Tag Archives: Daily Rundown

This is your SolarWakeup for January 24th, 2020

Sunrun CEO Speaks. Lynn Jurich gets the corner office treatment from the New York Times, conducting an interview to talk about her as a person and leader of the largest residential solar installer in the Country.

SEIA CEO Speaks. In an interview with Bloomberg, Abby Hopper talks about the ITC step-down, politics of solar and the opportunities that exist in the market.

Market Speaks. Thinking about the commercial distributed market, a market that has been struggling to find a real footing, it may be possible that storage creates a real certainty on value for the investor or business owner. What’s next for this space, especially the unrated portion of it, is what could create the largest solar opportunity in history of the US market.

EV Fleets Will Speak. The future of EVs and all the tangential markets it includes will require robust policy advocacy. The Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance will kick off the effort.

Opinion

Best, Yann

 

 

This is your SolarWakeup for January 23rd, 2020

Utility Activism. APS, the Arizona utility, announced a target of carbon-free by 2050 with some intermediate targets. Their CEO said “We don’t actually know how to get there right now,” which says a lot considering that solar plus storage is at record prices and Arizona consumers would be more than happy to do their part by putting solar and storage on their homes.

What Groups Say. Both SEIA and SEPA were quick to put out comments about the announcement. I was saddened to see that the statements were congratulatory in nature without pushing for more open access or firm technology outlines. In fact it is hard to differentiate the statements between the two groups when there should be. Solar, not smart, energy is going to be the way this gets done for APS consumers and other utilities around the Country. Giving that brand away without debate is bad marketing on our part.

Guess The Source. Here are the two statements. See if you can distinguish them, it shouldn’t be hard but it should be a lot easier. Note that neither makes reference to the consumers. “A number of major U.S. utilities have made commitments to carbon-free by 2050, but Arizona Public Service stands out in the crowd. While any carbon reduction commitment is laudable, APS is among the very small handful of utilities that have coupled their commitment with an aggressive but reasonable interim target and specific actions that demonstrate meaningful progress.” “The commitment that utilities are making to clean energy is reflective of plunging costs and a much stronger business case for going #solar.”

Money To Make It Real. Two groups that have been in the news in the past week are back at it by committing money to the cause, in different ways. BlackRock has backed European Climate Finance Group to build on their project portfolio, this is capital that isn’t novel but the timing makes last week’s shareholder letter backed by action. The other capital commit is from Microsoft, fresh off their carbon negative goal. The Carbon Negative Fund is capitalized at $1billion for carbon capture, reduction and removal technologies. Let’s see what they get into. 

Opinion

Best, Yann

 

 

This is your SolarWakeup for January 22nd, 2020

Tres Commas. Bloomberg is highlighting some success stories in the ‘green’ sectors. Solar has been an industry where people have done well but we don’t have a solar billionaire as of yet. Who will it be and how will they use that wealth to advance the industry? If you think you can be that person, come on the podcast.

Green Coffee. Starbucks announced their headline carbon initiative, to lower their emissions by 50% by 2030. Unlike tech companies, I find their path much more complex given their distributed footprint and shear quantity of waste and plastics. That being said, their transition to non straw tops happened very quickly so maybe the company embraces change along with their customers. Knowing that the outcome is the right thing to achieve, I look forward to learning how the company executes and how solar plays a role. Maybe this is an interesting solar hot water integration.

Opinion

Best, Yann

 

 

This is your SolarWakeup for January 21st, 2020

Schmoozing In Davos. The World Economic Forum starts today and climate change is going to be a central topic. The conversation between JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, and BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, should go something like this. Climate change is a real problem but can you believe that we get to invest trillions of dollars to solve this for the world? Coal plants are not investable anymore and unless a regulator will guarantee a double digit return, I won’t even invest in a natural gas plant. The only thing worth anything on those plants is the interconnection so we can put giant batteries there.

In Reality. This is clearly the investment thesis that others are seeing. Bay Area VCs are hailing climate tech as the trillion dollar opportunity as well. On the other hand, we have’t gotten to that point yet, the conversations in Davos will be more scientific which isn’t necessarily a bad thing so that folks can be educated on the situation. That education will let deals get to the point of being seen. Once they are seen, investors will see the economic case without needing the environmental influence to say yes.

Without The Markets. One of the key regulatory intersections to deploy the capital into projects is the lack of open markets. Advocates are playing by the rules to try and make these markets more open but they are in a fight against well run monopolies that know not to give an inch. From a political standpoint, it creates a catch-22 for politicians that either want to see more renewables or those that favor free market capitalism.

What’s Next. What else do you want to see from SolarWakeup? Different type of content, events or medium? What has been published from this platform that you want to see more of? In the mood for some feedback and community brainstorming. 

Opinion

Best, Yann