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Electrek morning green energy brief: Big business coming together, Solar+Storage at 11¢/kWh, UAE investing $161B and more!

LowCarbonUSA.org – “We, the undersigned members in the business and investor community of the United States, re-affirm our deep commitment to addressing climate change through the implementation of the historic Paris Climate Agreement.”

There is a lot of money in the energy industry. There are a lot of costs associated with combating the pollution and health effects of burning fossil fuels (climate change not even considered). These costs are mitigated in courts and industries forced to pay for these costs via political back and forth that lead toward laws. The Paris Agreement will drives significant investment, globally, in cleaner energy sources. Corporate America has interests in both sides of the argument.

Next Friday, game on…

Hawaiian Island signs deal for solar power + energy storage at 11¢/kWh – Energy storage plus solar power at 11 cents per kilowatt hour! Damn right. These types of numbers are what will drive change – hard core economically minded decisions. We should watch what Hawaii has going on.

OECD countries grew their economies 16% in last decade – and cut greenhouse gas emissions 6.4% – While developed countries were further growing their economies with post-industrial work – services – much of their high carbon manufacturing moved globally. What has remained in those countries is much cleaner and much more efficient – kudos to them. Now we need see that clean economy move globally (or move from China to us with their billions being invested). It doesn’t matter that OECD was able to cut their emissions if OECD doesn’t help China and, soon, India cut their emissions. The key argument we’re hoping to answer is that we can grow economically without increasing emissions – and we see a definite path forward for that.

For Small Commercial Solar to Succeed, Financiers Need to Be Service Providers—Not Just Brokers: I’m reading these articles because 9-5 I’m in solar power sales (Brightergy) focused specifically on small commercial. I started in residential, moved to the big show with Beaumont Solar – only 500kW and up – and settled in the 25-250kW range. And guess what – the main differences have come to be in how the projects are financed. The big projects get a bit more complex in wiring, the little projects need streamlinging and efficiency – and the middle projects need consistent finance support – our office has a solution we think we really like, but even that is new!

UAE to invest $161B in clean energy – A country awash in oil is making a change. Time is ticking on their cash cow – and they know it. Besides – even in the best of oil times there are still market lows that can last for decades, thus the constant chatter of diversification.

2.4 GW of wind power coming to NY State off shore – Rhode Island built it, Massachusetts said they’d do 1.6MW and now New York is brining 2.4W to the table. Rock on!

Picture of the day – perovskite solar cell layers. Check out the Nature Energy twitter feed today – lots of cool solar research published today.

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