Recent ArticlesFollow Julian on Twitter @JulianSpector and subscribe to Bright Ideas, his free weekly newsletter on the rise of clean energy. *** When your job involves occasionally illustrating the collapse of companies with a stock image of a skull, there’s a risk that, one day, the skull comes for you. That day arrived last month, instantly changing us journalists from the chroniclers of corporate demise to the chronicled. The outpouring from long-time readers got me thinking about what it was about Gr...
Thanks for the memories, GTM readers! In the future, you can reach me on Twitter @emmafmerchant. *** Greentech Media launched in 2007 before the solar industry as it looks today even existed. Solar — though it had already been around for decades — was so nascent that Wood Mackenzie (formerly GTM Research) doesn’t even have granular installation data prior to 2009. More than 10 years later, the environment is much different. Cumulative U.S. installations grew from about 1 gigawatt in 2009 to...
This is my last article at Greentech Media. Thank you all, and look for me on Twitter @jeffsaintjohn to keep in touch. * * * Greentech Media closes its doors this week. But the energy transformation it’s been chronicling for the past 14 years is just getting started. Since its 2007 founding, this site you’re on now grew from a slim-staffed startup with a flair for incisive coverage of the then-fledgling solar, smart grid and energy storage industries, to the news arm of a global energy ind...
This will be my final piece for Greentech Media. It’s been an honor and a privilege to track Europe’s energy transition for the sector’s most discerning audience. Find me on Twitter @jk_parnell if you want to say hi. Thanks for reading, and keep crushing that carbon. ~ JP *** It’s 2007. The failed Copenhagen climate talks are still two years out. Tesla is almost ready to ship its first car to its chairman of the board, Elon Musk. Five of the world’s 10 biggest companies by market cap are oil...
In 2015, I was sitting with representatives of Strata Solar, Southern Company and the Arkansas Public Service Commission, waiting to go onstage. We were the last session of the last day of the conference in question — a tough time slot. The speakers were talking about that bit of bad luck and joking that utility solar doesn’t get any love. Then someone chimed in, “Demand response, EVs, flow batteries — those are cool subjects. But the four of us know utility solar makes the real impact. We ar...
