I will be leaving fresh food economy and environmentalism around that to taking a few days speaking about environmentalism in general. Maryland has always been a very corporate state---now global corporate so any legislation or state and city environmental agency has always POSED PROGRESSIVE in seeing environmental laws and regulations are not enforced. Republican voters have historically been against EPA and Department of AG because Republican pols and think tanks always tell them----these regulations and this oversight kills corporate profits and jobs. This past decade saw Republican voters and conservative church groups coming out for the environment maybe driven by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and fracking killing the entire seafood industry in the Gulf and as in Maryland, industrial trawling/global markets killed our seafood industry. We must be PROACTIVE-----and not continue to be REACTIVE to development. Below you see what I referred to while talking about global VEOLA ENVIRONMENT and candidates who hawk for these global corporations and Wall Street. They will shout for $15 an hour but not educate as to International Economic Zones and Trans Pacific Trade Pact will allow global corporations to operate as they do overseas------ignoring US labor and wage laws so this issue will be worthless when candidates work for Wall Street. When Greater Baltimore Urban League like Baltimore Development honors people tied to all this International Economic Zone policy as with the CEO of BWI airport as a success in business they have lost sight of what good, small business economies are and why THEY are the success story. At this Baltimore business conference and mayoral forum for establishment candidates all you heard from these candidates were how they want to make Baltimore an International Economic Zone modeled after Silicon Valley----home of national NAACP leader Ben Jealous and Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals.
IF YOU KEEP SUPPORTING CANDIDATES WHO WORK FOR WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS ALL PUBLIC POLICY FALLS INTO THEIR HANDS----THESE ARE NOT SINGLE-ISSUES. IF GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT IS ATTACHED TO OUR BALTIMORE CITY WATER AND SUSTAINABILITY AND GLOBAL VEOLA TRANSPORTATION IS ATTACHED TO OUR BALTIMORE MTA PRIVATIZING ALL PUBLIC TRANSIT THEN ALL POLICIES TIED TO INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES AND TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT WILL BE INSTALLED.
'Speaking at a recent driver protest outside the Baltimore headquarters of SuperShuttle’s corporate parent, Veolia Transportation, Mohamed Cisse, like the other SuperShuttle van drivers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, routinely puts in seven-day weeks and 18-hour days, sometimes sleeping in his van at the airport'.
Business & Developmentby Fern Shen10:37 amJan 24, 20140 BAltimore Brew
SuperShuttle drivers protest franchise terms they call “intolerable”
System affords them “a good living,” says their Veolia-owned employer
Above: Driver Tony Koukou Yovo says he was fired for speaking out about working conditions at SuperShuttle.
Mohamed Cisse, like the other SuperShuttle van drivers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, routinely puts in seven-day weeks and 18-hour days, sometimes sleeping in his van at the airport.
But his work ethic stems not just from the need to support his family.
Because of a “franchise” arrangement that Cisse and the other drivers say is exploitative, they face a mountain of debt and pernicious weekly fees that pile up whether they are sick, business is slow, the airport is closed or – as happened to Cisse last year – their van is stolen and they cannot work.
Speaking at a recent driver protest outside the Baltimore headquarters of SuperShuttle’s corporate parent, Veolia Transportation, Cisse explained what happened in August after thieves stole his blue company-leased van from the parking lot of his Suitland apartment complex.
Unable to work for a month, Cisse still was expected to pay the multiple weekly fees owed by all drivers once they sign up to purchase the $35,000 SuperShuttle franchise over 10 years at 15% interest.
“They gave me no other vehicle,” said Cisse, 44, who is originally from Ivory Coast in West Africa.
He was told that he owed SuperShuttle $4,988.69.
Long List of Fees
Why the month delay to get his stolen van back? First, it took a week for police to locate the damaged vehicle. Then Cisse had to pay to have it towed. It took additional weeks for the insurance company (Marsh Insurance, which the drivers must use) to issue the check to cover the balance (after Cisse paid a $2,000 deductible).
Then, still more time passed while the repairs were completed.
“I kept calling. I was going crazy. I needed to get back to work. I knew they are charging me all these fees,” Cisse said.
What Cisse had to pay was his basic “franchise” repayment and all the other fees drivers typically owe: a van lease payment, two kinds of insurance, the 17.5% fee charged by the airport authority, a $500-per-week “system fee” to cover “mobile data terminals” used to transmit dispatch information, and other miscellaneous fees.
(One of Cisse’s “Weekly Vehicle Summary” sheets shows the many charges the drivers must pay.)
Shuttle driver Mohamed Cisse often sleeps in his van at the airport, so he won’t miss a job. (Photo by Fern Shen)
When Cisse finally got his van back, it took him eight weeks just to pay off the debt, an especially daunting challenge at first because, he said, he had no money for gas, “not one penny.” (Drivers pay for their own gas and maintenance costs out-of-pocket. Cisse estimates his gas costs at $100 per day.)
“I asked the company to just lend me the money, give me a break on the gas, but they wouldn’t,” Cisse said.
The other drivers took up a collection to help him. Finally, for his ninth week of work after he got the van back, he got a paycheck: $101.
“No Way I Can Get Ahead”
The high fees, along with other alleged harsh working conditions, are at the heart of a dispute between drivers and European transportation giant Veolia, that has flared into lawsuits and unionization battles across the country.
Even when they are working, the drivers say, the cost of gas and these fees leave them with barely enough to scrape by and, on many weeks, they wind up owing the company money.
Several said it was not unusual to come away with just $200-$300 at the end of a week. Cisse said he has pushed it, sleeping in his van at the airport and, after a 110-hour week, made $500. The drivers take a number and wait their turn.
Part of the problem, the drivers say, is that the company has taken on more and more franchisees at BWI, though the amount of work available to them has not increased.
“There is no way I can get ahead,” Cisse said, speaking with The Brew after addressing about 40 people assembled earlier this week at the rally organized by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1994 and area activists, including Sharon Black of Baltimore People’s Assembly.
SuperShuttle drivers and their supporters protesting outside the Baltimore offices of Veolia Transportation, SuperShuttle’s corporate parent. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Cisse and other drivers say they work 16- to 18-hour days, often sleeping at the holding center near BWI in order to be available for a job that could help them make their weekly payments to SuperShuttle and clear at least some profit.
“At the end of a week, you can go home with nothing,” said Tony Koukou Yovo, who said he was fired six weeks ago for participating in a November protest at BWI, complaining about broken dispatch equipment, for which drivers pay the $500-per-week “system fee.”
“These drivers do not know what they’re getting into when they sign these terrible agreements,” said Amy Millar, growth and strategic planning coordinator for Local 1994, noting that a lot of them are immigrants from West Africa. “Nobody would sign them if they did.”
Millar said it is next-to-impossible for drivers to find anyone willing to buy the franchises. Since they get no fee break for illnesses, they must hire a company relief driver to take over until they recover. They also get no health insurance benefits from SuperShuttle.
“This month, most of us will take money from our life savings to pay SuperShuttle,” sais Baba Saidykhan, originally from Gambia, calling the situation “intolerable.”
“A Good Living”
Dwight Kines, a vice president with Veolia Transportation on Demand, declined to get into specifics about Yovo’s and Cisse’s cases, but disputed the allegation that the drivers are exploited.
“I strongly disagree,” said Kines, in a phone interview with The Brew. Kines had figures that differed markedly from the drivers’.
Millar and the drivers said their weekly expenses (for gas and SuperShuttle fees and franchise repayment) routinely reach or exceed $2,000. Cisse’s “Weekly Driver Summary” from October showed about $1,630 for fees. He said keeping the gas tank filled for five days means another $500 or more that comes out of his pocket.
Kines, however, said their pre-gas fees average about $800.
“Our drivers are able to make a good living,” Kines said. He noted that the company has a program to help drivers sell their franchise and offers a couple of weeks credit on the fees each year if drivers wish to take a vacation.
“Can you name another franchisor – McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts – where this is allowed?” he asked. He also said that driver turnover has dropped to 15% in recent years.
“That reflects the fact that the vast majority of our drivers are successful,” he said, in an email. “When we operated under the employee model, turnover was over 150% – yes, 150% per year.”
___________________________________________
As establishment candidates like Mosby, Dixon, Pugh, Stokes, Embry, Warnock tout global corporate partnerships from our schools to our city agencies and call for a Baltimore looking like a very International Economic Zone Silicon Valley in San Francisco----they are calling for the industries most devastating to our environment----technology. Global technology and security vs local, emerging technology are opposite. San Francisco is loaded with immigrant third world slums, toxic waste pits, extreme wealth with a city center mostly foreign rich and controlled entirely by global Google and a few other global technology corporations. This area is staged to go completely ONE WORLD International Economic Zone if Trans Pacific Trade Pact is installed. As toxic pits from technology manufacturing grow-----so too is the degradation of environment that comes with International Economic Zones. Fracking, export terminals for natural gas and as you see COAL-----are filling US cities Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals said would have fresh food and GREEN economies in underserved communities.
THIS AREA OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA TAKEN BY GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL MESS.
So, why would citizens in Baltimore want candidates for Baltimore City Council and Mayor thinking THIS IS THE ECONOMIC MODEL FOR BALTIMORE?
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW POLITICIANS ALLOWING EXPORT TERMINALS FOR CRUDE OIL AND NATURAL GAS IN MARYLAND AND PORT OF BALTIMORE WILL AS WELL ALLOW COAL EXPORTS.
Who has a majority share in fracking and exporting corporations, oil export corporations, and the privatized Port of Baltimore and other US ports?
GLOBAL INVESTMENT FIRM HIGHSTAR WITH IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENTS GETTING RICHER FROM THESE POLICIES.
So, if HighStar is Johns Hopkins and Wall Street Baltimore Development----they are behind all this Port of Baltimore being a global port-----VEOLA Environment and VEOLA Transportation----and all the policy tied to exporting natural gas, crude oil, and coming soon----coal.
SEE HOW THESE GLOBAL POLICIES ARE ALL TIED TOGETHER AND INVOLVE THESE SAME GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TIED TO OUR US CITY GOVERNMENT.
Fight for a Coal-free Oakland
The developers of an export terminal on City-owned land on the Oakland waterfront have been quietly soliciting a partnership with four Utah counties to export up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year. The partnership would make Oakland the largest coal-export facility on the West Coast, and would increase national coal exports by a whopping 19 percent. This is a frightening prospect for the entire region. It would mean long, dusty coal trains through our communities and compromising health, worker safety, and climate security.
Want to join the fight?
Big Coal made a mistake in targeting the Bay Area. A poll shows that 76 percent of Oakland voters oppose the coal-export proposal, including a majority (57%) who oppose it “strongly.” We will not allow our path to a healthy and sustainable future be hijacked by the last gasps of a highly polluting and dying industry.
Big Coal’s profits are getting squeezed by new EPA regulations and closures of coal-fired power plants across the US. In response, coal companies are looking for ways to ship their dirty energy commodity to foreign markets. Major organizing victories squashing export proposals in Oregon and Washington mean that Big Coal has turned its sights on California. Bay Area communities are already burdened by poor air quality caused by our five oil refineries and the shipping industry. We even have some coal snaking through our neighborhoods by rail and shipping out of a private terminal in Richmond. Now Oakland is in Big Coal’s crosshairs.
The Threat to Climate
California has worked hard to be a coal-free state — but while the state is setting aggressive carbon-reduction targets, this terminal would allow the most carbon-polluting fuel to be brought to market, with devastating consequences.
The Threat to Clean Air
Toxic coal dust is linked to decreased lung capacity, increased childhood bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema, and heart disease. For communities along the I-80 corridor, adding more toxic particulate matter to the air would mean more trips to the hospital, more kids with asthma, and shorter lifespans for too many people.
The Threat to Workers
Port workers who have prolonged exposure to coal would suffer an even greater health risk. And the fact is that exporting coal is bad for jobs as well as for health; Terminals that ship coal provide far fewer jobs than terminals that ship containers or general cargo — and that means fewer local jobs. Coal is an increasingly anti-union industry. For so many reasons, this project is not right for the Bay Area.
Media coverage:
From extraction to transport to burning for fuel, coal leaches toxic chemicals into communities and the environment causing climate disruption and deadly diseases. Don’t let Big Coal exploit the Bay Area's economy, health, and environment. Join our fight today and help us shut down this dirty and dangerous coal-export project.
Questions? Email Brittany King at brittany.king@sierraclub.org.
________________________________________
As even the GREEN PARTY candidate Joshua Harris shout out for Silicon Valley as our Baltimore City economic model----Harris called for a solar panel industry in Baltimore as exists in California as if this CA model was a green one and as this article shows----IT IS NOT GREEN.
When global corporations control any economic model they always go for the cheapest and most profit-driven and this includes solar panel. Just as Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals labelled natural gas CLEAN ENERGY AND GREEN----when everyone knows fracking is worse environmentally than oil-----like Obama and Clinton neo-liberals labelling COAL----CLEAN COAL-----because it undergoes some sort of process not many people believe make it CLEAN-----the movement behind BATTERY technology tied to electric cars and solar panels has a goal of battery technology needed for global technology corporations like global health, global education, global Google and Facebook----and more importantly----this battery technology is tied to the ONE CORPORATION AS ELECTRIC AND HOME ENERGY-----THE CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID. So, as Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals pose progressive in all of what they call GREEN----the goal was always research and technology for global corporations and CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID.
For decades the US shipped overseas toxic computer hardware to developing nations that are now wising up and saying NO THANKS----as their environments are devastated by all this. So, where are all of these new GREEN energy units going after they fail? It will no doubt look like our nuclear energy storehouses where things are falling apart and no environmentally safe policy has moved forward for decades. THERE IS NO PLAN.
Right now China has most of the solar panel market and US imports most of its solar panels from China and Germany ---this is not a manufacturing business for US cities for the most part---and it would not be a wise industry to start. Those US corporations that are trying to enter the market are getting low marks for environment in most cases and that is with SELF-REPORTING. SELF-REPORTING IS WHAT WALL STREET BANKS AND THE SEC DO SO A GROUP ALLOWING SELF-REPORTING IS NOT GETTING GOOD DATA. The issues they promote are good issues. We know for decades US technology corporations have been telling us they have a recycle system in place then found that system was simply sending it all overseas to be dumped.
Markets & Policy
Solar’s Dirty Little Secret
The Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition’s new report ranks solar manufacturers on environmental health and safety.
by Eric Wesoff
March 23, 2010
"Green" solar panels can have their dirty side in terms of disposal and manufacturing. And what happens to the millions of solar panels planted in solar farms and installed on roofs once they've reached the end of their useful life in 20 or 25 years?
You might recall the outcry in 2008 when the Washington Post reported on the alleged dumping of silicon tetrachloride, a toxic byproduct of polysilicon production on farmland in China. Lax environmental enforcement and the drive to save money on expensive recycling and treatment drove the polysilicon supplier to this irresponsible act.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) has called on the solar industry to adopt environmentally friendly measures for manufacturing and disposing of solar panels. Sheila Davis, executive director of the non-profit SVTC, believes that solar companies should start investing in recycling efforts now rather than waiting for their products to clog up landfills before taking action.
"It's an excellent time to do this considering that solar is an emerging industry," said Davis. "It will be an environmental advantage if you have panels that not only contribute to sustainability and reduce carbon emissions, but also use renewable and sustainable materials."
To encourage solar manufacturers to do the right thing, SVTC just released its 2010 Solar Company Scorecard, which ranks manufacturers of PV modules according to environmental health and safety, sustainability, workers’ rights, and social justice. The responding companies self-reported on these areas and the results can serve as a resource for institutional purchasers, investors and consumers. SVTC is funded by individuals and foundations. The scorecard was partially funded by Henderson Global and Boston Common.
“Solar power is key to helping solve the world’s climate crisis,” offered Davis. “But the industry still faces serious issues that need to be addressed before it can be considered truly ‘clean and green’ and socially just.”
Fourteen companies representing 24 percent of the 2008 module market share and 31 percent of the cumulative market share responded to the inquiry. The top three scores were earned by German manufacturers Calyxo, SolarWorld and Sovello, which scored 90, 88 and 73 respectively. (Calyxo and Sovello, both funded by Q-Cells, likely have larger problems to worry about).
Two U.S.-based cadmium telluride manufacturers responded and scored in the mid-range: First Solar in Arizona received a score of 67 and Colorado-based startup Abound received a 63.
What really needs to occur to drive a recycling culture is the adoption of a takeback program by every solar module manufacturer. Firms can go it alone like First Solar or they can get together, as in the PV Cycle Association, which is developing a voluntary solar panel recycling program in Europe.
SVTC is calling for mandatory takeback and responsible recycling by solar companies as a step toward reducing the solar industry’s environmental footprint. Larger institutional customers and city or school districts can drive this process by insisting that there be takeback programs as well.
In Davis' words, "That's why we created the scorecard -- to see which makers are taking the panels back."
First Solar (FSLR), the largest maker of cadmium telluride solar panels, runs a recycling program and explains what it does with unwanted panels here. There is a toxicity risk associated with cadmium telluride that First Solar has confronted with a 100 percent takeback program bonded by Swiss Re in the event that First Solar is not around in 20 to 30 years.
The SVTC got started more than 25 years ago in response to water contamination caused by the semiconductor industry. Their focus has been on electronics, but the rapid growth of the solar PV industry has spurred them into getting an early start on working with the solar panel manufacturers, and to avoid the late start that the semiconductor industry had. "We don't want that to happen in the solar industry," said Davis.
She added, "The waste stream is going to diversify and manufacturers need to be prepared."
_____________________________________
When Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals tout building solar panel manufacturing----and an Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal running as GREEN PARTY Joshua Harris shout this California model for solar panels you see yet again they are trying to build global corporations to compete overseas and with that comes this super-sized toxic waste. We do not need Wall Street or global investment firms if we are building a local manufacturing solar panel business complete with all of the recycling and safety precautions for our workers and waste. Then you are only producing for Baltimore and surrounding region with the toxicity being manageable. Raise your hand if you know a corporations described below has all intent of marketing globally to compete with China------
THIS IS FOR WHAT GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT WORKS----IT SELLS SOLAR PANEL TECHNOLOGY BUT MAKES SURE IT GOES INTO GLOBAL CORPORATE HANDS.
Simply attaching individual homeowners to these solar panels will be the GREEN benefit-----massive real estate filled with solar panels for our energy grid----when electricity is more GREEN than solar panels is done simply to sell solar panels for these global corporations. The small amount of energy coming from these huge fields of solar panels creates so little GREEN to justify the toxicity of manufacturing these super-panels.
ENERGY STORAGE IS THE CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID TECHNOLOGY HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING GREEN OR GREEN ENERGY. MANUFACTURE LOCAL AND INSTALL INTO HOMES AND BUSINESSES.
Below you see the business calling itself SolarCity-----and you see more and more of the emphasis is on the battery technology and storage of energy all designed for global corporate campuses like WalMart making THEM ENERGY FREE with tons of toxic waste from these technologies moving into all of our communities. These kinds of technologies are not CLEAN and GREEN-----and they are not aimed at residential----you will soon see that market disappear as these global corporations find only the global corporate campuses with solar and energy storage being profitable.
Who is behind the GREEN ENERGY diversification when Maryland says it is going GREEN? A global corporation in Europe handles our Maryland off-shore windmill project and we know solar is tied to these West-Coast corporations....NOTHING LOCAL HAPPENING.
Don't think Bush neo-conservatives are being left out by all this Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal subsidy to global GREEN-----Obama is working as hard as he can for global FRACKING----which is Bush and oil and again ----NOT GREEN.
Solar Finance & VC
SolarCity Closes $338 Million Round for Commercial Solar and Energy Storage, Plus Residential
Can the company figure out the best way to pair C&I storage with PV?
by Julia Pyper
April 10, 2016
0
SolarCity closed two major rounds of funding this week that will give a boost to its residential and commercial solar businesses, and could possibly breathe new life into a languishing commercial and industrial (C&I) solar market.
On April 7, the California-based company announced it had closed the second round of financing as part of its renewable energy tax equity investment program with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and another investor. The program will finance approximately $188 million in solar projects, covering the up-front cost of the solar equipment and installation.
On April 6, SolarCity announced it had closed a $150 million round of non-recourse financing with Credit Suisse to support deployment of commercial solar energy systems, including battery storage systems.
The news builds on last year’s announcement that SolarCity had activated a $1 billion fund in partnership with Credit Suisse that is expected to finance more than 300 megawatts of solar for businesses, schools and government organizations across the U.S.
SolarCity is widely known as the largest residential solar installer in the U.S., but has also climbed to the top of the commercial and industrial space, claiming the number one spot for installations in 2014 and 2015, according to the GTM Research U.S. PV Leaderboard.
"Our asset portfolio enables us to continually bring in new capital from top tier institutional and corporate investors," said Jeff Munson, director of structured finance of SolarCity, in a statement. "Additionally, our proprietary, in-house technology provides us competitive advantages that have led us to become one of the top commercial solar providers in the U.S.”
Integrating High Levels of Renewables into Microgrids:
SolarCity's commercial offering leverages ZS Peak, a proprietary mounting system that integrates the solar panel with the racking hardware, reducing project build time from multiple weeks to a just a few days.
Battery storage projects will be supported by DemandLogic, which is SolarCity’s dedicated battery for businesses aimed at beating utilities' demand charges. Developed with energy storage technology from Tesla, DemandLogic is equipped with autonomous, learning software to optimize savings.
This isn't SolarCity’s first move in the C&I solar-plus-storage space. The company launched its energy storage product for businesses in 2013. Currently, DemandLogic is officially only available for customers in California, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program database lists SolarCity's commercial storage pipeline at 4.3 megawatts, of which only 505 kilowatts have been deployed, according to Ravi Manghani, senior energy storage analyst at GTM Research.
Most of those deployments came in 2011. In all likelihood they were installed for Walmart to aid in reducing peak load. SolarCity is currently installing an additional 10 battery projects for Walmart using 200 kilowatt (400 kilowatt-hour) batteries.
“Commercial solar-plus-storage financing -- or for that matter even residential -- has been a tough nut to crack,” said Manghani. “Companies like Stem and Green Charge Networks that have secured financing for C&I storage, have kept solar financing out of the conversation. And in spite of favorable economics for C&I solar-plus-storage, the market has been languid.”
GTM Research estimates that less than half of C&I storage projects are currently deployed in combination with solar. Some sites with solar may later add storage, but there are relatively few simultaneous deployments. Manghani said he's eager to see the extent to which SolarCity can bring two disparate value streams offered by solar (kilowatt-hour savings) and storage (kilowatt management) under a common financing platform.
It will also be interesting to see the impact a new round of financing could have on the overall C&I market.
Installations in the commercial solar segment have actually dropped 4 percent on an annual basis over the past two years, according to Cory Honeyman, senior solar analyst at GTM Research. This is primarily due to three challenges: policy constraints brought on by state incentive volatility and challenging rate structures, a sluggish customer acquisition process, and limited financing for small and non-investment grade commercial customers.
Honeyman said it will be telling for the sector to see just how much of SolarCity’s $150 million C&I fund targets solar-plus-storage and how much targets commercial customer segments.
He'll be looking out for "Whether this fund focuses on more of the same or reveals a shift in commercial solar finance towards under served solar-plus solutions and customer types that can reboot the broader commercial solar market."
Between funding announcements, SolarCity unveiled last week that it has appointed former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff as the company’s Chief Policy Officer. The progressive energy policy expert will advise SolarCity on regulatory and legislative affairs, and could lead the company commercial solar policy debates.
__________________________________________
The point is this: we KNOW what happened in CA and Silicon Valley both with global technology taking control of San Francisco----creating massive toxic dumps with workers being exposed to dangerous workplace environments----and we know San Francisco as International Economic Zone is hiring mostly foreign workers, bringing immigrant labor to these global technology factories as sweat shops----SO WHY WOULD BALTIMORE WANT TO COPY THAT BUSINESS ECONOMY?
The answer is Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins is driven by International Economic Zone and global corporate policy and global health care and global corporate education must have all this energy storage battery manufacturing.
'Often the original mess is almost untreatable. In Silicon Valley’s case, it would take 700 years of continuous treatment to make the groundwater drinkable.'"
None of these global corporate GREEN ENERGY projects are about being GREEN or making our homes and each community GREEN----it is all about building the technology needed for global corporations to do their business and to sell globally.
Global VEOLA ENVIRONMENT calls all this technology GREEN and SUSTAINABLE----knowing it is going to be targeting global corporate campuses and not our local communities and homes.
Silicon Valley's toxic past: How tech waste contaminated Mountain View and beyond
Mar 20, 2014, 11:53am PDT Updated Mar 20, 2014, 2:03pm PDT
Way back in the 1960s and 1970s, tech firms like Intel Corp. and Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. used toxic solvents to produce early computer chips. But that decades-old pollution has since led to additional environmental damage — and potential health threats — in Silicon Valley and other distant locales, according to a new report.
The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Guardian US conducted an in-depth study published this week on a government-designated environmental cleanup site in Mountain View that serves as a case study for 1,300 similarly toxic "Superfund" sites nationwide. The article found that costly clean up often creates more waste that goes beyond Silicon Valley and its residents.
Enlarge A new report on the "toxic trail" stemming from decades-old tech waste in Silicon Valley… more
iStock
The report follows the "toxic trail" of groundwater in Mountain View contaminated by cancer-causing solvents such as trichloroethylene and benzene, which were previously used by tech companies to degrease chips.
In an effort to limit harmful vapors wafting into nearby job and housing clusters — including massive tech campuses for companies like Google Inc. and Symantec Corp. — water is pumped out of the ground and sent to questionable treatment plants in places like Kentucky, Arizona or a separate plant in Silicon Valley. But that causes more concerns.
The CIR/Guardian report explains:
"Along the trail, contained toxic waste is turned into an array of uncontrolled and potentially worse problems that fan out across the U.S.
Often the original mess is almost untreatable. In Silicon Valley’s case, it would take 700 years of continuous treatment to make the groundwater drinkable.'"
Read much more about the environmental mess — including the potential impacts on your food supply — in the full report.
IF YOU KEEP SUPPORTING CANDIDATES WHO WORK FOR WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS ALL PUBLIC POLICY FALLS INTO THEIR HANDS----THESE ARE NOT SINGLE-ISSUES. IF GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT IS ATTACHED TO OUR BALTIMORE CITY WATER AND SUSTAINABILITY AND GLOBAL VEOLA TRANSPORTATION IS ATTACHED TO OUR BALTIMORE MTA PRIVATIZING ALL PUBLIC TRANSIT THEN ALL POLICIES TIED TO INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES AND TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT WILL BE INSTALLED.
'Speaking at a recent driver protest outside the Baltimore headquarters of SuperShuttle’s corporate parent, Veolia Transportation, Mohamed Cisse, like the other SuperShuttle van drivers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, routinely puts in seven-day weeks and 18-hour days, sometimes sleeping in his van at the airport'.
Business & Developmentby Fern Shen10:37 amJan 24, 20140 BAltimore Brew
SuperShuttle drivers protest franchise terms they call “intolerable”
System affords them “a good living,” says their Veolia-owned employer
Above: Driver Tony Koukou Yovo says he was fired for speaking out about working conditions at SuperShuttle.
Mohamed Cisse, like the other SuperShuttle van drivers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, routinely puts in seven-day weeks and 18-hour days, sometimes sleeping in his van at the airport.
But his work ethic stems not just from the need to support his family.
Because of a “franchise” arrangement that Cisse and the other drivers say is exploitative, they face a mountain of debt and pernicious weekly fees that pile up whether they are sick, business is slow, the airport is closed or – as happened to Cisse last year – their van is stolen and they cannot work.
Speaking at a recent driver protest outside the Baltimore headquarters of SuperShuttle’s corporate parent, Veolia Transportation, Cisse explained what happened in August after thieves stole his blue company-leased van from the parking lot of his Suitland apartment complex.
Unable to work for a month, Cisse still was expected to pay the multiple weekly fees owed by all drivers once they sign up to purchase the $35,000 SuperShuttle franchise over 10 years at 15% interest.
“They gave me no other vehicle,” said Cisse, 44, who is originally from Ivory Coast in West Africa.
He was told that he owed SuperShuttle $4,988.69.
Long List of Fees
Why the month delay to get his stolen van back? First, it took a week for police to locate the damaged vehicle. Then Cisse had to pay to have it towed. It took additional weeks for the insurance company (Marsh Insurance, which the drivers must use) to issue the check to cover the balance (after Cisse paid a $2,000 deductible).
Then, still more time passed while the repairs were completed.
“I kept calling. I was going crazy. I needed to get back to work. I knew they are charging me all these fees,” Cisse said.
What Cisse had to pay was his basic “franchise” repayment and all the other fees drivers typically owe: a van lease payment, two kinds of insurance, the 17.5% fee charged by the airport authority, a $500-per-week “system fee” to cover “mobile data terminals” used to transmit dispatch information, and other miscellaneous fees.
(One of Cisse’s “Weekly Vehicle Summary” sheets shows the many charges the drivers must pay.)
Shuttle driver Mohamed Cisse often sleeps in his van at the airport, so he won’t miss a job. (Photo by Fern Shen)
When Cisse finally got his van back, it took him eight weeks just to pay off the debt, an especially daunting challenge at first because, he said, he had no money for gas, “not one penny.” (Drivers pay for their own gas and maintenance costs out-of-pocket. Cisse estimates his gas costs at $100 per day.)
“I asked the company to just lend me the money, give me a break on the gas, but they wouldn’t,” Cisse said.
The other drivers took up a collection to help him. Finally, for his ninth week of work after he got the van back, he got a paycheck: $101.
“No Way I Can Get Ahead”
The high fees, along with other alleged harsh working conditions, are at the heart of a dispute between drivers and European transportation giant Veolia, that has flared into lawsuits and unionization battles across the country.
Even when they are working, the drivers say, the cost of gas and these fees leave them with barely enough to scrape by and, on many weeks, they wind up owing the company money.
Several said it was not unusual to come away with just $200-$300 at the end of a week. Cisse said he has pushed it, sleeping in his van at the airport and, after a 110-hour week, made $500. The drivers take a number and wait their turn.
Part of the problem, the drivers say, is that the company has taken on more and more franchisees at BWI, though the amount of work available to them has not increased.
“There is no way I can get ahead,” Cisse said, speaking with The Brew after addressing about 40 people assembled earlier this week at the rally organized by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1994 and area activists, including Sharon Black of Baltimore People’s Assembly.
SuperShuttle drivers and their supporters protesting outside the Baltimore offices of Veolia Transportation, SuperShuttle’s corporate parent. (Photo by Fern Shen)
Cisse and other drivers say they work 16- to 18-hour days, often sleeping at the holding center near BWI in order to be available for a job that could help them make their weekly payments to SuperShuttle and clear at least some profit.
“At the end of a week, you can go home with nothing,” said Tony Koukou Yovo, who said he was fired six weeks ago for participating in a November protest at BWI, complaining about broken dispatch equipment, for which drivers pay the $500-per-week “system fee.”
“These drivers do not know what they’re getting into when they sign these terrible agreements,” said Amy Millar, growth and strategic planning coordinator for Local 1994, noting that a lot of them are immigrants from West Africa. “Nobody would sign them if they did.”
Millar said it is next-to-impossible for drivers to find anyone willing to buy the franchises. Since they get no fee break for illnesses, they must hire a company relief driver to take over until they recover. They also get no health insurance benefits from SuperShuttle.
“This month, most of us will take money from our life savings to pay SuperShuttle,” sais Baba Saidykhan, originally from Gambia, calling the situation “intolerable.”
“A Good Living”
Dwight Kines, a vice president with Veolia Transportation on Demand, declined to get into specifics about Yovo’s and Cisse’s cases, but disputed the allegation that the drivers are exploited.
“I strongly disagree,” said Kines, in a phone interview with The Brew. Kines had figures that differed markedly from the drivers’.
Millar and the drivers said their weekly expenses (for gas and SuperShuttle fees and franchise repayment) routinely reach or exceed $2,000. Cisse’s “Weekly Driver Summary” from October showed about $1,630 for fees. He said keeping the gas tank filled for five days means another $500 or more that comes out of his pocket.
Kines, however, said their pre-gas fees average about $800.
“Our drivers are able to make a good living,” Kines said. He noted that the company has a program to help drivers sell their franchise and offers a couple of weeks credit on the fees each year if drivers wish to take a vacation.
“Can you name another franchisor – McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts – where this is allowed?” he asked. He also said that driver turnover has dropped to 15% in recent years.
“That reflects the fact that the vast majority of our drivers are successful,” he said, in an email. “When we operated under the employee model, turnover was over 150% – yes, 150% per year.”
___________________________________________
As establishment candidates like Mosby, Dixon, Pugh, Stokes, Embry, Warnock tout global corporate partnerships from our schools to our city agencies and call for a Baltimore looking like a very International Economic Zone Silicon Valley in San Francisco----they are calling for the industries most devastating to our environment----technology. Global technology and security vs local, emerging technology are opposite. San Francisco is loaded with immigrant third world slums, toxic waste pits, extreme wealth with a city center mostly foreign rich and controlled entirely by global Google and a few other global technology corporations. This area is staged to go completely ONE WORLD International Economic Zone if Trans Pacific Trade Pact is installed. As toxic pits from technology manufacturing grow-----so too is the degradation of environment that comes with International Economic Zones. Fracking, export terminals for natural gas and as you see COAL-----are filling US cities Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals said would have fresh food and GREEN economies in underserved communities.
THIS AREA OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA TAKEN BY GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL MESS.
So, why would citizens in Baltimore want candidates for Baltimore City Council and Mayor thinking THIS IS THE ECONOMIC MODEL FOR BALTIMORE?
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNOW POLITICIANS ALLOWING EXPORT TERMINALS FOR CRUDE OIL AND NATURAL GAS IN MARYLAND AND PORT OF BALTIMORE WILL AS WELL ALLOW COAL EXPORTS.
Who has a majority share in fracking and exporting corporations, oil export corporations, and the privatized Port of Baltimore and other US ports?
GLOBAL INVESTMENT FIRM HIGHSTAR WITH IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENTS GETTING RICHER FROM THESE POLICIES.
So, if HighStar is Johns Hopkins and Wall Street Baltimore Development----they are behind all this Port of Baltimore being a global port-----VEOLA Environment and VEOLA Transportation----and all the policy tied to exporting natural gas, crude oil, and coming soon----coal.
SEE HOW THESE GLOBAL POLICIES ARE ALL TIED TOGETHER AND INVOLVE THESE SAME GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TIED TO OUR US CITY GOVERNMENT.
Fight for a Coal-free Oakland
The developers of an export terminal on City-owned land on the Oakland waterfront have been quietly soliciting a partnership with four Utah counties to export up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year. The partnership would make Oakland the largest coal-export facility on the West Coast, and would increase national coal exports by a whopping 19 percent. This is a frightening prospect for the entire region. It would mean long, dusty coal trains through our communities and compromising health, worker safety, and climate security.
Want to join the fight?
Big Coal made a mistake in targeting the Bay Area. A poll shows that 76 percent of Oakland voters oppose the coal-export proposal, including a majority (57%) who oppose it “strongly.” We will not allow our path to a healthy and sustainable future be hijacked by the last gasps of a highly polluting and dying industry.
Big Coal’s profits are getting squeezed by new EPA regulations and closures of coal-fired power plants across the US. In response, coal companies are looking for ways to ship their dirty energy commodity to foreign markets. Major organizing victories squashing export proposals in Oregon and Washington mean that Big Coal has turned its sights on California. Bay Area communities are already burdened by poor air quality caused by our five oil refineries and the shipping industry. We even have some coal snaking through our neighborhoods by rail and shipping out of a private terminal in Richmond. Now Oakland is in Big Coal’s crosshairs.
The Threat to Climate
California has worked hard to be a coal-free state — but while the state is setting aggressive carbon-reduction targets, this terminal would allow the most carbon-polluting fuel to be brought to market, with devastating consequences.
The Threat to Clean Air
Toxic coal dust is linked to decreased lung capacity, increased childhood bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema, and heart disease. For communities along the I-80 corridor, adding more toxic particulate matter to the air would mean more trips to the hospital, more kids with asthma, and shorter lifespans for too many people.
The Threat to Workers
Port workers who have prolonged exposure to coal would suffer an even greater health risk. And the fact is that exporting coal is bad for jobs as well as for health; Terminals that ship coal provide far fewer jobs than terminals that ship containers or general cargo — and that means fewer local jobs. Coal is an increasingly anti-union industry. For so many reasons, this project is not right for the Bay Area.
Media coverage:
- San Francisco Editorial: A trainload of trouble rolls toward Oakland
- CBS: Proposed Oakland coal depot racing against the clock
- Contra Costa Times: Sierra Club poll: Most Oaklanders opposed to shipping coal
- Contra Costa Times: Guest commentary: Saying no to coal in Oakland is the right thing to do
- East Bay Express: It's time for Jerry Brown to break his silence on coal
- Los Angeles Times: How Utah quietly made plans to ship coal through California
- San Francisco Chronicle: Oakland making its move in dustup over coal trains
- East Bay Express: East Bay labor unions say 'No' to coal in Oakland
- KQED: "A dustup in Oakland over plan to ship coal through new terminal"
- San Francisco Chronicle: "Opponents of Oakland coal shipping target governor’s pal"
From extraction to transport to burning for fuel, coal leaches toxic chemicals into communities and the environment causing climate disruption and deadly diseases. Don’t let Big Coal exploit the Bay Area's economy, health, and environment. Join our fight today and help us shut down this dirty and dangerous coal-export project.
Questions? Email Brittany King at brittany.king@sierraclub.org.
________________________________________
As even the GREEN PARTY candidate Joshua Harris shout out for Silicon Valley as our Baltimore City economic model----Harris called for a solar panel industry in Baltimore as exists in California as if this CA model was a green one and as this article shows----IT IS NOT GREEN.
When global corporations control any economic model they always go for the cheapest and most profit-driven and this includes solar panel. Just as Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals labelled natural gas CLEAN ENERGY AND GREEN----when everyone knows fracking is worse environmentally than oil-----like Obama and Clinton neo-liberals labelling COAL----CLEAN COAL-----because it undergoes some sort of process not many people believe make it CLEAN-----the movement behind BATTERY technology tied to electric cars and solar panels has a goal of battery technology needed for global technology corporations like global health, global education, global Google and Facebook----and more importantly----this battery technology is tied to the ONE CORPORATION AS ELECTRIC AND HOME ENERGY-----THE CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID. So, as Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals pose progressive in all of what they call GREEN----the goal was always research and technology for global corporations and CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID.
For decades the US shipped overseas toxic computer hardware to developing nations that are now wising up and saying NO THANKS----as their environments are devastated by all this. So, where are all of these new GREEN energy units going after they fail? It will no doubt look like our nuclear energy storehouses where things are falling apart and no environmentally safe policy has moved forward for decades. THERE IS NO PLAN.
Right now China has most of the solar panel market and US imports most of its solar panels from China and Germany ---this is not a manufacturing business for US cities for the most part---and it would not be a wise industry to start. Those US corporations that are trying to enter the market are getting low marks for environment in most cases and that is with SELF-REPORTING. SELF-REPORTING IS WHAT WALL STREET BANKS AND THE SEC DO SO A GROUP ALLOWING SELF-REPORTING IS NOT GETTING GOOD DATA. The issues they promote are good issues. We know for decades US technology corporations have been telling us they have a recycle system in place then found that system was simply sending it all overseas to be dumped.
Markets & Policy
Solar’s Dirty Little Secret
The Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition’s new report ranks solar manufacturers on environmental health and safety.
by Eric Wesoff
March 23, 2010
"Green" solar panels can have their dirty side in terms of disposal and manufacturing. And what happens to the millions of solar panels planted in solar farms and installed on roofs once they've reached the end of their useful life in 20 or 25 years?
You might recall the outcry in 2008 when the Washington Post reported on the alleged dumping of silicon tetrachloride, a toxic byproduct of polysilicon production on farmland in China. Lax environmental enforcement and the drive to save money on expensive recycling and treatment drove the polysilicon supplier to this irresponsible act.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) has called on the solar industry to adopt environmentally friendly measures for manufacturing and disposing of solar panels. Sheila Davis, executive director of the non-profit SVTC, believes that solar companies should start investing in recycling efforts now rather than waiting for their products to clog up landfills before taking action.
"It's an excellent time to do this considering that solar is an emerging industry," said Davis. "It will be an environmental advantage if you have panels that not only contribute to sustainability and reduce carbon emissions, but also use renewable and sustainable materials."
To encourage solar manufacturers to do the right thing, SVTC just released its 2010 Solar Company Scorecard, which ranks manufacturers of PV modules according to environmental health and safety, sustainability, workers’ rights, and social justice. The responding companies self-reported on these areas and the results can serve as a resource for institutional purchasers, investors and consumers. SVTC is funded by individuals and foundations. The scorecard was partially funded by Henderson Global and Boston Common.
“Solar power is key to helping solve the world’s climate crisis,” offered Davis. “But the industry still faces serious issues that need to be addressed before it can be considered truly ‘clean and green’ and socially just.”
Fourteen companies representing 24 percent of the 2008 module market share and 31 percent of the cumulative market share responded to the inquiry. The top three scores were earned by German manufacturers Calyxo, SolarWorld and Sovello, which scored 90, 88 and 73 respectively. (Calyxo and Sovello, both funded by Q-Cells, likely have larger problems to worry about).
Two U.S.-based cadmium telluride manufacturers responded and scored in the mid-range: First Solar in Arizona received a score of 67 and Colorado-based startup Abound received a 63.
What really needs to occur to drive a recycling culture is the adoption of a takeback program by every solar module manufacturer. Firms can go it alone like First Solar or they can get together, as in the PV Cycle Association, which is developing a voluntary solar panel recycling program in Europe.
SVTC is calling for mandatory takeback and responsible recycling by solar companies as a step toward reducing the solar industry’s environmental footprint. Larger institutional customers and city or school districts can drive this process by insisting that there be takeback programs as well.
In Davis' words, "That's why we created the scorecard -- to see which makers are taking the panels back."
First Solar (FSLR), the largest maker of cadmium telluride solar panels, runs a recycling program and explains what it does with unwanted panels here. There is a toxicity risk associated with cadmium telluride that First Solar has confronted with a 100 percent takeback program bonded by Swiss Re in the event that First Solar is not around in 20 to 30 years.
The SVTC got started more than 25 years ago in response to water contamination caused by the semiconductor industry. Their focus has been on electronics, but the rapid growth of the solar PV industry has spurred them into getting an early start on working with the solar panel manufacturers, and to avoid the late start that the semiconductor industry had. "We don't want that to happen in the solar industry," said Davis.
She added, "The waste stream is going to diversify and manufacturers need to be prepared."
_____________________________________
When Obama and Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals tout building solar panel manufacturing----and an Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal running as GREEN PARTY Joshua Harris shout this California model for solar panels you see yet again they are trying to build global corporations to compete overseas and with that comes this super-sized toxic waste. We do not need Wall Street or global investment firms if we are building a local manufacturing solar panel business complete with all of the recycling and safety precautions for our workers and waste. Then you are only producing for Baltimore and surrounding region with the toxicity being manageable. Raise your hand if you know a corporations described below has all intent of marketing globally to compete with China------
THIS IS FOR WHAT GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT WORKS----IT SELLS SOLAR PANEL TECHNOLOGY BUT MAKES SURE IT GOES INTO GLOBAL CORPORATE HANDS.
Simply attaching individual homeowners to these solar panels will be the GREEN benefit-----massive real estate filled with solar panels for our energy grid----when electricity is more GREEN than solar panels is done simply to sell solar panels for these global corporations. The small amount of energy coming from these huge fields of solar panels creates so little GREEN to justify the toxicity of manufacturing these super-panels.
ENERGY STORAGE IS THE CONSOLIDATED ENERGY GRID TECHNOLOGY HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING GREEN OR GREEN ENERGY. MANUFACTURE LOCAL AND INSTALL INTO HOMES AND BUSINESSES.
Below you see the business calling itself SolarCity-----and you see more and more of the emphasis is on the battery technology and storage of energy all designed for global corporate campuses like WalMart making THEM ENERGY FREE with tons of toxic waste from these technologies moving into all of our communities. These kinds of technologies are not CLEAN and GREEN-----and they are not aimed at residential----you will soon see that market disappear as these global corporations find only the global corporate campuses with solar and energy storage being profitable.
Who is behind the GREEN ENERGY diversification when Maryland says it is going GREEN? A global corporation in Europe handles our Maryland off-shore windmill project and we know solar is tied to these West-Coast corporations....NOTHING LOCAL HAPPENING.
Don't think Bush neo-conservatives are being left out by all this Clinton/Obama Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal subsidy to global GREEN-----Obama is working as hard as he can for global FRACKING----which is Bush and oil and again ----NOT GREEN.
Solar Finance & VC
SolarCity Closes $338 Million Round for Commercial Solar and Energy Storage, Plus Residential
Can the company figure out the best way to pair C&I storage with PV?
by Julia Pyper
April 10, 2016
0
SolarCity closed two major rounds of funding this week that will give a boost to its residential and commercial solar businesses, and could possibly breathe new life into a languishing commercial and industrial (C&I) solar market.
On April 7, the California-based company announced it had closed the second round of financing as part of its renewable energy tax equity investment program with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and another investor. The program will finance approximately $188 million in solar projects, covering the up-front cost of the solar equipment and installation.
On April 6, SolarCity announced it had closed a $150 million round of non-recourse financing with Credit Suisse to support deployment of commercial solar energy systems, including battery storage systems.
The news builds on last year’s announcement that SolarCity had activated a $1 billion fund in partnership with Credit Suisse that is expected to finance more than 300 megawatts of solar for businesses, schools and government organizations across the U.S.
SolarCity is widely known as the largest residential solar installer in the U.S., but has also climbed to the top of the commercial and industrial space, claiming the number one spot for installations in 2014 and 2015, according to the GTM Research U.S. PV Leaderboard.
"Our asset portfolio enables us to continually bring in new capital from top tier institutional and corporate investors," said Jeff Munson, director of structured finance of SolarCity, in a statement. "Additionally, our proprietary, in-house technology provides us competitive advantages that have led us to become one of the top commercial solar providers in the U.S.”
Integrating High Levels of Renewables into Microgrids:
SolarCity's commercial offering leverages ZS Peak, a proprietary mounting system that integrates the solar panel with the racking hardware, reducing project build time from multiple weeks to a just a few days.
Battery storage projects will be supported by DemandLogic, which is SolarCity’s dedicated battery for businesses aimed at beating utilities' demand charges. Developed with energy storage technology from Tesla, DemandLogic is equipped with autonomous, learning software to optimize savings.
This isn't SolarCity’s first move in the C&I solar-plus-storage space. The company launched its energy storage product for businesses in 2013. Currently, DemandLogic is officially only available for customers in California, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program database lists SolarCity's commercial storage pipeline at 4.3 megawatts, of which only 505 kilowatts have been deployed, according to Ravi Manghani, senior energy storage analyst at GTM Research.
Most of those deployments came in 2011. In all likelihood they were installed for Walmart to aid in reducing peak load. SolarCity is currently installing an additional 10 battery projects for Walmart using 200 kilowatt (400 kilowatt-hour) batteries.
“Commercial solar-plus-storage financing -- or for that matter even residential -- has been a tough nut to crack,” said Manghani. “Companies like Stem and Green Charge Networks that have secured financing for C&I storage, have kept solar financing out of the conversation. And in spite of favorable economics for C&I solar-plus-storage, the market has been languid.”
GTM Research estimates that less than half of C&I storage projects are currently deployed in combination with solar. Some sites with solar may later add storage, but there are relatively few simultaneous deployments. Manghani said he's eager to see the extent to which SolarCity can bring two disparate value streams offered by solar (kilowatt-hour savings) and storage (kilowatt management) under a common financing platform.
It will also be interesting to see the impact a new round of financing could have on the overall C&I market.
Installations in the commercial solar segment have actually dropped 4 percent on an annual basis over the past two years, according to Cory Honeyman, senior solar analyst at GTM Research. This is primarily due to three challenges: policy constraints brought on by state incentive volatility and challenging rate structures, a sluggish customer acquisition process, and limited financing for small and non-investment grade commercial customers.
Honeyman said it will be telling for the sector to see just how much of SolarCity’s $150 million C&I fund targets solar-plus-storage and how much targets commercial customer segments.
He'll be looking out for "Whether this fund focuses on more of the same or reveals a shift in commercial solar finance towards under served solar-plus solutions and customer types that can reboot the broader commercial solar market."
Between funding announcements, SolarCity unveiled last week that it has appointed former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff as the company’s Chief Policy Officer. The progressive energy policy expert will advise SolarCity on regulatory and legislative affairs, and could lead the company commercial solar policy debates.
__________________________________________
The point is this: we KNOW what happened in CA and Silicon Valley both with global technology taking control of San Francisco----creating massive toxic dumps with workers being exposed to dangerous workplace environments----and we know San Francisco as International Economic Zone is hiring mostly foreign workers, bringing immigrant labor to these global technology factories as sweat shops----SO WHY WOULD BALTIMORE WANT TO COPY THAT BUSINESS ECONOMY?
The answer is Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins is driven by International Economic Zone and global corporate policy and global health care and global corporate education must have all this energy storage battery manufacturing.
'Often the original mess is almost untreatable. In Silicon Valley’s case, it would take 700 years of continuous treatment to make the groundwater drinkable.'"
None of these global corporate GREEN ENERGY projects are about being GREEN or making our homes and each community GREEN----it is all about building the technology needed for global corporations to do their business and to sell globally.
Global VEOLA ENVIRONMENT calls all this technology GREEN and SUSTAINABLE----knowing it is going to be targeting global corporate campuses and not our local communities and homes.
Silicon Valley's toxic past: How tech waste contaminated Mountain View and beyond
Mar 20, 2014, 11:53am PDT Updated Mar 20, 2014, 2:03pm PDT
Way back in the 1960s and 1970s, tech firms like Intel Corp. and Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. used toxic solvents to produce early computer chips. But that decades-old pollution has since led to additional environmental damage — and potential health threats — in Silicon Valley and other distant locales, according to a new report.
The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Guardian US conducted an in-depth study published this week on a government-designated environmental cleanup site in Mountain View that serves as a case study for 1,300 similarly toxic "Superfund" sites nationwide. The article found that costly clean up often creates more waste that goes beyond Silicon Valley and its residents.
Enlarge A new report on the "toxic trail" stemming from decades-old tech waste in Silicon Valley… more
iStock
The report follows the "toxic trail" of groundwater in Mountain View contaminated by cancer-causing solvents such as trichloroethylene and benzene, which were previously used by tech companies to degrease chips.
In an effort to limit harmful vapors wafting into nearby job and housing clusters — including massive tech campuses for companies like Google Inc. and Symantec Corp. — water is pumped out of the ground and sent to questionable treatment plants in places like Kentucky, Arizona or a separate plant in Silicon Valley. But that causes more concerns.
The CIR/Guardian report explains:
"Along the trail, contained toxic waste is turned into an array of uncontrolled and potentially worse problems that fan out across the U.S.
Often the original mess is almost untreatable. In Silicon Valley’s case, it would take 700 years of continuous treatment to make the groundwater drinkable.'"
Read much more about the environmental mess — including the potential impacts on your food supply — in the full report.
RSS Feed
