The battle between free trade,fair trade and protectionism continues. The Solar Energy Industry Association weighs in on the biggest solar trade fight that could determine the future of solar prices and jobs in the U.S .

SEIA is the national trade association of the U.S. solar energy industry. According the  the SEIA website,  “SEIA represents all organizations that promote, manufacture, install and support the development of solar energy.  SEIA works with its 1,000 member companies to build jobs and diversity, champion the use of cost-competitive solar in America, remove market barriers and educate the public on the benefits of solar energy.”

The Connecticut Legislature failed to bring HB 7097 to a vote despite a poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and released by Tesla showing, 74 percent of Connecticut voters support legislation authorizing manufacturers like Tesla to open brick-and-mortar stores in Connecticut. The poll, which surveyed 500 Connecticut voters likely to participate in the 2018 election, also found that 49 percent of respondents would be less likely to support state legislators who opposed such legislation.

According to an article in the New Haven Register, Tesla was considering increasing the number of galleries in the state to 10 if HB 7097 ended in failure. This would increase Tesla’s presence in the state beyond the current single gallery, in Greenwich. Locations under consideration include; Norwalk, Westport, Fairfield, West Hartford, Danbury, New London, Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport.

Tesla’s existing investments in Connecticut include a Service Center in Milford, a gallery in Greenwich, five Supercharger stations and 27 destination chargers across the state. Last Friday, Tesla opened the largest Supercharger station to date on the East Coast at the Connecticut Post Mall in Milford. The company plans to open eight additional Supercharger stations and up to 25 additional destination chargers throughout Connecticut by the end of 2017.

Image – By John Cummings – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37553049

Directly from the Press Release  – Governor’s Office of Dannel P. Malloy

06/02/2017

(HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Dannel P. Malloy today announced that he has committed the State of Connecticut to join the United States Climate Alliance – a coalition of U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement and taking aggressive action on climate change. Other participants in the alliance to date include California, Washington state, and New York.

“Connecticut has been a national leader in combating climate change and we have no plans of slowing down our efforts,” Governor Malloy said. “In the absence of leadership from the White House in addressing climate change, it is incumbent upon the states to take action in order to protect their residents. We remain committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Climate Agreement because it is the right thing to do for not only the future of our state, but for the future of our planet. I am proud to stand with my fellow governors in support of efforts to reverse the harmful effects of global warming and to send a message to the rest of the world that we accept the science of climate change and we will not let the misguided beliefs of a few ruin our planet.”

With input from all participants, the United States Climate Alliance will also act as a forum to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs, promote the sharing of information and best practices, and implement new program to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors of the economy.

After President Donald Trump revealed the United States will leave the Paris Climate Treaty, Elon Musk announced he will be leaving all 3 presidential councils; business, manufacturing jobs and infrastructure, effectively ending his controversial advisory role in the Trump administration . Musk made the departure official in a  message via Twitter,  “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

Reaction from other business leaders was swift, Robert Iger, Chairman of Disney, also resigned from the White House Advisory Council via Twitter, “As a matter of principle, I’ve resigned from the President’s Council over the #ParisAgreement withdrawal.”  Tim Cook, Chairman of Apple did not mince words, “Decision to withdraw from the #ParisAgreeement was wrong for our planet. Apple is committed to fight climate change and we will never waver.”

Surprisingly , oil companies such as Exxon, BP, Chevron and Shell had voiced support for staying in the Climate Treaty. Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell, told NPR in an interview, “We believe climate change is real, we believe that the world needs to go through an energy transition to prevent a very significant rise in global temperatures. And we need to be part of that solution in making it happen.”

 IBM released a strong statement via a blog post on the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, “IBM has stated its position on climate change publicly since 2007: Climate change is a serious concern that warrants meaningful action on a global basis to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is an international problem that requires an international solution, and we believe it is important for the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore IBM supported — and still supports — U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. Whether the U.S. participates in the Paris Agreement or not, IBM will continue its decades-long work to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions and will continue to help our clients do so as well.”

That last part of the statement from IBM is key – IBM will continue efforts to reduce green house gas emissions, something that many corporations will continue as well. Leaving the Paris treaty will not push companies like; Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, Nike, Amazon, Walmart, HP, Fed Ex, McGraw-Hill, Target, Costco, Kohls  and Ikea to abandon their wind and solar investments or expansions.

Leaving a climate treaty will not stop the price of renewable’s from falling, it will not stop states from commitments to obtain greater shares of energy from renewable sources. States such as Iowa already get 25% of their power from the wind. In Texas, the heart of oil country and a red state, they produce 20,321 mega watts from the wind.  In the wake of the Trump-Paris announcement, California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, is pursuing a partnership with China for clean energy.

The private sector and states have spoken, the sun is still shining, the wind is still blowing and as long as human beings innovate, renewable energy will have a very prosperous future.

Elon Musk has written a letter published in the Hartford Courant in an all out direct appeal to the public to push Connecticut Legislators to finally grant Tesla the right to sell automobiles directly to consumers.

This is Tesla’s third attempt at getting the state to allow direct sales of Tesla automobiles. At stake is the very heart and future of the free market economy in Connecticut.

Right now, a company like Apple can sell their products directly to consumers, but Tesla cannot. If an individual invents an amazing robot that gets your mail and mows your lawn, they can sell directly to the public but Tesla cannot. If a school or church decides to have a bake sale/fund raiser and sell their products directly to the public, that’s ok, but Tesla cannot. Every day restaurants, all over the state, sell their products directly to the public but Tesla cannot. This legislative and restricted approach to a free market economy is fractured and is not in the best interest of buyers or sellers.

The state of CT is facing a 2.3 billion dollar budget deficit, it makes ZERO fiscal sense to say to Tesla, “Sorry we don’t want you selling cars here, we would rather just give the jobs and sales tax to New York or Mass, go buy your Tesla there instead.”

This is a no brainer Connecticut, lets get this done. Click here to read  the Elon Musk letter in the Hartford Courant

Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
 

Since the advent of the piston powered automobile, car companies have relentlessly promoted the idea that the piston engine would always be the king of the transportation world. Decade after decade, consumers have been mind numbingly inundated through various media outlets, that the piston engine is here to stay and nothing else exists that could possibly provide the same competitive price and performance characteristics.

For decades, the big 3 blithely ignored developing alternative drive trains or paid a mere token interest through products like the ill fated , poorly executed GM EV 1 or the Wankel rotary engine powered Mazda RX 7.

Then along came the very first mass produced Hybrid; the Honda insight. It was a small, tear drop shaped(read ugly) body with 3 doors that seated (cramped) 2 people. The car was basically an under powered, poorly executed attempt at a hybrid that got an EPA rating of 61 MPG. The first generation Honda Insight only sold a laughable 17,020 units worldwide and was quickly eclipsed by the roomier 4 door Toyota Prius. The Prius went on to win large scale acceptance by consumers and tree huggers while the first generation Honda Insight has been largely forgotten.

In the meantime,  Tesla automotive successfully developed the Model S pure electric automobile, a car that shattered sales records for an all electric and even won the Motor Trend magazine prestigious, Car of the Year award. In the luxury segment,  the model S has outpaced  gas powered rivals such as; Mercedes, Lexus and BMW in both sales AND performance. When Tesla introduced the affordable Model 3 all electric automobile, over a quarter of a million people put a deposit down for the car, despite the fact 99% of them had not even driven it!

While Tesla was king of the luxury segment, Nissan produced the Leaf, the first affordable mass produced all electric auto that won praise from the automotive media, while winning over consumers.

One would think, after seeing the sales, the performance and the world wide accolade of the Nissan Leaf, the Tesla model S and the model 3, the other automakers would do everything in their power to transition their cars to all electric drive-trains as fast as possible. This begs the question; why is this not happening?

The simplest answer is raw greed. The internal combustion engine is complex, requiring constant maintenence and a lot of parts. The pure electric automobile on the other hand has far fewer parts and is far more reliable. The pure electric auto has no oil pump, needs no oil changes, does not have a timing belt, or starter, no fuel injection, no fuel filter, no catalytic converter, no exhaust, a minimalist transmission if any, no spark plugs or air filter. The undeniable fact is the electric auto is much cheaper to maintain and requires far fewer parts than an internal combustion engine.

The reality of fewer parts and less maintenence is exactly the problem for a giant auto company that reaps large profits off such parts and maintenence. The fact is, by keeping internal combustion powered hybrids around, they can LOOK like they care about the environment, while continuing to rake in millions in maintenence and parts sales. Unfortunately that is the very secret of why companies such as Toyota and others, have been so slow to adopt pure electric auto’s on a massive scale. Sad but true.

All self or autonomous driving cars will fail at some point due to a well known and potentially fatal flaw. This flaw could be responsible for the death and injury of thousands of motorists every year.

Self driving cars are being touted as the path to a much safer future for automobile transportation.  In fact, Tesla and Google are pouring immense resources of time and money into being the first to offer an auto that drives itself. Unfortunately, both companies are pushing a technology well past its ability to deliver anything but a dangerous experiment, an experiment that may dazzle customers into show rooms and into buying a rolling technology that they think is safe and yet contains a hidden fatal flaw.

Every self driving car relies on immense computer power to make instant decisions about how to respond in any given situation, however, as we all know, computers and computer systems crash. When a pc crashes the result can be a loss of time or data. When your pc or phone crashes, you just turn it off and reboot. However, when the computer that runs your self driving car crashes, the result is far more serious. It is a well known fact,  even after decades of development, our phones, laptops and pc’s still, on occasion crash.  Entrusting thousands of lives to a technology that will fail at 70 mph is foolish.

Tesla, Google and any other car company pursuing this wasteful dream of self driving cars would be wise to invest their time and money elsewhere. Tesla would be well advised to instead, invest in better batteries for electric cars, batteries that deliver longer range yet do not catch on fire when pierced and yet are cost competitive. If they were to find a battery chemistry that delivered that kind of safety, range and affordability, that would truly deliver on the promise of a safer and cleaner future for all of us. (Image – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

There are numerous media outlets reporting that the Trump administration has both silenced and taken away the ability of the EPA to perform or function. In essence the new President has simply shut down the agency until he can figure out what to do with it.

This kind of neck wrenching change of direction happens every time there is new leadership in Washington. Fortunately and unfortunately this is how our republic functions, it is the lifeblood that nourishes the very heart of our democracy.  However, there is another power broker that does not change every 2 or 4 years, this power broker is constant, relentless, incredibly powerful and can turn on a dime making or breaking both companies and economies.

This power broker is the free market economy, a bully pulpit that millions of us get to use to powerfully impact almost any area of our world. In the arena of energy, conservation and the environment, we as consumers can bend the will of any corporation and change entire markets despite what any politician may think or legislate.

Over the next four years, we as caretakers of our planet must legislate our own will to overcome any government laggards who would try to harm our cause. We the people have an entire economy to establish in a way that meets not just our needs but the needs of future generations and we must do this NOW.

So how does this work? Millions of us must vote our conscience in every single purchase we make. We must put our money where our hearts are and forge market share for those who treat our world as we would have it treated. just as important, we must set our minds to the task of making sure we stay away from purchasing products from those who do not share our concern for clean, safe renewable energy and products that do not harm our environment.

if millions of us do this, it will change our world so drastically the power of the old EPA will pale in comparison to the power of a new market based EPA in which Every Person is Accountable. A market driven movement so large no CEO or company would dare defy its principles of  environmental stewardship for fear of losing market share and being dumped by wall street.

This is already happening in many areas; the incredible rise of non GMO and organic foods, the amazing growth of solar and wind power, electric car companies like Tesla gaining record sales and market share despite plummeting fuel prices and the superb growth of the divest movement, which has seen large organizations and even entire countries move away from fossil fuel related investments.

We the people of this great nation must move forward and push our market based green agenda despite the negative legislation coming from the White House. We can do this, we must do this, the time is now.