A CODEL Success. A congressional delegation is on its way to Puerto Rico to see what the State of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure is after years of natural disaster including earthquakes over the past few months. One of the major power plants on the island is offline and power lines are still struggling to keep up. Solar with storage is playing a big role to keep essential operations running but we still need to do more for the people.

Coronavirus’ Unknown State Or Impact. I try to ignore things I can’t control and epidemics tend to scare me even more than other things. It’s hard to understand how the tragedy is unfolding in China and how it will be solved with minimal loss of life. On the other hand, there is a potential and likely impact to the solar market due to delays and slower reopening of Chinese factories post Chinese New Year. 

The BP Announcement. BP announced a series of climate related goals last week, the one making most headlines is net zero emissions by 2050. On the high end, this is a step in the right direction, it surely helps the cause of solving climate change. On the flip side, the question is what steps will BP take and what are the intermediary steps between now and then.

People Talking Climate. Americans want Government to do more to solve climate change and pollsters try to divide the Country by trying to get us to agree on the words used to define the change. Global warming, climate change, renewable energy, fossil fuels, pollution are all words in an incredibly complicated ecosystem. The politics is what gets us to move forward and that’s where the words matter but the people could care less about what you call it, they just want it solved. They want solar on every home, solar on every building and lower electric bills. At the end of the day, that’s something a pollster can’t get us to be divided on. 

• PV-Tech: China’s solar industry getting back to work as logistical constraints emerge
• Rocky Mountain Institute: BP’s Bold Zero-Carbon Pledge Is Only the Beginning
• Axios: The widening partisan divide on climate change
• Utility Dive: Virginia approves 100% clean energy legislation, pushing state toward 2.4 GW storage, RGGI
• WV News: WV Senate passes bill to encourage solar energy
• PV-Magazine: New Jersey calls for 14 GW more solar through 2035
• Los Angeles Times: Would a California takeover of PG&E make energy cheaper and safer? Maybe not

Opinion

• Greentech Media: What BP Can Learn From Orsted: The Route to Low-Carbon Profits

Best, Yann

Happy Solar Valentine’s Day. What in solar makes your heart flutter right now? For me it’s earnings season and it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the companies that are public and the decisions they are making.

New Home No Brainer. As the California new home mandate rolls out, the market will discover how easy and cheap it is to put solar on a home while building it. Wait to see how many other States look at this and say, of course we should do that. More importantly, builders are going to realize that they don’t need a mandate to make it their standard process.

Doubtful With A Chance? Senators from both parties sat down with advocates of the carbon tax/carbon dividend. This is one of those policies that would be great to see but I have no idea how it would ever get into law. But here we are on Valentine’s Day, taking an arrow to the heart.

Change One Legislator, Change The Future.Virginia is about to pass its most prominent energy policy ever. All because voters and organizers moved the State legislature over to the other party. As an industry, we should be selfish this election season. SEIA should send out surveys to every candidate in America just like the Realtor’s do and the NRA does. They should also include the Solar Pledge in the survey for the candidates that want to stand with us and in return we will stand with them.

• PV-Magazine: California’s solar mandate to deliver more than 1 GW
• Axios: Senators huddle over dinner with carbon-tax backers
• PV-Tech: Solar industry hails Virginia’s passing of landmark green economy bill
• Solar Power World: MCE becomes first CCA to require pollinator-friendly solar projects
• Greentech Media: A Revamped SunPower Looks to Get a Handle on Its Commercial Solar Business in 2020
• GreenBiz: Watch these four clean energy trends in U.S. cities

Opinion

• Utility Dive: Why DTE Energy gets failing grades on its 15-year energy plan

Best, Yann

More Tomorrow For Friday Rundown. Lots in corporate news today, need to reflect on what if anything this means. 

• Axios: BP vows to “fundamentally” change with net-zero emissions target
• PV-Tech: Innogy brings 770MW of solar, wind to DNV GL platform for corporate buyers
• Greentech Media: SunPower Begins 2020 on a High, with Profitable Quarter and 2019
• Utility Dive: Dominion Energy sets 2050 net-zero carbon goal, buys Southern’s stake in Atlantic Coast Pipeline
• Salina Post: Hedge fund pushes Kan. utility away from coal, toward wind, solar
• Times Free Press: TVA turns to the sun for more power but shifts its focus from rooftop solar to large-scale projects
• Tampa Bay Times: Florida lawmakers take aim at consumer advocate who has pushed back against utilities
• PV-Magazine: Jinko Solar, China dominate module shipment totals again in 2019

Opinion

• Grist: The biggest municipal solar farm in the U.S. is coming to … Cincinnati?

Best, Yann

Growth Without Pollution. With positive GDP growth across the world last year it is a departure from the norm that global emissions were flat. Still, with 33.3 gigatonnes of CO2 output, there is more work to do but when the economy grows it has always been the case that emissions do as well. This means that business health is diverging from climate sickness and that’s a step into the right direction.

The Kitchen Sink SolarCo. Real Good Solar has tried it all in the nearly 50 years that it has been around. Going public more than 10 years proved to change the path for the company from which it had difficulty recovering from and ultimately led it to the end last month when it closed the doors and filed for bankruptcy. Over the past decade the RGS got into solar shingles/tiles and even hoped to be a reverse merger vehicle for utility scale solar companies hoping to get public quickly. The OG solar guard will remember RGS as something much bigger and important than those that only encountered the most recent iteration but future solar pros will have to read the history books to learn the name.

4X But More To Come. New estimates show a step growth in residential energy storage in California this year up to 50,000 units to be installed. Let’s be real, that’s nothing compared to where we are going. First, the attachment rate is going to continue to climb but more importantly the retrofit market for adding storage to existing solar is going to be huge. Look to see what percentage of storage goes to existing solar. 

• Axios: Global CO2 emissions were flat in 2019
• Greentech Media: From Backwoods to Bankrupt – The Rise and Fall of Real Goods Solar
• PV-Magazine: Explosive growth – BNEF expects California residential battery installations to quadruple this year
• NPR: Why Cheap Solar Could Save the World
• Solar Power World: DOE announces 20 new competitors for Round 3 of American-Made Solar Prize
• Utility Dive: FERC’s Order 841 ‘essential’ for energy storage to cut emissions, the attorneys general argue
• Renew Economy: Wind, solar projects warned of seven-year delays in Victoria, NSW
• GreenBiz: The car industry might be putting the brakes on the corporate rollout of EVs

Opinion

• Grist: Most teachers don’t talk about climate change in the classroom. Washington state is trying to fix that.

Best, Yann