Learn This, Import License Fee. Here is the thing for you to think about going forward with the global solar economy. As we read about new plants in the US, product is coming and going across borders. Silicon, wafers, cells, glass, back sheets etc, are made all over the world. Some innovative companies like SunPower will have an onshore/offshore strategy which creates the best blend of lead times, cost of goods and types of products the market wants. Tariffs just increase the cost of the products across the value chain and nobody benefits. If instead, we had an import license fee on modules, the market would be able to pay for local module assembly manufacturing. Any module that comes into the market from abroad would create a pool of capital from the ILF that gets distributed to domestic manufacturers. So using an example that has both on and off shore manufacturing equally, the manufacturer ends up basically being tariff free. This ensures the solar market gets low cost solar while benefitting local manufacturing. Best of both worlds!
Growing Choice In Illinois. As policy fights in energy come up, I see a natural ally for solar in the retail energy companies. Utilities see this alignment as well and fight the consumer choice rules that allow retail energy providers to compete for consumers’ business. This is happening in Illinois right now. As a tangent, this affects community solar in a big way because the rules could overlap. Learn more about community solar and adjustable block grants in Illinois at SolarWakeup Live! Chicago on June 21st. Early bird pricing ends today so get your ticket today!
EVs For Everyone. EVs everywhere, that is a future of our transportation sector that I can get behind. This isn’t just for your Tesla owners, this is a 40x growth of where we are today in the next 10 years. The future includes electric buses and scooters in addition to cars. Add this to the retirement of coal and gas peaker plants, we’re going to need a lot of solar to be built in that same time frame.
Solar Powered Peaches. Hanwha is setting up an assembly plant in Georgia which is great news. I will note once more, this has very little to do with 201. This has to do with the value of supply chain and the growth of the markets on the East Coast. The Jacksonville and Savannah ports are massive distribution hubs with rail that goes up and down the coast. 201 supporters can save their happy dance for another argument.

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Have a great day!
Yann

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The legislature giveth with one hand and seems poised to taketh away with the other hand from the Illinois renewable energy providers. Despite a recent survey by CleanChoice Energy that shows 83% of Illinois residents want to have the choice of clean energy as an option to supply their homes and state-sponsored support under the Future Energy Jobs Act of 2016, action in the legislature later this week could diminish solar's growth considerably if two amendments to SB 1531 are passed as part of the bill. At issue is the idea of "automatic renewals," a practice widely practiced by utilities to keep customers on board. For decades, this practice allowed customers to stay with utilities automatically unless they specifically sought to change their providers. It keeps customer-acquisition costs low - renewals of existing customers are much less expensive than getting new customers. But an amendment to SB 1531 would end the practice for "alternatives suppliers" which, in the case of Illinois, means renewable energy providers. There are three significant problems that the amendment would engender in the renewable energy community:

Under the new rules, renewable energy providers appear to be singled out, meaning state-sponsored utility monopolies will not have to play under the same rules. This would have the actual effect of tilting the playing field in the direction of established utilities, who could make it easier for customers to stay with them through automatic renewals.

Renewable energy providers are operating on much tighter margins than state-sponsored utilities. Even if they were being forced to operate under the same rules, utilities have the financial wherewithal to absorb additional customer acquisition costs. Most renewable energy providers do not. Therefore, the playing field is again tilted in favor of the established providers and against newcomers like solar companies.

Finally, the new rules would clearly cause problems for the newly created community solar companies ready to take advantage of the promised state support under the Future Energy Jobs Act. One of the challenges community solar providers have is the necessity for long contracts (think 25-year PPAs as an example). That's often a much longer commitment than most community solar customers want to make. To entice them, many community solar providers will shorten the commitment to one or two years, using automatic renewals as the way to get that longer-term commitment once customers decide they are satisfied with their service. If you remove automatic renewals from community solar installations, those companies are back to arguing over 25-year commitments and frustrated consumers throwing up their hands and sticking with their traditional utility providers.

Ultimately, this is an underhanded way for utilities to keep the field tilted in their direction, and it's one solar advocates should work to stop. We'll be discussing this and other issues concerning the Illinois solar market at our upcoming SolarWakeup Live! event in Chicago on June 21. Tickets are going fast, so reserve your spot now. More: CleanChoice Energy poll finds majority of Illinois residents want clean energy option

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Let me start by stipulating that American jobs are important to me. Let me further stipulate U.S. manufacturing jobs are of particular importance to me. I come from blue-collar roots two generations back, and I am fully on board with keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States and using the levers of government, when necessary, to do so. But these tariffs on solar are killing me, and they are doing real harm to the industry. As we've reported, companies like Cypress Creek Renewables are canceling enormous numbers of projects, which means jobs not created and jobs lost. The "return" of solar manufacturing jobs in the module segment remains largely mythical, with gains being modest at best and nonexistent at worse. With each passing month, it becomes ever more clear that tariffs were the wrong governmental lever to pull to save the solar manufacturing industry. What, then, should government be doing instead? That's a question that has been kicked around here at SolarWakeup with its proprietor, Yann Brandt, who is far more involved in the financial end of solar than I have ever been (Yann has actually done deals; I've only written about them). And he has a proposal that sounds reasonable to me that I think is crazy enough it just might work: import license fees. The program would work like this: The U.S. government would add a 3-cent import license fee to every imported module. By our calculations, that would generate $300 million on every 10 GW of imported modules. Compared to the 30% tariffs importers are currently paying, that's a tiny drop in the bucket and might even allow an increase in inexpensive imports to come into the country. The flow of modules would reignite interest in projects currently in question and would stop the hemorrhaging of jobs from the downstream solar industry - where most of the jobs, as we've repeated ad nauseum, are. Once the money is collected, it could be distributed evenly across all module manufacturers on a simple formula: total money collected divided by the total number of watts produced. The resulting boon to the admittedly struggling U.S. module segment would allow for the companies to come up with the next revolutionary discovery that will reshape the solar industry not just in the United States but the world. Import license fees are a far more equitable, thoughtful and effective way of rebuilding the U.S. solar module manufacturing industry. But first, the tariffs have to go - and soon. Otherwise, not even license fees will stop the slowing of the project pipeline, damaging the industry for years to come. More: It’s Not Just Us: PRI Finds Trump’s Tariffs Are Tarnishing Solar’s Shine The Tariffs Are Taking A Devastating Toll 11 States To Feel Sting Of Cypress Creek Retrenchment Low And Behold, GOP Finds Solar Tariffs To Be A Bad Idea

The Bridge Fuel To Solar. Utilities and IPPs, like Vista Energy, are showing the future of the grid by announcing intentions to build more solar and less natural gas. If natural gas was the bridge fuel, the future costs of solar and storage may be the land on the other side of the moat. This is a space to keep your eyes on as a critical power market intent, especially when it comes from IPPs that benefit from more consumer retail choice. Having forward thinking allies on our side could be a great partnership in the future.
Policy Advocacy Works. SolarCity used to spend a ton of human and financial capital on policy in the US, on their own and in partnership with advocacy groups. Since the acquisition by Tesla, the company has been quieter on policy, not necessarily absent but a lot quieter. With the news out of Australia, it appears that it may be a US internal policy to stay out of the limelight but this is a great reminder that policy advocacy is an important part of our work. Can you commit one hour of legislative outreach in June? Meet with a State rep, Member of Congress or your mayor?
Great Benchmark In Haiti. Having lived in South Florida for most of my life it’s great to see some positive news out of Haiti. Glad to show off the results of solar leaders that have pushed for more solar to be built their and drive some economic growth in the space.
Cost Of Inaction. Trillions of lost economic growth due to inaction on climate issues. This is on top of the cost of inaction that drive more damage to our society and infrastructure. Pennywise, pound foolish is the saying you are looking for.
Taking It Up A Notch. Bam! Vote Solar, ELPC, SEIA, and others are appealing the Michigan commissions decision to approve the DTE natural gas plant. At the very least I hope that the legal tie-up lasts long enough for DTE to see the virtue in our argument and rescind the request to build the gas plant.

Have a great day!

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Have a great day!
Yann