The head of America's biggest residential solar company discusses her new deal with Ford, the "soft costs" that make US residential solar so expensive, and the future of electrification.
I find it rather disappointing that, in a discussion of "electrification," the Beneficial Electrification of space and water heating was hardly mentioned . When it was, it was only because Dave seemed to be pressing the issue. Yes, Jurich did mention water heaters once and she did later accept that heat pumps were important, however, it was clear that Jurich is primarily focused on the production of energy, not on the electrification of energy consumption. The reality is that "electrification" must involve more than solar panels, electric vehicles, and the occasional induction cooktop.
I write this off to "California Thinking," which has been a drag on climate and energy discussions for decades. Too much of our energy/climate strategy is focused on addressing the problems of Californians, who have only a minimal exposure to actual weather in most of their state and only see snow when they go skiing or watch Christmas specials on TV.
In New York, about 35% of our GHG emissions come from fuels burned for heat. Electricity production and use contributes less than 20% of our GHG emissions. The same is true in much of the Northeast and North. California is not representative of much of this country and California Thinking obscures much of what must be done to address energy and climate issues.
I listened to this in October 2022. (Hurray for archives.) I am dismayed by the byzantine and fractious regulatory system we have in the US but heartened by the notion that private companies might be able to circumvent all that because they are not "natural monopolies" that require (embrace) regulation as utilities. I can see a day when we dismantle all the power lines. Don't laugh. People in the 19th century would have scoffed at the notion of indoor plumbing, not to mention electricity itself.
I was a little confused when Ms. Jurich mentioned that we could retire a lot of peaker plants by deploying solar and batteries, and then sort of dismissed the costs of retiring assets by saying overall electricity demand is going to increase. Did I miss something? Are we retiring the peaker plants or no?
I was struck that advocating for regulatory updates at the local level to decrease soft costs is an under appreciated advocacy opportunity to speed up residential and small scale commercial solar adoption. I lead a fast-growing group of Wisconsin health professionals advocating for climate policy, with physicians around the state including in small rural communities. This kind of local advocacy would be a natural fit and I think not that hard to notch wins.
However, I checked in with our local clean energy advocacy groups in Wisconsin. They have looked into this issue, but concluded that given the very high number of local jurisdictions, it would take an unreasonable amount of labor to even figure out what the state of the problem is here and where it made sense to intervene.
Some useful things a group with resources like Sunrun could do to help everyone is if they A) made a check-list of policies to help cut soft costs and B) mapped out the key jurisdictions in a given state where those policies need to be changed and C) publicly released that information. I understand SolSmart (https://solsmart.org) is doing something akin to this, but it is more of a carrot approach that a jurisdiction seeks on their own, rather than building a target list from the outside.
Really enjoyed the conversation, thanks David and Lynn! As a SoCal homeowner who is interested solar and electrifying my home, it was really insightful to hear about the state of home solar and the challenges to a more rationale system.
I was really struck by the discussion around getting the utilities (esp SCE) to be more responsive/quicker in supporting hookups and the disincentives more broadly. Pardon my ignorance around the topic of the utility investment incentives, but would there be a way to allow utilities to "take credit" for installed home solar if it was hooked to their grid in a timely manner? Perhaps a payoff would expedite better behavior on their part versus a statutory/regulatory mandate. Would be selfishly interested in hearing more on bringing the soft costs down.
I find it rather disappointing that, in a discussion of "electrification," the Beneficial Electrification of space and water heating was hardly mentioned . When it was, it was only because Dave seemed to be pressing the issue. Yes, Jurich did mention water heaters once and she did later accept that heat pumps were important, however, it was clear that Jurich is primarily focused on the production of energy, not on the electrification of energy consumption. The reality is that "electrification" must involve more than solar panels, electric vehicles, and the occasional induction cooktop.
I write this off to "California Thinking," which has been a drag on climate and energy discussions for decades. Too much of our energy/climate strategy is focused on addressing the problems of Californians, who have only a minimal exposure to actual weather in most of their state and only see snow when they go skiing or watch Christmas specials on TV.
In New York, about 35% of our GHG emissions come from fuels burned for heat. Electricity production and use contributes less than 20% of our GHG emissions. The same is true in much of the Northeast and North. California is not representative of much of this country and California Thinking obscures much of what must be done to address energy and climate issues.
I listened to this in October 2022. (Hurray for archives.) I am dismayed by the byzantine and fractious regulatory system we have in the US but heartened by the notion that private companies might be able to circumvent all that because they are not "natural monopolies" that require (embrace) regulation as utilities. I can see a day when we dismantle all the power lines. Don't laugh. People in the 19th century would have scoffed at the notion of indoor plumbing, not to mention electricity itself.
I was a little confused when Ms. Jurich mentioned that we could retire a lot of peaker plants by deploying solar and batteries, and then sort of dismissed the costs of retiring assets by saying overall electricity demand is going to increase. Did I miss something? Are we retiring the peaker plants or no?
I was struck that advocating for regulatory updates at the local level to decrease soft costs is an under appreciated advocacy opportunity to speed up residential and small scale commercial solar adoption. I lead a fast-growing group of Wisconsin health professionals advocating for climate policy, with physicians around the state including in small rural communities. This kind of local advocacy would be a natural fit and I think not that hard to notch wins.
However, I checked in with our local clean energy advocacy groups in Wisconsin. They have looked into this issue, but concluded that given the very high number of local jurisdictions, it would take an unreasonable amount of labor to even figure out what the state of the problem is here and where it made sense to intervene.
Some useful things a group with resources like Sunrun could do to help everyone is if they A) made a check-list of policies to help cut soft costs and B) mapped out the key jurisdictions in a given state where those policies need to be changed and C) publicly released that information. I understand SolSmart (https://solsmart.org) is doing something akin to this, but it is more of a carrot approach that a jurisdiction seeks on their own, rather than building a target list from the outside.
Really enjoyed the conversation, thanks David and Lynn! As a SoCal homeowner who is interested solar and electrifying my home, it was really insightful to hear about the state of home solar and the challenges to a more rationale system.
I was really struck by the discussion around getting the utilities (esp SCE) to be more responsive/quicker in supporting hookups and the disincentives more broadly. Pardon my ignorance around the topic of the utility investment incentives, but would there be a way to allow utilities to "take credit" for installed home solar if it was hooked to their grid in a timely manner? Perhaps a payoff would expedite better behavior on their part versus a statutory/regulatory mandate. Would be selfishly interested in hearing more on bringing the soft costs down.
Thanks again!