Currents

It is the start of a new year. Many forecasters expect modest global growth this year, helped by favorable monetary policies by central banks, but with risk on the downside due to trade and geopolitical tensions. The US market remains awash in liquidity. Listen to a discussion led by Keith Martin, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, among John C.S. Anderson, global head of corporate finance and infrastructure at Manulife, Jean-Pierre Boudrias, managing director and head of project finance for North America at Goldman Sachs, Jack Cargas, managing director at Bank of America, Ralph Cho, co-head of the North American power and infrastructure group at Investec Bank plc, and Yale Henderson, managing director at J.P.Morgan, about what to expect in the year ahead for tax equity, bank and term loan B debt and project bonds.

Howard Seife, global head of financial restructuring and insolvency at Norton Rose Fulbright, joins us to discuss how power purchase agreements are affected by utility bankruptcies in the wake of the latest ruling by a US appeals court in the FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy. He covers what the FirstEnergy Solutions case, plus experience with the PG&E and other recent bankruptcies, suggest about when a PPA can be rejected, what project owners and creditors can do to protect themselves, and more.

Woody Rubin, president at AES Distributed Energy, joins us to discuss the distributed solar market. We talk about the market in general, the current abundance of capital, the balance between community and residential solar, AES’ recent success in Hawaii, changes he has seen in the energy storage market and more.

Richard Matsui, co-founder and CEO of kWh Analytics, is back to give us an update on their popular resource, the Solar Lendscape. We discuss how many banks are currently active in solar, what that means for the market and how many are lending in the community solar segment. From there we discuss the solar revenue put, trends in merchant risk and more.

Keith Martin, with Norton Rose Fulbright, joins us from Washington to discuss the likelihood that Congress will pass a tax extenders bill at year end and what tax changes of interest to the renewable energy industry are potentially in play.

Live from the Wharton Energy Conference, Manish Kumar, managing director at The AES Corporation, Jackson Lehr, operating partner, infrastructure at Energy Impact Partners, Martin Torres, managing director at BlackRock and Peter Zhu, senior vice president at Macquarie Capital, sit down with Todd Alexander to cover financing renewable energy. The lively panel discusses everything from traditional PPAs and tax equity to the latest trends the panelists are seeing in the industry.

Fleming Ray, senior project manager, due diligence at DNV GL, joins us to discuss all things solar plus storage. We get into the federal and state policies surrounding the market, the outlook for the next five years, the core technical due diligence focus areas, the integration of battery testing results including DNV GL’s recently published Battery Scorecard, and more.

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.