Limited commentary this week as I am traveling in Europe.
Gutting the EPA. What the Trump administration has proposed as a budget for the EPA is nothing short of terrible. Anyone that can stand by that kind of cut is a special kind of person.
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The Common Ground. I get it, solar and utilities want to get along. Utilities don’t like the bad PR and solar is having a problem affording the policy battles.
Storage in NYC. Let’s fix the solar on rooftops problem in LA first because solar on roofs in Manhattan is probably a bit crazy. On the other hand, storage in the basement of each building would do much good for peak demand cuts and helping when grid needs some demand response.
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Cheers from Qatar. Watch for more rhetoric about tough trade talk from the folks at SolarWorld, as their Qatari backers appreciate it.
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That’s not how it is supposed to work. Solar is cheaper than the grid, Georgia Power is trying to sour the marketing value of solar by charging a premium.
The Climate Caucus. I love the idea of this bi-partisan caucus to educate the GOP members in Congress about the effects of climate change. However, there should be a cost of entry for members. Sponsors a bill, a real bill, to actually do something about this. Right now you are seeing coastal members in swing districts use this for political cover, don’t let them get away with it.
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Yann
Bannon vs. Tillerson. Who would have thought? The CEO of Exxon in the cabinet seemed like the worst thing ever (I still don’t condone or support it) but then the rest of the internal staff became public. Self described economic nationalist (i.e. I win if you lose), Stephen Bannon, hates the Paris Agreement and he is taking the argument to drop out to the Oval Office (SNL covered this a few weeks ago). Tillerson is on the other side of the table, as an engineer and the 41 year veteran of Exxon, I am glad to have that voice in our corner.
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Silevo your way to the door. Somewhat quietly, but not without anticipation, Silevo has been exited by Tesla. After missing several milestones, the investors will fail to receive further payments and Panasonic has taken control of the manufacturing plant. Toodles!
Yea, this happened. In the words of my favorite demi-god, Maui. Yes it's really me, Rick Perry, breathe it in. Enjoy this video, it’s a must watch resume for the Secretary of Energy.
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That didn’t take long. Just yesterday I made the case for picking up our fight for solar policy. Later that day, solar policy groups took a big loss in Arizona and are calling it a win. When it comes to policy or market dynamics, the test is whether or not the policy allows the market to grow going forward. If it fails the test, if it fails to allow more customers to exercise their choice to add solar, then the policy change is a loss. If, and I expect this to be the case, the solar industry saw no way to win any forward progress, a likely outcome in Arizona, and the deal on the table saved existing solar customers by grandfathering them for 20 years, then take the loss, give up and say the truth why you made the deal. The language outlining the deal was clearly agreed upon because all three press releases I saw had the same crappy language. It’s a loss folks, and that is unfortunate. We should fight with our greatest assets, our supporters by filling halls and streets with signs. Make it political. We lost against a company that is under grand jury investigation.
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A bull distracted by bright red colors. The headlines are never ending in Washington DC and when you get large cuts to the State Department, most of us are ignoring whatever is happening to DOE or EPA. We call it moving the goal posts because once State dollars come back, you feel like you’ve won and the environmental and energy lobby has lost. Heritage and Koch brothers are laser focused on executing their plant to undo everything possible when it comes to our industry.
New headline, old news. Reuters has the news from a filing about the 20% cut to the workforce at SolarCity. I can only presume that some was due to slowdown in markets like Arizona and Nevada and some from redundancies in the merger. The company still has 12,000 employees which isn’t a small number. Read the article and I don’t see more than that, but I could be wrong.
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Yann