Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for December 2nd, 2020

Two Bills Become One. Senator McConnell is laying the path for the covid stimulus to be rolled into the omnibus spending bill which is needed to fund the government beyond December 11th. Romney had earlier stated that there’s a covid path at a $900billion mark including the reuse of the unused treasury slush fund. McConnell is signaling the pathway towards something I find rather positive, the spending bill will get bigger and more important. In DC, the bigger the price tag the better especially if it does things voters require of legislators like save the economy from a recession, send them money and fund the military. The most important part is that voters do not distinguish between $3 or $4trillion dollars, it’s a lot of money any way you look at it. What nobody has said yet is talk of tax extenders or continuing resolution. It seems to me that McConnell isn’t interested in pushing this to the new Congress (Georgia runoffs pending and new members with agendas) and a Biden White House. Watch this space for the next week, some action alerts may be coming your way.

A New FERC. Allison Clements and Mark Christie have been confirmed as new FERC commissioners. Ms. Clements is well regarded from inside the clean tech sector and is touted on Twitter having been active on the wonky #energytwitter prior to her nomination. Mr. Christie is also seen as a solid interpreter of the rules and regulations governing the energy markets and this is coming from a former regulator. This may setup a decent starting point for the Biden administration especially, as one would assume, a review of the MOPR is brought back to the docket amongst other things.

Climate Investing Tool. BlackRock is showing some professional chops today. On Monday, Brian Deese was announced as a Biden appointee who comes from BlackRock as the Global Head of Sustainable Investments and is under some, albeit tempered, fire from the progressives. Yesterday, BlackRock is enhancing its ESG credibility with a investment tool that will analyze companies based on internal and external sources on how able to withstand climate change. Aladdin Climate will rank companies on how well they do against climate goals set forth. The head of the tool is Mary-Catherine Lader, her (former) boss is Brian Deese.

Dealflow For Investors. Third Derivative is a venture/incubator spun out by RMI and New Energy Nexus which launched with almost 50 invested companies this week. Their LPs are many of the corporates that like the space but don’t get the deal flow and ability to invest at the lower dollar amounts that many of these companies need at the early stages. A $5million check for an oil major doesn’t pay the legal fees so a platform like Third Derivative makes sense.

Polluters Must Fund. Abandoned and capped wells across the Country are polluting the environment around them and that’s a problem. While some see an opportunity to clean it up, the Department of Justice, EPA and Interior need to be finding those that have commitments to those wells and landowners and ensure that they pay for the entirety of an investment gone back.

Solar For Clubs. My friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) have seen an uptick in interest for solar PPAs from schools, country clubs, and golf courses, as these off-takers have been impacted differently than other C&I energy consumers during the COVID-19 crisis. Golf & Country Clubs have seen increased revenue from golf and other outdoor activities, while schools would install solar while students aren’t on school grounds. In both scenarios, savings from a solar PPA are extremely attractive.Click here to learn more about how their subscription-free, proprietary software, the SCF suite, can help to speed up your PPA pricing and transaction process.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for December 1st, 2020

Big Solar Tech Money. Aurora, the design software company, added $50million in new capital from in their series B after raising $20million in their series A from 2018. From my memory, this could be the biggest software capital raise in our sector. Will be exciting to see what this runway does for the company.

We’re Adding Decimals. The scale of our industry is getting to a point where some of us have to recalibrate our minds. Take for example, the size of the securitizations in residential solar finance or the contracts for tracker supply in the utility scale sector. It seems that rather quickly, everything moved over one decimal and it feels like things are just getting warmed up.

What Grid Is Needed? Aside from the transition from gas to electric vehicles electricity consumption is going to stay largely flat or drop going forward. There have been hundreds of gigawatts of new gas plants with little talk about new grid infrastructure, why does renewable addition all of a sudden needs hundreds of billions in new investments? I have no problem in planning for a new 21st century grid, but that shouldn’t be a cost burden placed on solar and renewables. There is plenty of capacity coming offline that leaves room for new resources.

Biden’s Climate Advisor Pick. Brian Deese is joining the National Economic Council as Biden’s pick and is seen to be the inside man for climate. Deese is getting some negative feedback from the left because he works at Blackrock. The purity test is not for me, I’ve seen lots of solar enabled thanks to capital provided by firms like Blackrock and solar pros going to work at these firms. They, as Deese did, are creating internal pressure to expand ESG capital commitments and increased focus. Note that he comes with a quasi endorsement from Bill McKibben, who happened to perform Deese’s marriage ceremony.

Solar For Clubs. My friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) have seen an uptick in interest for solar PPAs from schools, country clubs, and golf courses, as these off-takers have been impacted differently than other C&I energy consumers during the COVID-19 crisis. Golf & Country Clubs have seen increased revenue from golf and other outdoor activities, while schools would install solar while students aren’t on school grounds. In both scenarios, savings from a solar PPA are extremely attractive.Click here to learn more about how their subscription-free, proprietary software, the SCF suite, can help to speed up your PPA pricing and transaction process.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for November 30th, 2020

Closing 2020. I still have the Thanksgiving coast this afternoon and I hope you enjoyed your long weekend in your best way possible. Yes it was different but maybe it brought you back to some level of comfort. We’re four weeks out from closing the book on 2020 and I start thinking about lists and the big stories of the year, what a year to think back on for solar. It’s also a time to do the 2021 forecast: who, what, when, where and why. Start pondering and we’ll exchange notes. If anyone has great gift ideas for a 10, 9 and 4 year old that incorporates solar, I’d love to hear them.

One Big Thing. With 236GW worth of coal capacity still online, many of which have a retirement date let’s look at the two attributes that are still valuable beyond the retirement but are not valued by anyone in the grid operations. Until the moment we start valuing, with real dollars, these two things, we will have a hard time actually closing these power plants that are polluting communities around the Country. First, the interconnection is incredibly valuable. If the land allows, connecting a new power generation to that interconnection point is the cleanest and cheapest way to operation. If the land is not there, like a downtown peaker plant for example, it’s a great energy storage connection point. Second, unused grid capacity. If a coal plant goes out of service the same capacity should be allowed to reconnect with a fast track interconnection. The way it works today is solar or other generation that applies to connect to a certain point of interconnection that has a coal plant on it, even if the coal plant is scheduled to close, grid operations do not remove that existing capacity. That results in large interconnection fees and new power lines required for the new generation even though they are filling a gap. If we just offset coal plants in the next 5 years, solar would grow at rates never seen before.

Solar For Clubs. My friends at Sustainable Capital Finance (SCF) have seen an uptick in interest for solar PPAs from schools, country clubs, and golf courses, as these off-takers have been impacted differently than other C&I energy consumers during the COVID-19 crisis. Golf & Country Clubs have seen increased revenue from golf and other outdoor activities, while schools would install solar while students aren’t on school grounds. In both scenarios, savings from a solar PPA are extremely attractive.Click here to learn more about how their subscription-free, proprietary software, the SCF suite, can help to speed up your PPA pricing and transaction process.

Opinion

Best, Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for November 24th, 2020

What We Know. The GSA has authorized the funds for the Biden transition team to receive the funds and access to start the transition. It also appears that Trump authorized this move in the closest we’ve come to a conclusion to the election. States have begun certifying their elections including PA, MI and GA while California does so on the 11th of December, 3 days before the electoral college meets on the 14th. Remember, the Government runs out of money on the 11th of December unless Congress passes a budget or continuing resolution (CR) which would require Trump’s signature unless a veto override takes place.

Climate Change Is National Security. John Kerry is returning to the White House as special presidential envoy for climate. This is a new cabinet level role for the former Senator and Secretary of State and will sit as a full member of the national security council. Kerry capped his time at State with the Paris agreement and founded the global organization, world war zero. This elevates climate to a security role and opens the dialogue that foreign policy has to take the issue into account. Some are unhappy with the status quo message of Kerry taking the lead but you have to assume he hits the ground running with decades of relationships with foreign political and corporate leaders.

Look For A Domestic Equal. It is expected that another climate leader will be added to the White House to coordinate across the agencies on the domestic front. If you step back, you understand that ever cabinet secretary has a portfolio of policies that impact climate change and some coordination needs to take place. We still have no nomination for energy, transportation, interior or EPA. Expect that to give us more color going forward.

Subsidies? You’re Joking. It is laughable to say we are going to subsidize climate change away, at best we are going to let climate change solutions play on an equal playing field. Not even the subsidies that solar and wind get are on par with what oil and gas get and have been getting for decades, long after reaching maturity and never paying their share for the damage they’ve caused the planet. Utilities still receive guaranteed rate base for natural gas plants that are subsidized from the shale to the pipeline and the stack, leaving consumers and neighbors to pay for the damage. Renewables need no subsidies, as long as no other fuels and incumbents get them either and societal costs are factored in.

What Does GM Know? GM seems to think that Biden is thinking big about electric transportation, doing a big leap in acknowledging the future is all electric. In that press release, GM also dropped its support for Trumps fight against California and the state’s ability to regulate auto emissions separately. This could be as simple as shifting with the wind but could also mean that Biden is about to double down on California’s 2035 goal of no more internal combustion sales. The leader in California on the trend to electrify transportation both consumer, fleet and mass transit has been Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board. She was an assistant administrator at the EPA for President Clinton and would look great in the administrator’s office for President Biden. Maybe GM knows more than they let on?

Happy Thanksgiving! SolarWakeup is off for the rest of the week, returning on the 30th. You can stay in touch with us on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter @yannbrandt. Of course, you can always hit reply to the morning email and let me know your thoughts. I’d be extra thankful if you forward this email and ask someone to subscribe to the newsletter.

When Will It Build? Here’s the question I have been pondering for a few weeks. If someone signs a contract to put solar on your house, when do you tell them it will be installed? How sure are you that enough product will be available when install time comes? We are entering the most complex 2 quarters residential solar has ever seen, backlogs are at an all-time high and supply chains are very tight. The Buyer’s Group is working through this and would love to talk with you about it. Reach out on the price discovery page. 

Opinion

Best, Yann