What Cleantech Should Be Thankful For

WhatCleantech Should Be Thankful For

What should the cleantech industry bethankful for this year?

According to RickThompson, Greentech Media's co-founder and president, it's the power thatdistributed generation is starting to wield: “Cleantech should be thankful thatit finally has a disruptive force that is painful enough to change regulation.”

Digging deeper intothat theme, the GTM team came up with its list for 2014.

California leads theway

“I'm thankful forthe state of California. First, there's the sunset of theCalifornia Solar Initiative,which has hands down been the strongest state policy influence on distributedsolar in the U.S. and has played a major role in pushing residential andcommercial solar to where it is today in the U.S.,” said MJ Shiao, director ofsolar research at GTM Research.

“Furthermore, rightnow, it's the only state that's systematically looking at the influence ofhigh-penetration PV integration through the Rule 21 interconnection filings.”

Ravi Manghani,senior energy storage analyst with GTM Research, gave thanks to California’sIndependent System Operator for starting theenergy imbalance market between the Northwest andSouthwest. “This is a small step toward integrated markets in the WesternU.S.,” said Manghani.

California alsoreceived praise for its work on integrating distributed resources, includingstorage. With the passage ofAB 327inlate 2013, the state required its large investor-owned utility toproactively plan for adistributed system.

“Finally, a state'sutilities will make an effort to simulate dynamic three-phase power flows onthe distribution grid,” said Ben Kellison, director of grid research with GTMResearch. “This is the first step to building out detailed business cases fordistributed dynamic resources. It may also be the key policy to change the faceof how we plan and invest in the distribution grid. This is important stuffthat is hard to do and continues to fly under the radar.”

Both Manghani andGreentech Media Editor-in-Chief Eric Wesoff also pointed toSouthern California Edison’s distributed energy storageprocurement, which is geared to help the Los Angeles and Orange Countyregions make up for the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, as adevelopment that the storage industry should be thankful for.

Regulatorypraise

Another utility madethe thankful-for list, but not quite in the same way as SCE. Shiao, Wesoff andManghani also mentioned the Hawaii Public Utility Commission for playing toughwith HECO, not only on distributed solar, but also “requiring them to have moredetailed plans for critical power supply and reliability, integration ofdistributed resources and demand response,” said Manghani.

Praise was notreserved for the Western U.S. Senior Editor Stephen Lacey, Grid Edge ResearchDirector Steve Propper and this writer all gave thanks to New York state’sPublic Utility Commission’s bold energy reform,Reforming the Energy Vision.Although the REV proceeding is just getting underway, there is an enormousamount of promise in its goal of eliminating peak load and transformingdistribution utilities into managers of a distributed energy platform.

Even the praise forNew York, however, elicited more praise for California from one analyst. “I’mnot sure how REV will work without [California’s] type of grid power-flowanalysis and dynamic resource comparison tools,” that AB 327 requires, saidKellison.

Beyond REV, thiswriter thinks the industry should be thankful for green banks in states likeNew YorkandConnecticut, as well as the U.K. and Australia. Thesepublic-private partnerships have the opportunity to open up the promising, butchallenged, energy efficiency markets in new ways.

America gainstraction on the global stage

Lacey said the solarindustry should be grateful for theGreen Tea Coalition, which is banding together withenvironmental activists to fight for more solar in theSoutheastU.S. andAmerica’s heartland.

Omar Saadeh, seniorgrid analyst with GTM Research, took a more national view. He said therenewables and efficiency industries should be thankful for theU.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency’s new carbon rules, which could grow renewable capacity by anadditional 70 percent in the next decade. Although there will likely be yearsof litigation ahead, “This year's EPA ruling on carbon emissions mayfinally alter the climate change status quo policy of ‘Do as I say,not as I do,’” said Saadeh.

Even without climaterules, the industry has surged. “I'm thankful that the U.S. will install two tothree times more solar than Germany this year, so I can stop hearing about theunquestioned superiority of feed-in tariffs,“ said Shiao. I’m extremelythankful for them buying down the initial cost of scaling up the industry.”

Also on a globalscale, Shayle Kann, SVP of research for GTM Research, was grateful for therecent deal between the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide. “The U.S.-Chinaclimate agreement provides some much-needed hope for a global accord and somereal action,” noted Kann.

Finally, we aregrateful for our fellow media outlets doingcareful reporting on cleantech issues, and askingElon Musk the hard questions.