Speaker 1: Pushkin. Here is an underappreciated world historical fact. In the
Speaker 1: past twenty years, the price of solar panels has fallen
Speaker 1: not by twenty percent, not by half, but by more
Speaker 1: than ninety seven percent, and as a result, solar power
Speaker 1: has gone bananas. The amount of solar power that was
Speaker 1: installed in the world over the past two days, just
Speaker 1: today and yesterday, is greater than the total amount of
Speaker 1: solar power that existed in the whole world in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, and the rate of new installations is
Speaker 1: still growing. This is very good news for the world.
Speaker 1: Wildly cheap and abundant solar power won't solve all of
Speaker 1: our climate problems, but it will solve a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Solar combined with batteries, will provide a huge chunk of
Speaker 1: the world's electricity in the decades to come. On top
Speaker 1: of that, the spread of solar means that within a
Speaker 1: few years energy may be free, free energy in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day in many parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and that free energy will create new opportunities, new ways
Speaker 1: to generate and store fuel and heat, new ways to
Speaker 1: fight climate change. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's
Speaker 1: your problem. Starting today and continuing over the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking to people who are in
Speaker 1: the middle of the solar power revolution, people who can
Speaker 1: tell us how this extraordinary thing happened, this ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent fall in the price of solar panels, and what
Speaker 1: it means for the world. My guest today is Jenny Chase.
Speaker 1: She's one of the world's top solar analysts. She's been
Speaker 1: covering the industry for something like twenty years. She's a
Speaker 1: writer at Bloomberg ne Ef and she's also the author
Speaker 1: of the book Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon. I
Speaker 1: talked with Jenny about how solar power got so cheap
Speaker 1: and what it means for us now. So okay, So,
Speaker 1: so it's the turn of the century. Solar power is
Speaker 1: very expensive. It's four dollars per wattch just for the
Speaker 1: solar panels. When does that start to change? What sort
Speaker 1: of the first key moment in this story of solar
Speaker 1: power getting cheaper?
Speaker 2: So the first the first moment was probably solar power
Speaker 2: getting like slightly more expensive. Because the Germans brought in
Speaker 2: an expanded version of a previous program called a Freedom
Speaker 2: tariff in two thousand and four. This was the by
Speaker 2: far the biggest incentive driving the most solar build that
Speaker 2: the world had ever known. And there was a kind
Speaker 2: of sucking noise as all the world's solar module stuff
Speaker 2: going to Germany.
Speaker 1: Okay, and so it's great I think for world historical
Speaker 1: reasons that Germany did this. I wish they called it
Speaker 1: something other than a feed in tariff. Does it make
Speaker 1: more sense in German? I hate this phrase feed in tariff?
Speaker 1: Is it sensible in German? And it's just a bad translation?
Speaker 2: No, not really, It's an unspizer for gutungen in German.
Speaker 2: And does it mean feed in tariff?
Speaker 1: Okay? So what is a feed in tariff?
Speaker 2: So it means that you get paid a fixed price
Speaker 2: for the electricity that you feed in to the grid.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: So it's basically the German government saying we promise to
Speaker 1: pay anybody who puts up solar panels a certain amount
Speaker 1: for the energy those panels produce.
Speaker 2: For twenty years. I think it's almost twenty five years.
Speaker 2: It's twenty years now.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so tell me more about this unfortunately named
Speaker 1: policy that helped kick off the solar power revolution.
Speaker 2: Well, basically, for the first time, it was actually profitable
Speaker 2: to put solar power plants on fields. I mean historically,
Speaker 2: nearly all solo models have been as stall and rooftops
Speaker 2: because you just didn't buy the huge numbers of solar modules.
Speaker 2: You bought small numbers of solar models because they were expensive.
Speaker 2: And so for the first time there were actually specialized
Speaker 2: development companies who were rolling solar panels out on fields
Speaker 2: and they were raising money from investors. And for the
Speaker 2: first because the feed in tariff is paid for the
Speaker 2: lifetime of the system more or less almost then you
Speaker 2: can do things like get bank debt for it. So
Speaker 2: banks and Germany also had a support for bank debt
Speaker 2: for projects. But for the first time, European banks in
Speaker 2: particular could get really comfortable with the fact that the
Speaker 2: cash flows from these solar projects were extremely reliable, and
Speaker 2: so you could lend money to these projects at quite
Speaker 2: a low rate of interest.
Speaker 1: Germany creates the feed in tariff. It means it's easier
Speaker 1: to get loans because now the government is promising to
Speaker 1: give you a stream of income for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: which is a lender's dream come true. It's a sovereign
Speaker 1: bond like investment. You start getting commercial development of solar
Speaker 1: power for the first time in the history of the world.
Speaker 2: What happens next and you get manufacturers ramping up, So
Speaker 2: you get US sunhower and evergreen solar, Chinese Suntech, German
Speaker 2: Q cells coming in, and they went onto the public
Speaker 2: stock markets and raised money to expand their factories and
Speaker 2: also to secure supplies of their raw material, polysilicon.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: Now, until the Germans started this, this crazy solar expansion,
Speaker 2: the solar industry had got along just fine using offcuts
Speaker 2: from the semiconduct to industry huhs for their silicon.
Speaker 1: The offcuts meaning just scraps from chip factories. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what does it mean for just this raw material,
Speaker 1: the silicon, once the industry becomes industrialized and starts ramping
Speaker 1: up after this German policy change.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, polysilicon factories are quite really expensive
Speaker 2: and they require a lot of technological expertise to do.
Speaker 2: There's nasty chemicals, there's a point in your where you
Speaker 2: have to be simultaneously heating and cooling different parts of
Speaker 2: a reactor. There's all kinds of gases that you're trying
Speaker 2: to purify. There's a huge amount of incredibly technical expertise there,
Speaker 2: and at the time there were only really five companies
Speaker 2: that are worldwide that could do it, which was fine
Speaker 2: because they were only supplying the semiconductor industry, right, the
Speaker 2: demand was not that great, but solar panels use a
Speaker 2: lot of silicon compared with semiconductors, and so demand just
Speaker 2: went up.
Speaker 1: So before the Germans, before two thousand and four, you
Speaker 1: could get silicon for about twenty five dollars a kilogram.
Speaker 1: What's the price go up to after when everybody's trying
Speaker 1: to get into the solar panel So.
Speaker 2: The spot price went up to over four hundred kilogram.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So it went up by like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: almost twenty x exactly. So there is this thing people
Speaker 1: love to say about commodities, right, which is the cure
Speaker 1: for high prices is high prices, which basically means if
Speaker 1: there is a high price on some commodity thing, more
Speaker 1: people will will make it, we'll pull it out of
Speaker 1: the ground, whatever, and that increased supply will drive down
Speaker 1: the price. And that happens here, right, More polysilicon factories
Speaker 1: come online, so the price of the raw material falls,
Speaker 1: and then demand for solar panels grows, but not as
Speaker 1: much as people expected. So there is this collapse in
Speaker 1: the price, right, this first big decline where between two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and two thousand and nine the price
Speaker 1: falls from four dollars a WoT to two dollars a WoT.
Speaker 1: So what does this first big decline mean for the industry.
Speaker 2: It has a little wobble, But the German market expanded
Speaker 2: because of course Germany still had its feet and tower,
Speaker 2: no cap and suddenly you've got two dollars what modules
Speaker 2: rather than four dollars of what modules. So developers in
Speaker 2: Germany were basically going catching the US market. There's this
Speaker 2: blot called Jiga Shah, who some of you may have
Speaker 2: heard of, who since about two thousand and three had
Speaker 2: been running a business called San Edison that sold commercial
Speaker 2: rooftop solar in America to enterities like Walmarts.
Speaker 1: And I should mention so Jigger Shaw, this guy you're
Speaker 1: talking about, he actually was on this show. He now
Speaker 1: runs an office in the US federal government that's basically
Speaker 1: in charge of lending out money to energy transition companies,
Speaker 1: companies you know, trying to make clean cement and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So what's he doing back at this time?
Speaker 2: So At this time, he was convincing companies like Whole
Speaker 2: Foods and Walmart to sign twenty year power purchase agreements
Speaker 2: with his company so that he could put solar power
Speaker 2: on their roofs.
Speaker 1: So it's again this idea of finance, this idea of
Speaker 1: if he gets some institution like Walmart that everybody trusts
Speaker 1: and everybody thinks is going to be around for twenty
Speaker 1: years to promise to buy solar power for twenty years, presumably,
Speaker 1: then he can get the financing to build the panels.
Speaker 1: Now I mean, is that the basic idea exactly?
Speaker 2: And then he would go to the financiers and say, look,
Speaker 2: I'm selling this power to Whole Foods under a twenty
Speaker 2: year power purchase agreement. This is not risky. Lend me
Speaker 2: some money. And he had to do some convincing to
Speaker 2: very and find the right person in each division, but
Speaker 2: he did, and he was able to offer these retailers
Speaker 2: solar power at prices which were reasonably attractive to them.
Speaker 2: So it worked, it worked, and I think he did
Speaker 2: very nicely in two thousand and nine because just like
Speaker 2: because this company also had fixed PRICEE power purcuse agreements
Speaker 2: in place, and suddenly modules were much cheaper than they'd expect.
Speaker 1: Huh ah, huh, So his margins go up the cheaper
Speaker 1: modules are. He's still getting paid the same for twenty
Speaker 1: five years. It's great for him. So clearly the rise
Speaker 1: of Chinese manufacturing of solar panels is a big part
Speaker 1: of this story, is it? Where does that happen in
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: It's been happening all along. I mean one of the
Speaker 2: companies that did an IPO in two thousand and five
Speaker 2: with Suntech, which is the Chinese. Essentially it's using technology
Speaker 2: developed in Australia at the University of New South Wales,
Speaker 2: but it's it is a Chinese company went by a
Speaker 2: Chinese person. And yeah, so the Chinese are there from
Speaker 2: the beginning. But around this time, the polysilicon price is
Speaker 2: coming down as well. So the polysilicon price is coming
Speaker 2: down to the sort of sixty dollars a kilogram range
Speaker 2: from four hundred dollars a kilogram.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this time where it's like twenty eleven something, it's.
Speaker 2: About twenty eleven twenty eleven, module prices have dropped to
Speaker 2: one dollar or what one dollar?
Speaker 1: Okay, so they've fallen in half again. They went from
Speaker 1: four to two and out of one. And you mentioned polysilicon.
Speaker 1: Silicon prices are coming down. That's because what people are
Speaker 1: building more and more of these factories. There's an economy
Speaker 1: of scale. It's that's the sort of classic industrial development.
Speaker 2: What you're starting to get then, is Chinese companies figuring
Speaker 2: it out. So there were hundreds, I mean pretty probably
Speaker 2: literally one hundred Chinese companies attempted to make polysilicon. But
Speaker 2: making polysilicon is hard, and most of them failed, and
Speaker 2: some of them were extremely random companies. Then again, the
Speaker 2: largest polysilicon maker in China these days, Tongway, started as
Speaker 2: a fish food maker.
Speaker 1: So fish food, and then they decided to pivot to polysilicon.
Speaker 2: No, they still make fish food.
Speaker 1: Aha, how'd that happen? Is there some genius there? They
Speaker 1: make a million different things? Or do they just make
Speaker 1: fish food in polysilicon?
Speaker 2: They do just make fish food. No, now they make
Speaker 2: polysilicon fish food sold a wafers, cells and modules, U huh.
Speaker 2: But they still get about ten percent of the revenue
Speaker 2: for fish food.
Speaker 1: Amazing. So with two thousand and eleven or so, China's
Speaker 1: kind of not just solar panel industry, but the raw materials,
Speaker 1: the polysilicon part is coming online, and you're getting this
Speaker 1: kind of manufacturing ecosystem for which China is famous in
Speaker 1: a lot of industries, right, Like they don't just make
Speaker 1: one thing. There's often a region where lots of different
Speaker 1: manufacturers are making sort of components for each other, and
Speaker 1: there's kind of a whole value chain in one place.
Speaker 1: That happening in China at this point.
Speaker 2: This is probably when it's starting to appear. So in
Speaker 2: Jiangsu Province, if you want to buy encapsulant or silver paste,
Speaker 2: then you can talk to somebody twenty kilometers away instead
Speaker 2: of talking to somebody in another country. And this is
Speaker 2: starting to be very convenient.
Speaker 1: Like clearly the price has kept falling by a lot
Speaker 1: from one dollar, Like why does the price keep coming
Speaker 1: down after two thousand and eleven.
Speaker 2: So, solar panels are a manufactured commodity, and they they
Speaker 2: have something called the experienced curve, which probably a lot
Speaker 2: of things have, but then they're difficult to notice, particularly
Speaker 2: I they're not very commoditized. So Moore's law is a
Speaker 2: special sort of experienced curve. But the experience curve just
Speaker 2: means that every time you double cumulative experience that we
Speaker 2: have as a species doing something, we get a certain
Speaker 2: amount better at it, And in the case of solar panels,
Speaker 2: it's probably about twenty eight percent better at it. And
Speaker 2: that comes from having a better recipe to get your
Speaker 2: solar models more efficient, and you slicing your wafers more thinly,
Speaker 2: all kinds of little tweaks you make to use less
Speaker 2: material and to make your machines through output more energy
Speaker 2: and to make the thing more efficient.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. So I mean, in a way, is like
Speaker 1: the big story of technological development in human life, certainly
Speaker 1: since the Industrial Revolution a couple hundred years ago, right,
Speaker 1: you know, people make these incremental improvements one after the other,
Speaker 1: and things get cheaper and cheaper. And you're saying, that's
Speaker 1: basically how the price of solar panels fell all the
Speaker 1: way from four dollars a WAT to less than ten
Speaker 1: cents a WAT, which is where we are now. So
Speaker 1: I want to kind of take stock, like just what
Speaker 1: does this wild decline in the price of solar panels, Like,
Speaker 1: what does it mean for the world.
Speaker 2: I think it's basically really good news. So the power
Speaker 2: only only supplied about six percent of the world's electricity
Speaker 2: last year. But it's growing and nobody and you couldn't
Speaker 2: stop solid now if you wanted.
Speaker 1: To, just because it's so cheap. Like, yes, there are
Speaker 1: subsidies for it in various ways, but even without subsidies,
Speaker 1: in many cases it would be the best option.
Speaker 2: Is that the case exactly? And there are places where
Speaker 2: I mean, I love talking about Pakistan right now because
Speaker 2: Pakistan probably has about twenty gigawatts of relatively new solar panels,
Speaker 2: most of which the normal grid, that the traditional grid
Speaker 2: has no idea about where they are or whether they exist.
Speaker 1: Huh. So it's just people like going to the store
Speaker 1: buying solar panels and putting them up in their backyard
Speaker 1: or on their roof.
Speaker 2: And it's factories who are putting solar panels on their roofs.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're probably not just going to the store.
Speaker 2: They're probably buying the re bulk. It's farmers putting them
Speaker 2: in instead of to run their irrigation pumps instead of
Speaker 2: these or generators. I actually only know about this because
Speaker 2: I can see it in Chinese customs data. And then
Speaker 2: when you go to Google Earth and look at Lahore
Speaker 2: or Karachi or is Lamabad, you can see that all
Speaker 2: the roofs have solar panels on them. A lot of
Speaker 2: the activity in the developing world increasingly is outside government programs.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are some countries which in the developing
Speaker 2: world too, that have government supported billoms, like Vietnam also
Speaker 2: built about twenty gigawats of solar into nineteen and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty under a probably slightly badly calibrated government program. But
Speaker 2: increasingly it's actually the businesses and individuals that are buying
Speaker 2: solar themselves because it's just less effort than trying to
Speaker 2: go through the government than trying to get support.
Speaker 1: In a minute, what the world will look like in
Speaker 1: the relatively near future when solar energy is free in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day in a lot of places.
Speaker 1: Give me the big picture for like, where we are
Speaker 1: twenty years ago solar twenty yeah, twenty ish years ago,
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. Certainly twenty five years ago, solar
Speaker 1: power was like, if you're a rich hippie in Marine County,
Speaker 1: maybe you spend a crazy amount of money to put
Speaker 1: solar power on your roof to feel good about yourself. Right,
Speaker 1: it was a kind of fringe thing. Where are we now?
Speaker 2: The sun is one solar power was the by far
Speaker 2: the largest source of new installed capacity last year, so
Speaker 2: of any generations. Now people hate it when you compare capacity,
Speaker 2: but about four hundred and forty four gigawatts of solar
Speaker 2: panels were installed last year worldwide. Okay, And bearing in
Speaker 2: mind that the whole power grid after that is about
Speaker 2: nine three hundred gigawads. So if we keep adding half
Speaker 2: a terror what a year, and we'll do more than
Speaker 2: that this year is going to be about six hundred
Speaker 2: gigawads this year. I mean, adding half a terror what
Speaker 2: every year to a nine point three terror what grid,
Speaker 2: you pretty quickly get to real amounts of contribution. And
Speaker 2: this is why I'm pretty sure that by twenty thirty
Speaker 2: power will basically be free whenever it's sunny.
Speaker 1: Power will basically be free whenever it's sunny in around
Speaker 1: the world pretty much twenty thirty is soon, especially in
Speaker 1: like energy terms, like twenty sol.
Speaker 2: Is fast, like most energy infrastructure is really slow to build,
Speaker 2: but solar is really fast and the only way. And
Speaker 2: we're already getting to the point where in California, even
Speaker 2: in Germany on a sunny day, the wholesale power price
Speaker 2: goes very low or even negative and what you have.
Speaker 2: So the most likely thing, the most sensible thing to
Speaker 2: do in response to that, is to hand free power
Speaker 2: at that time to the customers so they can actually
Speaker 2: increase their demand at that time and then charge them
Speaker 2: more later when the sun's gone down.
Speaker 1: Huh. So let's talk about that in a little bit
Speaker 1: more detail. So there is this thing that is already
Speaker 1: true in California among other places, right, which is in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day, because of the growth of
Speaker 1: solar there is more electricity being generated than people are using, right, great, amazing,
Speaker 1: And so one option is you could just essentially not
Speaker 1: take that electricity, right, you could just not use it.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that's not what's going to happen. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about that.
Speaker 2: Like, some of that will definitely happen. I mean, we
Speaker 2: call it curtailment when you literally turn off the solar
Speaker 2: panels to stop them doing any damage to your grid.
Speaker 2: And you can do that. It's super easy. It's actually
Speaker 2: way easier than it is for fossil fuel plants. What
Speaker 2: makes most sense is to offer three your extremely cheap
Speaker 2: power to people in the hope that they'll actually use it.
Speaker 2: You know, if as an individual you might turn your
Speaker 2: air conditioner on to make your house really nice and cool,
Speaker 2: so you can turn it off in the evening and
Speaker 2: your house will stay comfortable into the night. You might
Speaker 2: do your laundry, and if you're in an industrial company,
Speaker 2: you can do a lot more. So. If you have
Speaker 2: a meat freezer, you can chill it to minus twenty
Speaker 2: seven degrees celsius and then let it warm up to
Speaker 2: minus nineteen. When power is expensive, you can charge your
Speaker 2: electric car, I mean especially if you can charge at work.
Speaker 2: You can heat your water for a shower later. There
Speaker 2: were all kinds of things that we can do to
Speaker 2: shift when we use power into the daytime. And of course,
Speaker 2: if you've got batteries, you can charge your batteries.
Speaker 1: Yes, So what's happening with storage, right, that's the sort
Speaker 1: of complementary piece of this that everybody always talks about
Speaker 1: what's happening with storage.
Speaker 2: So storage is definitely growing. I just looked at the
Speaker 2: new energy storage market outlook from my colleagues, and a
Speaker 2: new build energy storage grew seventy six percent. They estimate
Speaker 2: that it's grown about over seventy percent from twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: So it's growing. That's good, and it's basically lithium ion
Speaker 1: batteries and kind of batteries that are in electric vehicles.
Speaker 2: It's mostly just lithium ion batteries, you know, because electric
Speaker 2: vehicles have driven them down the experienced curve as well.
Speaker 2: And electric vehicles, laptops, phones, these are actually quite They're
Speaker 2: getting more and more affordable, and so I think we
Speaker 2: can probably assume that by twenty thirty you have batteries
Speaker 2: charging and discharging every day to absorb some of that
Speaker 2: daytime solar power.
Speaker 1: And the question is how much?
Speaker 2: Question is how much are yeah?
Speaker 1: And what does that turn on? I mean, is it
Speaker 1: just how fast do lithium ion batteries get cheap? Is
Speaker 1: that the key unknown question?
Speaker 2: It does. But I think what people don't realize when
Speaker 2: they talk about solar and batteries being the answer to everything,
Speaker 2: But first of all, they may be write in climates
Speaker 2: that are not very seasonal. So if every day you
Speaker 2: have a long day and then a similar length night,
Speaker 2: then it may actually be fairly feasible to run your
Speaker 2: civilization on solar and batteries in places like northern Europe
Speaker 2: where I am, then you're going to hit the problem
Speaker 2: that the biggest battery you can imagine will not hold
Speaker 2: power from summer to winter, and the economics of that
Speaker 2: would be terrible because the first bunch of batteries you
Speaker 2: put in that charge and discharge every day, their cost
Speaker 2: per cycle is whether to be low because they have
Speaker 2: a lot of cycles. However, your next wave of batteries
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily needed every day, and if they're cycling every
Speaker 2: two days, for example, that it actually doubles the cost
Speaker 2: per cycle.
Speaker 1: The less you use it, the more expensive it is,
Speaker 1: sort of per unit of service is providing you.
Speaker 2: The economics are building a battery, the cycles once a
Speaker 2: year are almost impossible. I mean, you might be able
Speaker 2: to do something like feel a huge tank with the
Speaker 2: chemical fuel, or feel a huge big tank hot of salt,
Speaker 2: like you could. What you could do is make a
Speaker 2: big tank of salt molten and then use that heat
Speaker 2: in the winter, because salt is relatively cheap, so you
Speaker 2: could have a lot of it to make hot.
Speaker 1: So you could build essentially like a giant salt cavern
Speaker 1: under the earth, spend all summer heating it up, and
Speaker 1: all winter using the heat to whatever makes demon spin
Speaker 1: a turbine that's that's.
Speaker 2: A treat more to heat your home. I mean, that
Speaker 2: would be the probably the easiest way of doing it.
Speaker 2: But exactly malta salt is kind of a pain to
Speaker 2: work with as well, because it tends to if it
Speaker 2: gets above about two hundred, if it gets below about
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy one celsius, as I recall, it freezes,
Speaker 2: and so if you've got any pipes that it's meant
Speaker 2: to be going down, your pipes are now full of
Speaker 2: just non molten salt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So is the sort of medium term unsolved problem
Speaker 1: long duration storage for these reasons, like you clearly see
Speaker 1: a very short term path to free power in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day. It sounds like you're pretty optimistic
Speaker 1: about kind of overnight charging, like you when you can
Speaker 1: charge in the day and discharge overnight, like lithium ion
Speaker 1: will do that. But once you get to the sort
Speaker 1: of seasonal problems, is that where we don't really have
Speaker 1: a clear answer.
Speaker 2: Is it a lot less obvious what the answer is,
Speaker 2: which is why as a solar analyst, I say a
Speaker 2: lot that we should be building wind as well. I mean,
Speaker 2: because the great thing about wind, especially in a climate
Speaker 2: like Northern Europe's and a lot of others around the world.
Speaker 2: Is it blows at night and in the winter.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, it's a good compliment. So wind has gotten cheaper,
Speaker 1: but not nearly as much cheaper as solar. Right, it
Speaker 1: didn't win clearly in the way that solar won. Why not?
Speaker 2: Wind is heavy engineering, it's not bulk manufacturing. That said,
Speaker 2: there have been huge improvements in wind, in wind turbines,
Speaker 2: and in wind maintenance, and in fact in financing for
Speaker 2: wind and wind havings are just getting bigger. I mean
Speaker 2: one of the things you can do with wind turbines,
Speaker 2: as as the materials to make blades get better and better,
Speaker 2: you can make wind turbines bigger and it's windier high up.
Speaker 1: So wind has gotten cheaper, but it seems like building,
Speaker 1: you know, gargantuan blades, gargantuan turbines. It doesn't have that
Speaker 1: beautiful commodity race to the lowest price element that solar
Speaker 1: panels have that dead simple They don't have to move
Speaker 1: once you make them. You can make a little one
Speaker 1: or a big one just by adding more. Like I
Speaker 1: love how commodified solar panels are. I know it's a
Speaker 1: terrible business. To be in. But it's the same reason, right,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible business to be in because it's this amazing, cheap,
Speaker 1: relatively simple thing that that is quite different from a
Speaker 1: turbine the size of a giant building that is a
Speaker 1: thousand feet up in the air, or whatever it really is.
Speaker 2: I mean, solar panels are the first major eeditacy generation
Speaker 2: source that isn't doesn't evolve anything moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, nothing to get stuck. You've been
Speaker 1: doing this job, You've been following the solar power market
Speaker 1: for twenty years. When you look ahead another twenty years
Speaker 1: from now, what do you think will be going on?
Speaker 2: Ah, that's such a hard question. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: we will. I'm actually relatively optimistic about us having us
Speaker 2: achieving a worldwide energy transition. I think that in twenty
Speaker 2: years nations that are currently developing will have substantial economies
Speaker 2: running substantially on solar power and batteries, and I hope
Speaker 2: they also have air conditioning and ways to make to
Speaker 2: protect themselves from the effects of extreme climate change, because
Speaker 2: we will also have increasing the extreme climate change. So
Speaker 2: I think the developing world will be substantially solar power
Speaker 2: at least the bits of bit of the sunny and
Speaker 2: realize that's not actually the whole developing world. I hope
Speaker 2: there is a I hope there's there are much more
Speaker 2: widespread transmission grids around the world because it's often sunny
Speaker 2: and windy in one place when it's not sunny or
Speaker 2: windy in another place. And if the more we can
Speaker 2: we can run big power lines to smooth that out
Speaker 2: and sell each other power, the easier this whole energy
Speaker 2: transition will be and the less gas will need to burn.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's there's a project now where they want to
Speaker 1: build solar panels in Australia and run a wire to
Speaker 1: Singapore to send the energy to Singapore. Right, I love
Speaker 1: that one. I love that idea. Is that Is that
Speaker 1: a real thing or is that just like silly?
Speaker 2: It's a really big cable. I mean, like, I hope
Speaker 2: they've figured this all figured out, But that is that's
Speaker 2: a four thousand kilometer cable.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. I mean there's cables. I know they're different
Speaker 1: kinds of cables, but like they ran a cable across
Speaker 1: the Atlanta for Telegraph whatever one hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: ago or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that's a good reason to think
Speaker 2: it is possible. It's I think it's technically possible. I
Speaker 2: suppose part of me wonders whether whether Singapore went decided
Speaker 2: it's easier to buy power from, for example, Indonesia, which
Speaker 2: is closer. Yes, I mean Australia was just so far
Speaker 2: away from Singapore.
Speaker 1: Yes. I mean that's why it's sort of so thrilling
Speaker 1: to consider it, right, this idea of like, well, we
Speaker 1: got sun down here, they need power up there. Let's
Speaker 1: just build a big cord.
Speaker 2: I mean, also with a solo analyst, I prefer the
Speaker 2: idea of running tables east to west. I mean, if
Speaker 2: we just put a big cable all the way around
Speaker 2: the world, we're sorted.
Speaker 1: Right, because it's always sunny somewhere, so.
Speaker 2: We're sunny on about half the world at one time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. I didn't even think of that, of course. Well,
Speaker 1: so a couple of things. We haven't talked about the grid.
Speaker 1: We're talking about wires and plugging things in. We haven't
Speaker 1: talked about moving power just from one place to another
Speaker 1: place not so far away. You know, I understand that
Speaker 1: the grid is in many places, including in the developed world,
Speaker 1: not optimally efficient and is a sort of binding constraint
Speaker 1: in some instances, like tell me about the grid.
Speaker 2: Well, grids are actually pretty efficient. There's so as you
Speaker 2: move from quite a centralized power system with large power
Speaker 2: plants in a couple of locations to a decentralized system
Speaker 2: where you've got wind farms and solar farms all over
Speaker 2: the place being connected, you need a lot more grid, okay,
Speaker 2: And we estimate that investment in the grid has to
Speaker 2: be about sixty percent of the investment in the actual
Speaker 2: solar and wind farms themselves by twenty thirty to stick
Speaker 2: to a their zero pathway. So investment in the grid
Speaker 2: needs to be substantial. We need to like bolster the
Speaker 2: short range grid because literally, if you're trying to feed
Speaker 2: too much electricity at one point in the at one time,
Speaker 2: it gets stuck and you can't get it all swhere,
Speaker 2: and then some of your farms don't get paid.
Speaker 1: And also, just to be clear, we're electrifying, right, We're
Speaker 1: not only switching the source of electricity from fossil fuel
Speaker 1: to solar power, but we're also taking things like stoves
Speaker 1: and cars that have been previously directly powered by fossil
Speaker 1: fuel and powering them with electricity, So we just need
Speaker 1: more wires. However, we're getting the electricity or more room
Speaker 1: in the wires pretty.
Speaker 2: Much, yes, yes, But building grids specifically, for example, a
Speaker 2: solar plant is quite tough because the utilization of the
Speaker 2: grid will be.
Speaker 1: Quite low because the solar plant is not providing electricity
Speaker 1: all the time exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, solar plant output is very peaky. It really
Speaker 2: does peak in the middle of the day. You can
Speaker 2: have panels that follow the sun and then it's less peaky,
Speaker 2: but it's still not a big part of the day.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, basically we have to build more grid.
Speaker 2: We have to connect both both local grid and also
Speaker 2: long range grid just to connect whole regions.
Speaker 1: And is that happening, Like is that becoming a constraint already?
Speaker 1: Like where are we in terms of the relationship between
Speaker 1: the development of solar power and the development of the grid.
Speaker 2: So if you walk into any solar conference all around
Speaker 2: the world and say, oh, the problem in this market
Speaker 2: is grid, then everyone will nod and say this person
Speaker 2: knows what they are talking about, because the developers all
Speaker 2: know how difficult it is to get Sometimes it's just
Speaker 2: that they need to get permission to connect to the grid,
Speaker 2: and because there are hundreds of people trying to get
Speaker 2: permission to connect to the grid, and the grid has
Speaker 2: to be quite choosy, and they don't and grids just
Speaker 2: a lot of the time they just don't have the
Speaker 2: manpower to make that decision when you've got when you've
Speaker 2: suddenly got hundreds of power plants asking whether they can
Speaker 2: join your wires like this is not necessarily a decision
Speaker 2: making process that grids were set up to do. So
Speaker 2: sometimes it is as simple as manpower. Sometimes it's actually
Speaker 2: a question of building, of their being substantially more grid
Speaker 2: built needed. But grid is always a problem, and there
Speaker 2: are there are thousands of gigawatts of solar and wind
Speaker 2: projects on the planning table but waiting to get permission
Speaker 2: to connect to the grid and get built around the world.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that the US is weird in terms
Speaker 1: of solar power? Why Why is the US weird in
Speaker 1: terms of solar power?
Speaker 2: So the US is much slower to grow than you
Speaker 2: would expect of a market of its size and wealth
Speaker 2: and support level, And partly that's because it's got quite
Speaker 2: a Nimbi problem. It's hard to get permission to build plants.
Speaker 2: It's also partly because the US is an expensive place
Speaker 2: to buy solar panels, which again is partly because there's
Speaker 2: been a trade war between the US and China since
Speaker 2: twenty welve. Obama brought in the first import tariffs on
Speaker 2: Chinese modules, and consistently solar modules in the US are
Speaker 2: at least double the prices that they are elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So so you were saying that the global
Speaker 1: price of solar panels now is nine point something per what?
Speaker 1: Not nine cents per what?
Speaker 2: You would play at least twice that in the US
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 1: Oh wow? So it's like twenty cents a watt instead
Speaker 1: of nine point four sense per what?
Speaker 2: It's putty something since per what I think, although although
Speaker 2: you might get some that some that are in containers
Speaker 2: that are port and need to be sold in a
Speaker 2: great hurry for a bit less.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. So is that just because of tariffs that
Speaker 1: exist in the US and not?
Speaker 2: No, that's basically tariffs are also the uncertainty because because
Speaker 2: the US import strips are quite complicated, if you're a developer,
Speaker 2: you don't want to take the risk of buying a
Speaker 2: module that will be stopped at customs, So there's a
Speaker 2: there's a strong sort of pushed towards just a few
Speaker 2: name brands, and that also pushes out the prices a bit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's basically the tariffs and the trade war.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a US solar panel manufacturing industry
Speaker 1: that that tariff is protecting.
Speaker 2: There wasn't for a long time. There was First Solar,
Speaker 2: which manufactured mostly in Malaysia, and there is a move
Speaker 2: to onshore it specifically since the Inflation Reduction Act passed.
Speaker 2: The inflation of Reduction app is quite is pretty generous
Speaker 2: for solar installations, but it's really generous for solar manufacturers
Speaker 2: setting up plants on US soil. And there has been
Speaker 2: a boom and announcements of solar factories returning to the US.
Speaker 2: We'll see how they do.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Let's talk about the Inflation Reduction Act the IRA.
Speaker 1: It's a giant bill. Despite its name, it's much more
Speaker 1: about sort of subsidizing the energy transition than about specifically
Speaker 1: fighting inflation. How does that affect the adoption of solar
Speaker 1: power in the US?
Speaker 2: I mean, to me, it feels like somebody is pushing
Speaker 2: down really hard on the accelerator while the handbrakes on.
Speaker 1: So the break is the tariff and the accelerator is
Speaker 1: the inflation reductory, which.
Speaker 2: Is the tariff. And also the difficulty with planning, with
Speaker 2: getting planning permission to do things in the US, and
Speaker 2: also the fact that grid is also an issue in
Speaker 2: the US as everywhere else, and the gas and the
Speaker 2: gas is the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act will
Speaker 2: give you loads of money if you've managed to get
Speaker 2: one of these projects through. There is a reason why
Speaker 2: one of your fastest growing regional markets is Texas because
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of breaks in Texas. There are
Speaker 2: data center setting up there that will liquase power demand,
Speaker 2: soldar and wind boom really booming there.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of weight in Texas.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of nim It's a very very
Speaker 2: it's a market where you can actually build things.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, right because politically, solar power has this
Speaker 1: left valance in the US, has a very sort of
Speaker 1: democratic leaning valence. Texas is a very republican state, and
Speaker 1: the fact that solar power is booming the most there
Speaker 1: is really telling. It really is.
Speaker 2: And batteries too. I mean, Texas is building when solar
Speaker 2: and batteries at one of the most rapid paces of
Speaker 2: any o region in the US.
Speaker 1: So you started covering this field in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: right at the moment when it was all starting, and
Speaker 1: nobody knew it at the time. But when you tell
Speaker 1: the story, it all sounds sort of clear in retrospect, right, like,
Speaker 1: solar panels are this fundamentally very simple thing. They don't
Speaker 1: have to move, The input is pretty straightforward. Why has
Speaker 1: it been so surprising? Why did nobody see it come in?
Speaker 2: I think what we So, there are a couple of
Speaker 2: things we didn't expect. So we didn't quite estimate correctly
Speaker 2: how fast demand would pick up, and how and actually
Speaker 2: how quickly governments would come in and set their own
Speaker 2: subsidies realizing that the subdy didn't have to be so
Speaker 2: high anymore, and how fast organic markets would kick off.
Speaker 2: And we basically underestimated human ingenuity and how easy it
Speaker 2: is to deploy something that is like a black rectangle
Speaker 2: that comes out of a factory and you put it
Speaker 2: in the some somewhere and wear it up.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 1: I want to finish with the lightning round, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about a particular part
Speaker 1: of your book. So in the middle of your book,
Speaker 1: right after a chapter called how markets set power prices,
Speaker 1: and right before a chapter called solar after the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight crash, there's a chapter called networking and
Speaker 1: other stuff not taught at state schools. And you're not
Speaker 1: talking about like energy networks. You're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: going to meetings and introducing yourself to people. And I'm curious, Like,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting chapter. I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about it, but like, what is that chapter doing in
Speaker 1: the middle of a book about energy financing?
Speaker 2: So, Jacob, I wrote this book for somebody like me
Speaker 2: who is not particularly posh, came through the state school system,
Speaker 2: which is the sort of government school system, and literally
Speaker 2: had nobody to tell me things like how finance worked
Speaker 2: or what you should wear to a meeting. And so
Speaker 2: I wrote this book for somebody looking for a job
Speaker 2: in something vaguely green. And this is one of the
Speaker 2: things that I had to learn. And I think it
Speaker 2: would have been useful to me to have someone sit
Speaker 2: down and say these things. I would have been a
Speaker 2: little bit less awkward in many many meetings.
Speaker 1: So you do in this chapter just sort of give
Speaker 1: some simple tips, like what are you say your three
Speaker 1: top tips for networking?
Speaker 2: I think you can ask people what they do, and
Speaker 2: then you can ask them how they make money from it,
Speaker 2: because they'll give you a much more interesting answer than
Speaker 2: if you just let them talk about how their business
Speaker 2: is great, because everyone talks about that.
Speaker 1: What's one thing I should not do if I'm at
Speaker 1: a networking event.
Speaker 2: Probably talk too much to somebody who doesn't want to listen.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I mean it doesn't have to be very often, but
Speaker 2: I do sometimes get cornered by people who want to
Speaker 2: talk about something that is very specific that I and
Speaker 2: I will try very hard to find it interesting.
Speaker 1: But what's your getaway strategy in that setting?
Speaker 2: Ah? So this is a tip from from somebody else.
Speaker 2: If you get drinks, get two drinks, and then if
Speaker 2: you're stuck in a conversation that you're not happy with,
Speaker 2: you say, oh, I have to go and find the
Speaker 2: person who I got this drink for, and then you
Speaker 2: get away. And if it's a really interesting conversation, you
Speaker 2: have two drinks.
Speaker 1: That is a very that's a very like prepared Do
Speaker 1: you actually walk around networking events with two drinks in
Speaker 1: your hands for just such a circumstance. Occasionally, there's a
Speaker 1: section in this chapter called being female pros and cons?
Speaker 1: What are the pros and cons of being female in
Speaker 1: networking settings?
Speaker 2: To be honest, I think I've benefited over the years
Speaker 2: from the fact that people would would rather.
Speaker 1: Have a woman on the panel on a panel like
Speaker 1: Edimon on a.
Speaker 2: Panel in like Visible. Like I'm sure that my profile
Speaker 2: as an analyst has been improved by being a woman,
Speaker 2: and I'm grateful to that.
Speaker 1: And is the converse of that or is the flip
Speaker 1: side of that it's been improved because there aren't very
Speaker 1: many women in the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there are more than they used to be,
Speaker 2: which is amazing. So this is working, Like the strategy
Speaker 2: is working, so there are more and they're also more
Speaker 2: confident to actually say proper things.
Speaker 1: Kem and I ask you a couple of non networking questions.
Speaker 1: What's one thing you wish more people understood about energy?
Speaker 2: I wish people would understand the difference between capex and
Speaker 2: op X. Uh huh, because like there's a huge difference,
Speaker 2: but things that have high upfront cost and low running
Speaker 2: cost that there are ways of comparing them to things
Speaker 2: that have constant cost.
Speaker 1: And just to be cool. CAPEX is capital expenditure. Op
Speaker 1: X is operating expenditure right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yes, upfront cost and running cost.
Speaker 1: Basically, Huh, why is that such a big deal.
Speaker 2: It's the one thing that frustrates me that people will
Speaker 2: talk about cost, and they'll talk about solar power being free,
Speaker 2: for example, and not think about the fact that this
Speaker 2: is a problem, like if the soul of power is
Speaker 2: not free, is merely paid upfront. And I think if
Speaker 2: people want to understand energy systems are actually almost any system,
Speaker 2: you need to have some understanding about comparing upfront costs
Speaker 2: and later savings.
Speaker 1: If you weren't writing about energy, what do you think
Speaker 1: you'd be doing.
Speaker 2: I hope I was writing about sustainable agriculture. I mean
Speaker 2: what I always wanted was to work in some way
Speaker 2: towards tackling climate change. Maybe I have trained as a
Speaker 2: heat pump installer, and I would be going around putting
Speaker 2: in heat pumps. Maybe I would work for a local
Speaker 2: planning office processing planning applications for wind farms. That's also
Speaker 2: a valid part of the energy transition. I think if
Speaker 2: you want to have hope for the future. You need
Speaker 2: a new feel climate anxiety, which I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us do. It's really important to have something that
Speaker 2: you can do every day where you think, if I
Speaker 2: do a good job here, the world is better than
Speaker 2: if I did a bad job or didn't show up
Speaker 2: for work.
Speaker 1: Jenny Chase is the author of Solar Power Finance Without
Speaker 1: the Jargon. Next week on the show, I'll talk to
Speaker 1: the founder of a company that's trying to take that
Speaker 1: extra solar energy in the middle of the day and
Speaker 1: use it to solve one of the biggest unsolved problems
Speaker 1: in the energy transition, generating the heat we need to
Speaker 1: make everything from steel to clothing. Today's show was produced
Speaker 1: by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by Lyddy Jean
Speaker 1: Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguier. You can email us
Speaker 1: at problem at Pushkin dot FM. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and
Speaker 1: we'll be back next week with another episode of What's
Speaker 1: Your Problem? With the introduce so physical st