Greed and NV

http://www.getsolarize.com/how-solar-tariffs-will-hurt-solar-growth-state-by-state/

Forecast Shows How Solar Tariffs Will Hurt Growth, State by State

Which states will be hit hardest by Trump’s solar tariffs? A new analysis reveals how the Trump administration’s recently imposed solar tariffs could hinder installations at the state level. The tariffs are predicted to reduce the projected pipeline of new solar construction in the U.S. by 7.6 gigawatts over the next 5 years[…]

Click here to view original web page at www.greentechmedia.com

As the country’s largest solar market, California stands to lose the most from the 30 percent tariff, with an expected 1,079-megawatt decline in new solar capacity between 2018 and 2022. California is trailed by Texas and Florida, which are expected to lose 674 megawatts and 513 megawatts, respectively.

Nationally, the GTM Research analysis shows that utility-scale solar will bear the brunt of the losses, accounting for 65 percent of the anticipated decline.

                                  States won’t feel the full impact of the tariffs until next year, as older projects wrap up and stockpiles of modules begin to dwindle. U.S. companies currently have at least 2 gigawatts of tariff-free modules reserved for 2018 projects.

“I know of no project, at this point, that is not going to be built because of the tariffs,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Association. ”People are scrappy, and they can come up with ways to get the job done.”

San Jose-based manufacturer SunPower announced last week that it was suspending $20 million in investments, which would have created hundreds of jobs at its facilities in California and Texas. SunPower makes its high-efficiency solar modules in Mexico and Malaysia, both of which are subject to the new import tariffs. The company is one of many asking the Trump administration to exclude its product from the new trade measures.

“Any increase in solar costs will have an impact on participation in ERCOT, so it’s certainly a challenge,” said Charlie Hemmeline, the executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association. ERCOT operates the Texas electric grid and manages the deregulated market for most of the state.

Hemmeline said he hasn’t heard of any pending job cuts yet and continues to feel optimistic despite the new tariffs. “We’ve got all the fundamentals that you need here, with the land, the sun and the economics that will make this work.”

The percentages tell a different story. While installations are expected to drop by about 11 percent nationally, California, Delaware and North Carolina should only see modest declines of 7 percent. Texas is only slightly above average, with losses coming in at 13 percent.

At the other end of the spectrum, Montana’s solar market is predicted to plummet by nearly 50 percent.

“Montana is going to be creamed because Montana, as a state, doesn’t do anything to drive renewable energy,” said Del Chiaro.

                                      The reason for the dramatic differences between states can be attributed to regional market size and local renewable energy policies. New and emerging state solar markets are disproportionately affected by the tariffs, with Southern states like Texas, Florida and South Carolina among the most significantly impacted. States with strong renewable portfolio standards are among the least sensitive to the trade measures.

“There’s no meaningful impact in California,” said Morten Lund, a solar industry attorney for Stoel Rives. “They could put a 1,000 percent tariff on solar, and we would still be doing solar in California. The political will for solar here is incredibly strong and powerful.”

California’s has a 50 percent renewable energy target on the books for 2030, as well as a 1,300-megawatt storage target.

A 7 percent decline in new solar installations could still translate into significant job losses for the state. The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that tariffs will cause the loss of roughly 23,000 American jobs this year alone, and nearly 40 percent of solar jobs are in California.

Montana and Idaho top the list for solar demand loss by percentage, largely due to changes state legislators made to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, or PURPA. By shortening the length of PURPA contracts for solar projects, the states made it difficult for developers to receive financing due to price uncertainty.

“I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as bad as folks think it’s going to be,” predicted Scot Arey, owner of Solar CenTex, a small-scale installer in central Texas. “If Texas electricity prices start rising, and I think they will, then residential installers are going to be just fine.”

Texas, which currently lacks an RPS and has no default net metering policies, is expected to see a 17 percent decline in residential installations, the second highest in the nation. Pennsylvania tops the list with a projected 27 percent decline. In terms of absolute megawatts, major residential state markets in California and the Northeast will see the largest declines.

The U.S. solar market is expected to lose almost 5 gigawatts of utility-scale installations. To replace the lost capacity, wind installations could increase by nearly 800 megawatts from 2018 to 2021, according to an analysis by MAKE Consulting. Most of the new wind additions are forecast for Texas, California and Western states that need to meet renewable energy targets.

Natural gas could also capture some lost solar demand, but many PV projects are likely to be delayed rather than replaced by another power source, said Cory Honeyman, a solar analyst with GTM Research.

“This just pushes out certain utilities’ procurement timelines for large-scale solar from the 2019 to 2021 timeframe to 2022 and 2023, as the tariffs expire altogether,” said Honeyman.

The 30 percent tariff is scheduled to phase down by 5 percent annually over a four-year period. That translates into an average 10-cent per watt increase in year-one prices for modules, stepping down to a 4-cent per watt premium by year four.

Even with the new tariffs, GTM Research expects the industry to deploy more than 10 gigawatts of solar installations in the U.S. this year and 11.9 gigawatts next year, with continuous growth through 2022. But that growth will be at a slower pace than initially expected.

http://www.getsolarize.com/trumps-tax-on-solar-power-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

Trump's Tax on Solar Power: Here's What You Need to Know

Trump signing the trade action that imposes tariffs on imported solar panels. President Donald Trump has imposed a 30 percent tax on imported solar panels, a move that’s expected to pull the plug on tens of thousands of American jobs, while slowing the rush to renewable energy and rewarding […]

Click here to view original web page at www.rollingstone.com

America First? The solar tax announcement came down Monday from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative – during the government shutdown – followed by a quiet White House signing ceremony Tuesday. Solar manufacturers in the U.S. had been “decimated” by unfair trade, Trump said, arguing the new tax means “those companies will be coming back strong.”

The lack of fanfare was from the White House was curious. Taxing solar imports is one of the first concrete implementations of Trump’s “America First” trade agenda. And Trump himself had been badgering senior staff to, “Bring me some tariffs!”

But taxing solar panel imports is not a clear political victory for the president – underscoring the reality that U.S. trade policy is far more complex than Trump’s bumper-sticker sloganeering. “It boggles my mind that this president – any president, really – would voluntarily choose to damage one of the fastest-growing segments of our economy,” Tony Clifford, chief development officer of Standard Solar, a leading installer, told reporters. “This decision is misguided and denies the reality that bankrupt foreign companies will be the beneficiaries.”

American Plants, Foreign Owners The solar trade dispute came to a head last year, when two distressed companies that manufacture solar panels in the United States filed a trade complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent federal agency. The flood of cheap solar panels produced by Chinese-owned solar firms across Asia, the companies argued, had unfairly undercut their businesses.

Suniva and Solar World were not wrong about solar panel dumping: The ITC ruled, unanimously, that the companies had been harmed by low-cost imports, and recommended in October that tariffs be imposed. Under U.S. trade law, the ITC’s recommendation is non-binding. The final decision to impose an import tax fell to the president himself – leading to Monday’s decision.

At first glance, Trump appeared to have been given a golden political opportunity to protect American manufacturers and U.S. jobs. But the big picture is far muddier: Despite manufacturing in the United States, the two companies at the heart of the trade dispute are not American. Suniva, which operates in Georgia, is Chinese owned. Solar World, producing in Oregon, is a German concern. Both operations are highly automated – employing only hundreds of Americans. And both have been kept afloat by large taxpayer subsidies – about which Republicans have long cried foul.

The Solar Boom If the flood of cheap imported panels harmed a few domestic manufacturers, the same imports created a much greater solar boom in America. Solar energy has become cost-competitive with coal. It is now being adopted even in red states that lack renewable energy mandates – purely on the economics. Florida Power & Light, for example, recently announced it has shuttered an aging coal plant in favor of four new solar farms, featuring more than 1 million panels combined.

The solar industry today employs 260,000 Americans – more than twice the number of jobs in the coal industry – including in unexpected places like Mississippi and Alabama. That total covers more than 38,000 American manufacturing jobs, for workers who make “racking” equipment needed to mount solar panels or high-tech inverters required to integrate solar power to the electrical grid.

Trump’s “Lose-Lose” Decision Trump’s solar tariff lasts four years. It starts with a 30 percent tax on imported solar panels in the first year. The tax drops by five percentage points each year afterward. (The decision also allows the first 2.5 gigawatts of imported panels to enter America, tax free – or about a fifth of what the U.S. imported in 2016.)

Trump’s tariff numbers left many in the industry scratching their heads. The tax was lower than what the ITC had advised (up to 35 percent) and the tax-free exemption was more than double ITC’s recommendation. MJ Shiao, a top solar analyst for GTM Research, said that many will see the decision as a “lose-lose”: It will slow solar deployment in America without guaranteeing a future for domestic solar panel manufacturing. (Despite their ostensible victory, both Solar World and Suniva were tepid in their endorsement of Trump’s decision. They had been seeking an import tax of 50 percent.)

A Victory for Coal In fact, the biggest winner from Trump’s decision appears to be a party that wasn’t involved in the trade case at all: The fossil-fuel industry. According to GTM, Trump’s tariff will block 7.6 gigawatts of solar from being installed through 2022 — roughly twice what’s currently installed in Arizona — primarily by deterring utilities from building new solar farms. In turn, this will extend reliance on older, more polluting generations like coal-fired power plants.

Clean Gigawatts and Jobs Squandered Trump’s solar tax will cost 23,000 jobs this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, and ultimately prevent 1.2 million homes from being powered by solar. “This case will not keep foreign-owned Suniva and SolarWorld afloat,” argued Abigail Ross Hopper, the solar trade group’s CEO. But it will, she added, “create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving” and “ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs.”

Ironically, Trump’s decision hits workers in “new and emerging state solar markets” in red America hardest, “with southern states like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina among the most impacted by the tariffs,” according to GTM.

Trump’s decision to tax solar power is seen as a betrayal by solar advocates who supported his candidacy. Debbie Dooley is one of the founders of the Tea Party, and was an ardent Trump supporter. (“Tears of joy started falling from heaven right after Trump was sworn in. #MAGA,” she tweeted during the inauguration.)

http://www.getsolarize.com/todays-energy-jobs-are-in-solar-not-coal/

Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal

Last year, the solar industry employed many more Americans than coal, while wind power topped 100,000 jobs.

Those numbers come from a Department of Energy report published in January by the Obama administration that provides the most complete picture available of American energy employment.

Click here to view original web page at www.nytimes.com

In 2016, 1.9 million Americans were employed in electric power generation, mining and other fuel extraction activities, according to the report – a field we’ll call power creation for short.

More than 373,000 Americans worked part or full time in solar energy, and just over 260,000 of them – or about 70 percent – spent a majority of their time on solar projects.

Most solar energy jobs were in installation, construction and manufacturing, as the relatively new industry continued to add capacity. Solar power still generated a small share of United States energy output last year.

The coal industry, which has shed jobs since 2012, primarily due to competition from cheap natural gas, employed just over 160,000 workers nationwide. About 54,000 coal jobs were in mining.

It’s important to note that power creation isn’t the only source of energy employment. The Energy Department report found another 2.3 million jobs in energy transmission, storage and distribution, a number that includes powerline and pipeline workers and more than 900,000 retail jobs, such as gas station workers and fuel dealers. If non-traditional energy workers are included in the mix – those involved in manufacturing and installing energy-efficient products – the total number of energy-related jobs swells to 6.4 million.

Of course, energy jobs aren’t equally distributed throughout the country.

Solar has more jobs across the country, but coal is a more important employer in some states.

Midwest and Great Plains states had the highest rates of wind energy employment. The region has been leading the way on renewable power generation thanks to its strong wind resources.

http://www.getsolarize.com/todays-energy-jobs-are-in-solar-not-coal/

Today’s Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal

Last year, the solar industry employed many more Americans than coal, while wind power topped 100,000 jobs.

Those numbers come from a Department of Energy report published in January by the Obama administration that provides the most complete picture available of American energy employment.

Click here to view original web page at www.nytimes.com

In 2016, 1.9 million Americans were employed in electric power generation, mining and other fuel extraction activities, according to the report – a field we’ll call power creation for short.

More than 373,000 Americans worked part or full time in solar energy, and just over 260,000 of them – or about 70 percent – spent a majority of their time on solar projects.

Most solar energy jobs were in installation, construction and manufacturing, as the relatively new industry continued to add capacity. Solar power still generated a small share of United States energy output last year.

The coal industry, which has shed jobs since 2012, primarily due to competition from cheap natural gas, employed just over 160,000 workers nationwide. About 54,000 coal jobs were in mining.

It’s important to note that power creation isn’t the only source of energy employment. The Energy Department report found another 2.3 million jobs in energy transmission, storage and distribution, a number that includes powerline and pipeline workers and more than 900,000 retail jobs, such as gas station workers and fuel dealers. If non-traditional energy workers are included in the mix – those involved in manufacturing and installing energy-efficient products – the total number of energy-related jobs swells to 6.4 million.

Of course, energy jobs aren’t equally distributed throughout the country.

Solar has more jobs across the country, but coal is a more important employer in some states.

Midwest and Great Plains states had the highest rates of wind energy employment. The region has been leading the way on renewable power generation thanks to its strong wind resources.

New Post has been published on http://www.getsolarize.com/politicians-attack-solar-energy/

Lobbyists and politicians attacking solar energy

Solar power’s rise has felt unstoppable. Clean energy development has shattered records for years. And new figures show the U.S. solar energy market experienced more record growth in the second quarter of 2017. Solar made up 22 percent of new electric capacity this year. But the game’s far from over […]

Click here to view original web page at www.cnbc.com

There are signs that rooftop solar may be feeling the effects of political attacks. Those attacks could hinder efforts to fight climate change and reduce the resiliency of America’s power grid.

As we witness the violent effects of climate change across the country – from rampant, destructive wildfires to back-to-back, devastating hurricanes – our elected leaders should be doing all they can to rapidly transition away from dirty fuel sources.

Instead, politicians influenced by fossil fuel and utility companies are working feverishly to stifle renewable energy growth.

In 2015, Nevada lawmakers passed a bill that allowed utilities to charge rooftop solar customers extra. The state’s solar industry was effectively frozen as a result. Within a month three major solar companies, SolarCity, Sunrun and Vivint, announced they were forced to leave the state and terminate hundreds of jobs.

In Florida, customers can only purchase solar power from utilities. And both Indiana and Arizona have decided to roll back net metering policies, which allow solar customers to be compensated for excess energy they produce and send back to the grid.

These policy changes seek to drive up the costs of residential solar and make it affordable for many Americans.

And it’s becoming clear that these tactics are working. Much of the impressive solar power growth in 2017 was led by large-scale and utility installations. Distributed solar – those smaller systems often put on rooftops and parking lots – only grew one percent in the second quarter.

This slowdown of rooftop solar growth is problematic, and not just for solar customers and renewable energy companies.

Distributed solar has the potential to supply electricity during grid outages resulting from extreme weather or other emergency situations. That means that, on top of reducing our fossil fuel dependence, rooftop solar helps to make our cities more resilient in the face of climate change.

It’s also good for the environment – solar energy on existing structures doesn’t create pollution during generation, it requires negligible water use and it doesn’t take up additional land. That makes it better for our planet and the most wildlife-friendly form of energy.

And although utility-scale solar growth continues to break records, we can’t take it for granted either. There is pressure building that could stifle these projects as well as smaller distributed ones.

The federal government is considering a trade petition that could, if successful, gut the solar industry. And the petition is moving forward under the guise of protecting U.S.-based solar panel manufacturers from international competition. If approved, it could double the price of solar panels in the United States. This price hike would decrease demand, potentially forcing the loss of one-third of domestic solar jobs and dropping installations by two-thirds.

Rather than letting polluters drag their feet, we need to make it easier for rooftop solar to flourish. We need politicians to enact solar-friendly policies rather than work to eliminate them.

States can enact policies that allow for third-party ownership, which allows companies other than utilities to sell solar panels. States also need to establish strong programs that ensure homeowners and businesses with solar panels get reimbursed for the extra energy they produce. In addition, federal renewable energy tax credits, along with programs to support renewable research and development, can help spur rooftop growth.

But most importantly, policymakers need to take into account the true value of solar – including its benefits to people, climate and wildlife – especially as utilities continue their attacks on distributed renewable energy. It’s time to put a price on the social and environmental costs of the outdated monopoly model, which solely considers utility profits. Some states are beginning to do so by requiring utilities to consider the social cost of carbon in their rate-making decisions.

New Post has been published on http://www.getsolarize.com/politicians-attack-solar-energy/

Lobbyists and politicians attacking solar energy

Solar power’s rise has felt unstoppable. Clean energy development has shattered records for years. And new figures show the U.S. solar energy market experienced more record growth in the second quarter of 2017. Solar made up 22 percent of new electric capacity this year. But the game’s far from over […]

Click here to view original web page at www.cnbc.com

There are signs that rooftop solar may be feeling the effects of political attacks. Those attacks could hinder efforts to fight climate change and reduce the resiliency of America’s power grid.

As we witness the violent effects of climate change across the country – from rampant, destructive wildfires to back-to-back, devastating hurricanes – our elected leaders should be doing all they can to rapidly transition away from dirty fuel sources.

Instead, politicians influenced by fossil fuel and utility companies are working feverishly to stifle renewable energy growth.

In 2015, Nevada lawmakers passed a bill that allowed utilities to charge rooftop solar customers extra. The state’s solar industry was effectively frozen as a result. Within a month three major solar companies, SolarCity, Sunrun and Vivint, announced they were forced to leave the state and terminate hundreds of jobs.

In Florida, customers can only purchase solar power from utilities. And both Indiana and Arizona have decided to roll back net metering policies, which allow solar customers to be compensated for excess energy they produce and send back to the grid.

These policy changes seek to drive up the costs of residential solar and make it affordable for many Americans.

And it’s becoming clear that these tactics are working. Much of the impressive solar power growth in 2017 was led by large-scale and utility installations. Distributed solar – those smaller systems often put on rooftops and parking lots – only grew one percent in the second quarter.

This slowdown of rooftop solar growth is problematic, and not just for solar customers and renewable energy companies.

Distributed solar has the potential to supply electricity during grid outages resulting from extreme weather or other emergency situations. That means that, on top of reducing our fossil fuel dependence, rooftop solar helps to make our cities more resilient in the face of climate change.

It’s also good for the environment – solar energy on existing structures doesn’t create pollution during generation, it requires negligible water use and it doesn’t take up additional land. That makes it better for our planet and the most wildlife-friendly form of energy.

And although utility-scale solar growth continues to break records, we can’t take it for granted either. There is pressure building that could stifle these projects as well as smaller distributed ones.

The federal government is considering a trade petition that could, if successful, gut the solar industry. And the petition is moving forward under the guise of protecting U.S.-based solar panel manufacturers from international competition. If approved, it could double the price of solar panels in the United States. This price hike would decrease demand, potentially forcing the loss of one-third of domestic solar jobs and dropping installations by two-thirds.

Rather than letting polluters drag their feet, we need to make it easier for rooftop solar to flourish. We need politicians to enact solar-friendly policies rather than work to eliminate them.

States can enact policies that allow for third-party ownership, which allows companies other than utilities to sell solar panels. States also need to establish strong programs that ensure homeowners and businesses with solar panels get reimbursed for the extra energy they produce. In addition, federal renewable energy tax credits, along with programs to support renewable research and development, can help spur rooftop growth.

But most importantly, policymakers need to take into account the true value of solar – including its benefits to people, climate and wildlife – especially as utilities continue their attacks on distributed renewable energy. It’s time to put a price on the social and environmental costs of the outdated monopoly model, which solely considers utility profits. Some states are beginning to do so by requiring utilities to consider the social cost of carbon in their rate-making decisions.

http://www.getsolarize.com/clean-energy/

Clean energy’s dirty secret; Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems

ALMOST 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world’s electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them competitive with fossil  fuels. BP, an oil firm, expects clean energy renewables to account for half of the growth in global energy supply over the next 20 years. It is no longer far-fetched to think that the world is entering an era of clean, unlimited and cheap power. About time, too. […]

Click here to view original web page at www.economist.com

Policymakers are already seeing this inconvenient truth as a reason to put the brakes on clean energy. In parts of Europe and China, investment in renewables is slowing as subsidies are cut back. However, the solution is not less wind and solar. It is to rethink how the world prices clean energy in order to make better use of it.

At its heart, the problem is that government-supported renewable energy has been imposed on a market designed in a different era. For much of the 20th century, electricity was made and moved by vertically integrated, state-controlled monopolies. From the 1980s onwards, many of these were broken up, privatised and liberalised, so that market forces could determine where best to invest. Today only about 6% of electricity users get their power from monopolies. Yet everywhere the pressure to decarbonise power supply has brought the state creeping back into markets. This is disruptive for three reasons. The first is the subsidy system itself. The other two are inherent to the nature of wind and solar: their intermittency and their very low running costs. All three help explain why power prices are low and public subsidies are addictive.

First, the splurge of public subsidy, of about $800bn since 2008, has distorted the market. It came about for noble reasons—to counter climate change and prime the pump for new, costly technologies, including wind turbines and solar panels. But subsidies hit just as electricity consumption in the rich world was stagnating because of growing energy efficiency and the financial crisis. The result was a glut of power-generating capacity that has slashed the revenues utilities earn from wholesale power markets and hence deterred investment.

Second, green power is intermittent. The vagaries of wind and sun—especially in countries without favourable weather—mean that turbines and solar panels generate electricity only part of the time. To keep power flowing, the system relies on conventional power plants, such as coal, gas or nuclear, to kick in when renewables falter. But because they are idle for long periods, they find it harder to attract private investors. So, to keep the lights on, they require public funds.

Everyone is affected by a third factor: renewable energy has negligible or zero marginal running costs—because the wind and the sun are free. In a market that prefers energy produced at the lowest short-term cost, wind and solar take business from providers that are more expensive to run, such as coal plants, depressing power prices, and hence revenues for all.

The good news is that new technology can help fix the problem (see article). Digitalisation, smart meters and batteries are enabling companies and households to smooth out their demand—by doing some energy-intensive work at night, for example. This helps to cope with intermittent supply. Small, modular power plants, which are easy to flex up or down, are becoming more popular, as are high-voltage grids that can move excess power around the network more efficiently.