Currents

Bob Shapiro, partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s Washington office, discusses FERC’s proposed changes to PURPA. We go over what PURPA is and why it was created, its relevance today, the most significant changes that FERC is proposing and how those changes will affect the market.

Serge Abergel, director of media relations at Hydro-Québec, joins us to discuss how being state-owned affects the company's business decisions, how much energy the company exports and where the energy is being exported. We get into the business of hydro, its environmental impacts, the challenges of exporting to the northeastern US and more.

Jim Spano, co-founder of Radiant REIT, joins us to discuss the evolution of the solar market and the idea behind his new company. Radiant REIT has an interesting business model for providing long term fixed-rate debt to solar projects.

Russell Gold, senior energy reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Michael Skelly, a senior advisor at Lazard and founder of Clean Line Energy Partners, join us for a discussion about Gold’s new book on the ultimately frustrated effort by Clean Line Energy Partners to build four independently-owned transmission lines to move wind electricity from the Midwest to other parts of the country.

Jessie Robbins, senior director of structured finance at Sol Systems, joins us to talk about the ITC extension bill. We talk about whether developers still need to worry about safe harboring, how the ITC step down works, whether safe harboring is worth it, how module prices are affecting developers' decisions and more.

Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BloombergNEF, joins us to discuss their New Energy Outlook. We get into how the outlook differs from others in the market, some of the biggest and most surprising findings, the big shifts that are being seen in the US power sector, how costs of wind and solar are changing, and much more.

Richard Matsui, founder and CEO of kWh Analytics, is back to give us an update on their Solar Lendscape from the asset owners’ perspective. We get into their methodology, discuss the recent trend of refinancing and how refinancing is being built into models, strategic partnerships in the industry and more.

John Schuster, founder and president of JLS Capital Strategies, LLC and former vice president and head of the structured finance division of US ExIm Bank, joins us to discuss US ExIm Bank’s re-entrance into the market. We discuss what happened, his prediction for the future of the bank, as well as his thoughts on working with the bank and other development finance institutions to finance overseas.

Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, joins us to discuss the California market. We discuss the current appetite for new investment in the state, how people are reacting to CCAs and mitigating their risks, how the market looks in the aftermath of the wildfires and more.

Ted Brandt, CEO and founder of Marathon Capital, joins us again to discuss his overall perspective on how active the M&A market is for renewables right now and what he sees in the next six months. We discuss the shift in clients on the buy side, the market’s reaction to the influx of new products, how people are currently looking at the California market and more.

David Burton, partner in our New York office, joins us to for an update on recent headlines in the tax market. We discuss the recent opinions of the US Court of Federal Claims in Bishop Hill Energy, LLC and California Ridge Wind Energy, LLC; what is driving the recent increase in repowerings from a tax perspective; and finally safe harboring panels: why people are doing it, how they are structuring their deals and more.

Tom Buttgenbach, CEO and president of 8minute Solar Energy, one of the most successful developers of utility-scale solar projects in the United States, joins us to discuss what he sees in store for the solar market. We get into how solar technology has affected the energy industry, Tom's forecast for the solar market and more.

Noam Berk of Dean Street Capital Advisors joins us to discuss interesting developments in thermal power hedging as well as key hedge products. We get into the details of tolls, HRCOs, RPOs, spark spread swaps, gas netbacks and more.

Ali Ghorashi, head of section, wind independent engineering at DNV GL, joins us to unpack the business of repowering, which has become relevant in the past few years. We discuss the key valuation drivers, the technological challenges, how the financing structure differs from a preconstruction project and more.

Alex Hinojosa, Calixto Mateos, Carlos Carranza, and Salvador Lopez of the North American Development Bank, join us to talk about why the bank was formed, the types of projects it finances, how it is governed and more.

Richard Matsui, CEO and co-founder of kWh Analytics, and Dana Olson, solar segment leader at DNV GL, join us to discuss the recently published "Solar Risk Assessment" report in which they, along with industry experts from eight other companies, share their quantitative insights on solar production risk.

Ralph Cho and Mike Pantelogianis, Power & Infrastructure Finance Co-heads for Investec in North America, join us to discuss quasi-merchant gas deals. They go into how the projects are set up, who takes the merchant exposure, different types of hedges available and more. .

Kat Gamache, senior counsel at Norton Rose Fulbright, joins us to discuss all things energy PPAs. We go into the biggest differences between traditional renewable PPAs and PPAs with storage, how pricing is handled, the types of batteries she is seeing in the market, lifespan terms in combined resource projects and more.

Jared Quient, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at BayWa r.e., joins us to discuss the innovative PPA structure the company recently used to finance its 100 MW solar deal in North Carolina, from there we expand the discussion to the environment for solar development in the US.

Dr. Becca Jones-Albertus, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, joins us to talk about what the office does and the programs it has funded in the past. The office recently announced $130 million of new funding, $3 million of which has been allocated for “Innovative Solar Finance”; she gets into how you can submit a project for funding, how the solar office tracks the success of its projects and more.