Back with Friday rundown tomorrow.
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Yann
BlackRock’s Fink Speaks Climate. BlackRock’s CEO wrote his annual letter that outlines some philosophical points about business and climate change. By not stating the actual metrics, Fink is giving some space to company CEOs to outline their own view of this world. Company executives spend an outsized amount of their time doing what they think keeps them employed and well paid by investors. They rarely spend time doing what they think is right when they know investors will fire them for doing it. Fink coming out and saying that their investments will have a guide involving sustainability creates a new operating agreement. Looking at the largest BlackRock holdings, Exxon, Chevron and NextEra show up on the top of the list that are energy related.
A Trillion At A Time. The EU is going to investment at least $1Trillion euros to avoid a climate crash. What’s the best way to spend that and what does it mean for the industry?
Looking Inside A Mind. Dan Shugar of NEXTracker is one of the more interesting people in solar doing one of the more uninteresting things. Trackers were largely written off 15 years ago when cost would be able to catch up but with high-efficiency and bifacial modules getting traction, NEXTracker was able to build a billion dollar business and be acquired by Flex. This turned an unsexy idea into a great company and Dan does a good job opening up in this interview. Or maybe I have a soft spot for building aluminum hardware businesses in solar?
Coal Goes, What Follows? Coal is leaving stage left and now it looks like things are not going well in the world of natural gas. Too much supply and low market prices are seemingly hurting the financials of gas companies. There is still a lack of impact on gas generation, as that market expands in DG segments, but these tea leaves look to be indicating the start of a possible trend.
Oceanfront Property. Twitter is loving the words of the APS CEO, saying that the Arizona utility will not directly or indirectly fund regulator’s political races. I’m sorry to say that Arizona still does not have oceanfront property even if Mr. Guldner is trying to sell it.
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Yann
Terraform Gets A Bid. Brookfield has placed a bid to the remaining shareholders at TERP to acquire the remaining parts of the company that it doesn’t own yet. Brookfield already owns 62% of the shares and sees enough upside to acquire the rest of the company for a price that is a premium of 11% from the prior night’s closing.
ACORE Has A Dream. Four of them to be exact. An RPS, a carbon tax, clean energy tax credits, and transmission investments are part of the plan to drive a cleaner grid in the future. ACORE is right about the plan, these policies would help the planet and our industries but I am too jaded to see the political path to make it happen.
Airports And Solar. An infrastructure fund that has a portfolio primarily in airport construction and operation is acquiring solar developer, Greenskies. Greenskies has been active in the solar market for sometime and has also been looking for partners like pretty much all solar developers. The interesting evolution is that there appears to be a growing value placed on the actual development platforms not just the projects. This was a hard value to find in the market in the past, maybe things have changed.
Million Solar Roofs. There is something happening in residential solar around the world. Governments are seeing the value and incredible value in residential rooftops that don’t yet have solar. Austria is looking to install 1million solar roofs by 2040, a goal that California just reached last month.
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Disasters On Disasters. Every climate related crisis seems to layer horrific images and situations on our society. For some reason, the pictures of koalas holding our hands and kangaroos holding each other is especially sad. Imagine reading that 500 million animals have died, that’s an insane number that will create a generations hole in nature. This is a reminder that we have to be victorious in our work and regulatory expansion of our markets. We cannot fail in this endeavor as well as the work that needs to be done to expand the tent.
Hummer Comeback. The SUV that died due to being a gas guzzler, and relatively useless is making a comeback to your General Motors dealership. GM announced it will be releasing an EV Hummer in 2022 in time to compete with the Tesla Cybertruck, Ford F-150 EV and more. This is a category that should be interesting as it tests the purchase behavior of consumers that aren’t driven to EVs for environmental purposes given they drive SUVs and pickups now. I assume they will be successful which drives a huge increase of load for utilities across the Country and the need for more charging stations.
Puerto Rico Hit Again. Last week an earthquake struck Puerto Rico that knocked out a large part of the grid once again. Years after groups piloted onto the island to show them how their grid should be rebuilt, not much more than talk has occurred. Maybe a different approach should be taken up.
Being Smarter. Utilities have spent billions in ratepayer money to get smart meters onto the homes. What has that yielded those consumers? I am a PG&E customer and it still takes an engineering degree to download and review my consumption data. I’d like to see this data be more easily accessed and readable for consumers and their contractors so that saving energy can be smarter.
Watching BlackRock. BlackRock is one of the largest investors in the world and they announced they would be entering the Climate Action 100+. The world’s eyes and ears are now watching to see what this means and what, if any, changes to investment policies or voting policies occur.
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Yann