Climate change

The 2016 US Presidential election is close – plenty of politics are swirling related to the solar power and renewable energy industries. Each of the candidates running for President have spoken specifically on solar power, with Clinton and Sanders expressly supporting significant growth. Sungevity has put together a fun tool that lets you tweet directly to your candidate the system size that Sungevity thinks would best fit on their residence. Raising awareness – one tweet at a time!
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According to a new research study, released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), your old solar modules will be worth $15 billion in recyclable material by the year 2050. This potential material influx could produce 2 billion new panels. IRENA estimates that PV panel waste, comprised mostly of glass, could total 78 million tonnes globally. This end of life recycling ability will help finance future solar growth, and – more importantly – when combined with current industry recyclability at 96% (goal of 100%) will mean that solar power has, beyond a doubt, environmental credibility.

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On May 26, 2016 – “U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Silicon Valley, Calif.)  introduced H.R. 5350, the bipartisan Energy Storage for Grid Resilience and Modernization Act. Honda was joined by Reps. Chris Gibson (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY) and Mark Takano (D-CA).” The purpose of the legislation is to clarify that energy storage industry receives a 30% tax credit equivalent in nature to what the Renewable Energy industry gets. The 30% Solar Power Tax Credit, is credited with being one of the major drivers for the solar power installation boom in the United States.

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GreentechMedia did the work to determine “Solar Made Up 64% of New Electric Generating Capacity in the US in Q1 2016.” This first quarter is part a potential 119% growth in the solar industry in 2016 – greater than $30 billion in revenue. And these announcements are on top of many other recent solar proclamations – 1,000,000 rooftops, record low pricing, leadership in jobs count and growth, whole countries running on renewables and more. With the Earth setting record warm months, every single month, its good that solar power is becoming sexy – but can we keep up the pace long enough to win the war?

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Yesterday, 9to5Mac.com reported that Apple Inc has founded a new, fully owned, subsidiary known as Apple Energy and that this entity had applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC regulates power companies) to be able to sell electricity and other power grid services to anyone that is not a public utility. Does this mean that you can now buy clean electricity made on the roof of the Apple Spaceship? Unless you are a large corporate electricity user within 10-30 miles, probably not. However if we step back and take a broader view, something interesting is happening – the likes of Apple, Google, Ikea and others including even Walmart are showing us a small piece of the future of much smarter electricity grid owned by many instead of the few.

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After our attempt at explaining the 500% markup on Apple’s new solar array yesterday, further information has now confirmed that Apple’s new stores – starting in the brand new San Francisco location – will be utilizing a new walkable solar glass floor technology for electricity generation. According to a document on Onyx Solar’s website, Apple “has decided to commit itself to OnyxSolar’s designer photvoltaic technology for its new stores. The first of these is located in the heart of San Francisco, the company’s home town.”

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Solar Power now has more employees than either the Oil & Gas or Coal Extraction industries in the United States. The solar industry employed approximately 208,000 individuals at the end of 2015 versus 185,000+ in oil and gas, or 190,000 in coal extraction. Solar power employment is expected to grow an additional 15% in 2016 to almost 240,000 individuals. Globally, solar power now directly employs 2.8 million people as the largest renewable energy employer.

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According to documents reviewed by Handelblatt, “it is likely that U.S. silicon supplier Hemlock will win a case it brought against Solarworld for allegedly not fulfilling a contract and claiming up to $770 million in damages.” SolarWorld recently reiterated their position that the probability of losing this case was ‘low.’ In earlier quarterly statements SolarWorld has also said that a victory by Hemlock is seen as, “possibly even threatening the continued existence of the company.” The verdict is expected on June 9, 2016.
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In the above image in 1900, we see that there is a single car out of many horse drawn carriages in New York City. Within thirteen years it transformed into one of many cars and one horse. Technology disruptions made this happen – and the evidence from the past several decades seems to show that battery pricing, electric car design, autonomous technologies and solar power are all about to hit their thirteen year strides.

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Legislators for the State of New York failed to move forward on a vote to deliver $485 million in funding to build out SolarCity’s Gigafactory in Buffalo. According to BuffaloNews, even though the project has been approved by the State Legislature as part of the much-heralded Buffalo Billion program, a three-person team has decided to not vote on the release of the next round of funding due to, “red flags were raised in the Legislature when the control board’s internal agenda document included vague language about future, undetermined beneficiaries.”

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It seems that whole cities are now going solar:

The Santa Monica City Council voted in April to approve an ordinance requiring rooftop solar systems for all new construction in the City of Santa Monica—both residential and commercial.

Santa Monica joins other California cities San Francisco, Lancaster and Sebastopol in implementing solar requirements at time of construction. The requirements will add between $3.27-3.54/sq ft in construction costs – 33-37% below current solar market prices. The energy savings will more than offset mortgage pricing increases – lowering ownership costs from day one.

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North Palm Beach, FL – 9.3kW PCM Solar, Renogy & SolarEdge built by Coronado Solar

Does Solar Power make sense for my roof?

Residential Solar Power is big time business – 2,099 MW at about $3.60/W means $7.6B in sales in the United States in 2015. SolarCity, the largest national installer at about 34% of all residential installs, is one among thousands of installers. In my home state of Massachusetts alone, there are greater than 400 companies and 15,000 employees involved in the solar power supply chain. Across the US, there are more employees in the solar power industry (200,000+ as of right now) than oil. And of course, we’ve recently crossed 1,000,000 residential solar power installs in the US. You might be among many considering this investment. Let’s get into the devilish details…

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Dovolenk, designed by Architect/Owner David Komonosky, engineered by Q3 Engineering and built by Meeker Homes. Hardware – Dual Axis Trackers by Deger, BYD Solar Modules, BAE Batteries and Schneider Inverters.

Engineering that is designed right, looks good and drives both economic and environmental benefits – that’s what solar power done well can be. A couple of common homeowner questions are how will these solar modules look and what’s going to happen to my property value?
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The White House announced today its plan for a proposed “21st Century Clean Transportation System”. The President’s plan will be part of the final proposed budget next week and will include over $300 billion in investments in mass transit systems, high-speed rail, self-driving cars, and other transportation systems aiming to reduce carbon emissions over the next 10 years.
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Just as the Climate-focussed COP21 conference in Paris is drawing to a close, Google has expanded its Project Sunroof tool to cover more metro areas across the US. If you’re thinking of installing solar panels on your home roof, you can now check Project Sunroof in a number of metro areas in California, Massachusetts, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, Colorado and North Carolina. Although no specific cities have been mentioned in the announcement, it’s safe to assume that any major cities in those states should now be covered…

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With the Paris climate talks taking place this week, I thought it fitting to share an idea I came up with a few years ago while visiting the French capital. ‘Moulin Eiffel’ is taking the 130-year old Eiffel Tower, the iconic symbol of Paris, and outfitting it with a vertical axis wind turbine. The idea is that the tower seen around the whole world would genuinely (not BS) become energy neutral and a symbol for a sustainable energy future.

I had originally considered the option of placing a traditional “windmill” on top of the tower like you increasingly see in farms around the world, but with all of the equipment located up there already plus factoring changing wind patterns and the all important aesthetics, the vertical model works the best. This is how:

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On the margins of the UN conference on climate change in Paris, Elon Musk was at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University yesterday for a talk about what can be done to curb CO2 emissions, which he followed with a Q&A with students.

The main point Musk was trying to make during the talk was that the fundamental problem with carbon emission is that companies are currently incentivized to use fossil fuels rather than sustainable energy. He argued that to end the incentives, you need to attach a price to carbon emissions, and the best way to that is to introduce a carbon tax.
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A group of activists called “Brandalism” installed hundreds of “fake ads” in Paris to protest against corporate greenwashing. The action is taking place during the climate talks in the French capital, which are being held at an airport and sponsored by an airline as well as energy companies, car manufacturers and banks.
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Tesla (and Space X CEO, Solar City Chairman) CEO Elon Musk made some important remarks yesterday at the “Business for Tomorrow” summit at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy yesterday. While the translations and the moderation/questions at the end are frustrating, Musk’s comments at the beginning are poignant.

On Refugees:

“Today’s refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change. Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe.”

On taking action:

I think it’s very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans. One that is almost impossible to reverse…

And where you could really feel some emotion:

If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It’s almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it’s, like 97 percent… So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, ‘Did nobody tell you?’

No, everyone was telling us. ‘

So why didn’t you do anything?’ What’s the answer?

…I think it’s very important that we do something.

The full video, queued up at Musk’s remarks is below:
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