across!
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