The Tariff Effects. SEIA released a report showing that the solar tariffs have caused more than 62,000 job losses or missed growth. At least $19billion in private investment was lost while 10.5GW of solar was not installed. The harm hit the States that have the most borderline markets already that could have created job and business opportunities if US modules were priced at the same level as other markets globally.
Trump White House Claims ‘Fake News’. Navarro called SEIA “a loose confederation of Chinese solar companies seeking to destroy American solar manufacturing jobs and U.S. solar installers that want cheap Chinese panels and don’t care how many American jobs are destroyed by China’s heavily subsidized industry.”
SEIA’s Abby Hopper Responds. “We were heartened to hear the president talk today about his concern over climate change, and I think we are all in agreement that greater use of solar energy and a strong solar manufacturing presence is one way we can meet our collective goals of continuing American economic growth and addressing climate change in a meaningful way. We’d be thrilled if Mr. Navarro would come to one of our conferences and meet some of the 240,000 Americans who work in this great industry, including the tens of thousands of people who are manufacturing solar products. We look forward to working with the Trump administration on ways to advance real manufacturing growth without these particularly counterproductive tariffs.”
SolarWakeup Comments. The White House doesn’t have to like the report and can even rebut it. They could have easily countered by saying that solar is growing and new manufacturing has been built in the US thanks to their policy. Instead they go straight to the fake news and the kicker quote. SEIA is a lot of things and not perfect from my standpoint but diminishing the association to a “loose confederation” or “Chinese solar companies” that “don’t care about American jobs” is complete malarkey. Most of you reading this newsletter are members of SEIA and know that the jobs you create and you hold are cared about. I don’t care what party you come from, there should be robust condemnation of the Navarro comments.
A New Era Of Investment. Axios’s Dan Primack, whom I ran into at SFO yesterday, is out with a renewable energy article. This is news by itself given that he covers private equity in greater detail than any reporter. The TL:DR is capital is drying up for fossil fuel generation and a lot of the investment is going to go towards renewable energy. Of course we have to make sure the pipeline is robust enough for the capital to be interested. The further takeaway is that executives and board directors will have adjust their messaging and strategy going forward. Watch this space.
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Yann
Unbundle Solar. “I’d tell my mom to sign up” is the best headline of 2019. I’ve had some great conversations with community solar executives as well as pondered my hopes as to where this market goes this year. All of it can be summed up to this headline because that is where we need to be. There is a never ending demand for community solar and more needs to be developed. 2021 is the year that this market takes off with a nice run-up continuing next year.
Co-op Opportunities. The western co-ops have been largely untapped by solar developers because of the agreement with Tri-State. This agreement limits how much each co-op can contract independent of the group. Once this dam breaks, and it will, you will see some incredible capacity of solar getting contracted. This may even open a new merchant market.
EV Through Policy? Los Angeles is looking to have 80% of new vehicles be electric by 2028. Through incentives, infrastructure and working with ride hailing companies, it should be achievable. Here’s my question though. San Jose is currently at 21%, almost 3x Los Angeles. What makes EVs more common in the Bay Area than their southern partners? Maybe we should figure that out before embarking in a policy driven game of guess what?
Personnel Moves. Eric Wesoff is back! The former Editor-in-Chief at Greenwich Media is now the editor of PV-Magazine USA after former editor, Christian Roselund, left for Rocky Mountain Institute. Welcome back Eric!
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Yann
Welcome Back. Thank you for letting me take a week off last week, because life has been busy we skipped right over the 7 year anniversary of SolarWakeup and the 2,500th edition of the daily newsletter. We’re read more than a million times a year and growing now and for that I am thankful.
The Tweet To Ponder. I’ve talked about the need to spend on policy in the past and we, as a solar industry, still don’t. It is the agenda item most ignored in board rooms because we feel like we’ve never been able to show the payback of the policy spend. So let’s look at how it works when the big boys do it. Here are a list of companies and their political contributions in anticipation of the tax bill of last year, just one example. Look at Pharma, oil, gas, utilities or defense as other examples of how the US political system goes round. Your spend doesn’t need to be just contributions, you can do that through SEIA PAC or the CALSSA PAC or supporting some of the trade groups. Add a zero to your policy budget for next year, please.
Big Problem, Big Names, Big Hopes. John Kerry is launching World War Zero. A group that includes The Who’s who of the global establishment to highlight the national security risk and wartime mobilization caused by global warming. The group includes Presidents Clinton and Carter as well as GOP governors Kasich and Schwarzenegger. The celebrities joining the group include Leonardo DiCaprio and Sting. Interestingly, World War Zero will not propose policies instead opting to make itself known in battleground states and speaking at military bases that are impacted by climate change.
Different Type Of Activism. Two variations of activism that could have an impact on the energy markets. If you watched the Yale-Harvard football game last you saw that student activists stopped the game from restarting for the second half. They were protesting for the divestment of the Yale and Harvard endowments. This is in fact a way to impact the decision making process of large investors and similar to hedge fund TCI ($26B AUM) arguing that directors should be more transparent in their company’s polluting activities.
The Integrated Storage Play. Enphase has opened their website for pre-orders of their Ensemble energy storage platform. The pre-order is a great new tool to gauge interest and create a pipeline ahead of release. It’s also a great tool for supply chain folks to make sure they are getting enough of what they need and keep customers happy. The micro inverter to energy storage platform is the launching off point for the IQ8 system that will open new potential revenue streams like what we saw from Sunrun/National Grid in ISO-NE earlier this year.
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Yann
More column tomorrow. I’ll be off next week, hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday week. SolarWakeup will publish again on Friday and then return to your inbox on December 2nd.
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Yann