INTERVIEW: Clean Energy Associates CEO on post-election

While the country anxiously awaits the results of the 2020 election, clean energy is a big topic on everyone's mind. But for Andy Klump the big renewable question is not if but how. 

"Regardless of who wins, I think the renewable energy train has already left the station, it’s just a question of ‘Are we going to go through super high growth or just high growth?’" Klump told New Project Media.

Klump, the CEO of Clean Energy Associates (CEA), added that economics would be the real industry driver for renewables no matter what. The results of the election would really only determine how much costs could come down for solar and hybrid projects. For CEA, which is based in Colorado but features offices worldwide, the potential boost renewables could get with a new administration could result in a solar-plus-storage boom and US supply chain growth, assuming there's policy to back it up.

According to his company's latest report, Klump said developers can expect to see over 770 GWh of production capacity in the next few years, based on data from the APAC supply chain. Although he said the foreign supply chain has mostly recovered following the pandemic, costs have greatly gone up due to the inability of some of the subcomponents of solar and storage technologies to move from location to location. This, combined with both Trump and Biden's expressed interest in growing manufacturing jobs in the energy industry, means that the US could be on its way to boosting its own supply chain if there's incentives for foreign companies to move. 

"There is definitely room for growth [in the US supply chain], but it has to come with some type of carrot, if you will, for the suppliers to expand," Klump said. 

For Klump, the growth of renewables and the domestic supply chain needs to be driven by stable, long-term policies and the removing of any obstacles, such a lack of financial incentives for relocation, more so than implementing something like a longer-term tariff. 

If the policy support is there, he also expects to see huge growth in 2022 and 2023 from projects attempting to meet tax credit deadlines or 2021 projects that got pushed back due to COVID-19. He believes the majority of these projects will have a storage component but added that the tax credit expiration means that almost 100 percent of projects in 2024 and beyond will include storage. 

"Increasingly, the utilities are looking to own these assets and the amount of infrastructure to invest in transmission and distribution throughout the different load centers, it's much more cost-effective to implement a storage solution at various choke points..." Klump said. "With the ITC reducing to that next level, storage is really the only way to make those projects cost-effective." 

Given the growing interest of long-duration as states move to go 100 percent renewable, Klump added that now is a pivotal time for the energy storage industry. 

"The growth is in that hockey-stick inflection point," Klump said. "So that’s where we expect to see more growth in the future."