Thank you all for showing up at SolarWakeup Live! in Jersey City. It was an amazing crowd of 180 top solar executives and first round of feedback says that the conversations with the speakers had great content. The excitement of the day and the yet to be digested election results means that the column will be back on Thursday.

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By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By the time you read this, polls will have already opened on the East Coast. It's your opportunity to shape the country in which you live, so get out today and vote like your life depends on it. In several states - Arizona and Nevada leap immediately to mind - clean energy is on the ballot. In both states, constitutional amendments are on the ballot that would raise the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to 50% by 2030. Both amendments have been hard fought contests, with progressive billionaire Tom Steyer fighting hard against entrenched utility interests (especially in Arizona) to put the issue before the voters. And one day before the vote, the Solar Energy Industries Association and Vote Solar (in the personages of Abigail Ross Hopper and Adam Browning) penned an op-ed urging Nevada voters to support Question 6, which is how the amendment appears on the ballot. The op-ed starts out with a strong clarion call, appealing to voters on both sides of the aisle:

Nevada families will head to the polls tomorrow and cast their ballots in a host of hotly contested races. But whether you’re a Republican, Democrat or Independent, there are two things all voters agree on: They want clean air and they want prosperity.

Clean air and prosperity. That's a winning combination of issues. Instead of framing it as strictly a solar issue - on which there is still a divide between those who understand solar and those who have yet to learn about it - SEIA and Vote Solar decided instead to frame the issue as being a pocketbook and overall health issue. And that messaging, I must say, is brilliant. I've been critical in the past of SEIA for what I saw as its difficulty in finding its political voice, particularly at the state level. But the more I see of the new, aggressive tone of the asssociation - and its increased willingness to fight for issues at the state level - the more impressed I've become. More: Yes on Question 6 Means Less Pollution, More Jobs

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Steve Hanely over at CleanTechnica reports that a new Consumer Reports' survey reinforces what most of you have known since you joined the solar industry - renewable energy is popular among Americans. In words someone like me can appreciate (because I wish I'd written them first), Hanley writes:

The Trump maladministration wants to choke us all with more emissions from coal-fired generating plants, but a survey of 1200 Americans conducted by GfK for Consumer Reports finds the vast majority of Americans want more renewable energy and less power plant pollution. The survey also reveals that plenty of utilities seem to have a credibility issue with their customers. Consumers Union has submitted the results of the survey to the EPA as part of the public comment process on rolling back the Clean Power Plan that ended October 31.

But it's even better than that. According to the survey, 81% of thsoe surveyed say they want their power plants to produce less pollution, and that even included the four states where the majority of power is produced by coal (those states would be Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois and Virginia). So here's a news flash: renewable energy is even popular in coal country, something I've been telling you since the Kentucky Coal Museum switched over to solar power last year. But here's the other finding of the survey that Hanley highlights and that should strike fear into the hearts of utility executives across the country: Consumers don't trust utilities to do the charge fair prices and provide excellent service. I don't know why they don't trust their utilities. Oh wait, yes I do. It's because their utilities lie to them all the time, especially when it comes to solar and the fake "cost shift" they are constantly going on about. The Consumer Reports survey just proves what most of us have known all along. The renewables revolution is coming, and utilities better figure out how to harness that revolution or they will be assigned to the ash heap of history right quick. More: Consumer Reports Survey Finds Most Americans Want More Renewable Energy

Greetings from 37,000 feet. I am on my way to New Jersey for SolarWakeup Live! in Jersey City. Big thanks to the sponsors and the attendees that have registered. I look forward to a week of meetings in New York following the biggest Wakeup event to date. 
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Incentives Not Taxes. Over time, the headlines go away and reality sets in. Shortly have the solar 201 tariff was implemented, a few factories were announced. Factories that would open in the US and caused the public to show support for the assessment. However, as the year has gone by, more tariffs on Chinese imports have been implemented and the overall support for doing manufacturing appears to have left the solar game. 
Build A Community, Part 2. A month ago Facebook announced a solar farm for their data center in New Mexico, this month the data center is in Alabama and so is the solar farm. Alabama doesn’t have policies that enable Facebook users to go solar with limited or no access to net metering and high fees by some utilities. 
Is Florida Really? Just south of the Alabama border is Florida, a State that is very similar politically. The headlines last week spoke clearly about the market growth which was largely talking about the recent utility owned solar farms that were approved. So in short, Florida is growing massively and has a ton of upside. Most importantly, Florida has strong building departments that will fight against some of the dodgy solar engineering that happens across the Country. You can’t just build things in Florida that look pretty but don’t meet the building code. 
Election Week, Climate Change Edition. This week I hope everyone heads to the polls. A lot of the issues on the ballot are centered around what is happening in States. Regardless of your political persuasion, solar is still not a defining issue on the ballot for politicians which means you still have the ability to choose elected officials that are very much different on the issue. One will support net metering, one will not. One will fight for solar interconnection streamlining, one will not. 
Standing Up In Congress. Over the past 2 years, as climate change becomes a more important topic politically, members of Congress have joined the climate change caucus. The caucus sounds good but it has failed to adequately provide political cover mostly because climate change issue hasn’t come to the forefront yet. Don’t be surprised if that changes soon though. 

Have a great day!

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Have a great day!
Yann