Green Giants – Episode 48

Steve Newby  (01:55)

Yeah, I spent 25 years in oil and gas and in 2020, you said, made the leap into the renewable space. But really, the growth in the space and the energy transition overall is something I believed in and thought was going to occur and there was going to be a growth catalyst in the in the solar space particularly, but in energy transition overall. So I saw it as a great opportunity, honestly, to bring some of the skill sets I have developed from founding companies and growing them over to a space that I thought was going to really ripe for a lot of startups and a lot of growth in the industry.

Wes Ashworth  (02:35)

Yeah, and coming from the oil and gas sector, you bring a unique perspective to renewables. I think one we can learn a lot from, which we’ll get into that as we go. But what was your biggest surprise when you transitioned to solar? What did you expect to be the same? But maybe it turned out to be very different.

Steve Newby  (02:51)

Yeah, it’s an interesting, I get asked this a lot. I think one of the biggest surprises, positive surprises was the growth in the space has just been much greater than I thought. I mean, this was before the IRA and in that catalyst. And I thought the growth was going to be pretty significant. It’s actually exceeded my expectations there.

One of the biggest surprises was frankly just how young the industry still was in trying to accomplish a pretty significant growth platform and growth expectations, right? You now had a real industry that’s trying to get a lot of projects done, a lot of growth done across multiple areas and didn’t have like in oil and gas when we had this during what we call a Shell Revolution.

We had a hundred-year-old industry behind that of norms and processes, and how you partner with people, and how you get things done. The renewable space just didn’t have that as a developing that along the way. Now that creates a tremendous opportunity for folks involved in it as well too. But that’s probably some of the biggest challenges. And I’ve said many times to folks, I’ve built billions of dollars of energy infrastructure, and solar is the hardest thing I’ve ever built. And not because of the technical aspects or the engineering aspects, it’s really labor and supply chain, and just the volatility of the industry.

Wes Ashworth  (04:17)

Yeah, absolutely. And a few things you mentioned there that I want to dig into a bit further. So, oil and gas are known for deep partnerships, which we talked about, and scalability, structured project execution, while renewables are still finding their footing in a lot of ways in some of those areas. So what’s one key lesson from your experience in traditional energy that solar companies should adopt now?

Steve Newby  (04:46)

Yeah, well, I think they are adopting it. I think that’s, you mentioned it, it’s sort of partnerships and how you approach projects and partners and vendors and suppliers, and to get things that you need to get done. think it’s, when I say somewhat new, we’re talking about in the last maybe five years, maybe a little bit longer than that, but we’re real growth in the industry where you’re trying to get, developers are trying to get, depending on what area you’re in, gigawatts done a year, or definitely tens or hundreds of megawatts done a year. And I think one of the things that is coming to the space, or has come to the space, is just how you partner with various us as an EPC, but suppliers, module suppliers, other labor suppliers, how do you partner with people to be able to get things done? And how do you look at the long game in doing that? and look multiple years out versus a project-by-project basis can sometimes be tough because you’ve got to try to make every project work. yet you’re trying. But yet you have 50 projects that you got to that you got to make work over the next couple of years, types of situations. So, I think that’s the biggest thing is the industry is maturing, becoming more sophisticated, planning better. because planning is the key to be able to partner

Wes Ashworth  (06:06)

Absolutely. And in one example, in oil and gas, you partnered with Exxon on a half-billion-dollar pipeline project. I guess comparing that to how partnerships work in renewables today, what’s missing? What needs to change for the industry to operate at that higher level of collaboration, as you mentioned?

Steve Newby  (06:23)

Yeah, that was a very large pipeline project before I left Summit that, we developed and Exxon’s not an easy partner, but they’re a fair partner and they’re realistic and they’re very detailed or any, all the things you would imagine from, from a big major. I think I mentioned it earlier. I think the ability to plan ahead, the ability to see the long game, the ability to not try to. to squeeze each side of the equation. Both sides, our side, your side, is something occurring, starting to occur more, but needs to occur more in planning ahead multiple years. That’s the key for some of these. If you look at one pipeline project versus trying to do 20 or projects in solar, they may equal each other in the same dollar amount.

In our space, which is distributed generation. But they’re similar in the sense of you’ve got to partner long term, and how do you make it work? And I think that the space is getting more sophisticated in that you’re starting to see it all over the place. Obviously, you’ve seen it on the supplier side, the vendors of modules being the sort of easiest example. But we’re having a lot of discussions with our customers about partnering more long-term over multiple projects and how we get things done over the course of a couple of years, not just a couple of months.

Wes Ashworth  (07:36)

Yeah, no, I love it. Love the comparisons too. And it’s good to see that it is already happening, and that we’re starting down that path of heading towards that. And I think there’s a lot that this industry can learn from oil and gas. And it’s been around a long time, obviously, and successful, regardless of what you feel about it. it is a successful business that’s grown in scale.

Steve Newby  (07:46)

Yeah, that’s It’s had to build tremendous infrastructure too in short periods of time as well. So there are a lot of similarities, quite frankly. There are differences too, but there’s a lot of similarities, particularly how you approach sort of multi-year solutions with various partners. And if we’re gonna get what we all want to get done in the energy transition, we’re gonna have to approach it that way. I think it’s gotta get out of this sort of, you I said, per project type analysis, into more of a, how do we accomplish this over the next several years together?

Wes Ashworth  (08:27)

Yeah, absolutely. Transitioning a little bit to Bravo. So you built Bravo Infrastructure Group into a major player with Sunshine Solar, Radiant Solar under its umbrella, scaling from a small lifestyle business to a company with over 100 employees now in just a few years is no small feat. Anybody who’s ever gone down that path knows it’s no small feat. Exactly what were some of the biggest growing pains, and what key decisions made the difference?

Steve Newby  (08:50)

Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to hear much different than a lot of people in the solar space. I think the volatility in the solar space is hard on everybody in the space. The political volatility, supply chain volatility, I think, makes it more difficult to plan long-term, to scale long-term. The biggest decision we made was to integrate and buy an EPC and bought Radiance in 2022, around Thanksgiving of 2022. That was a big decision. We brought in a capital partner, sort of recapitalized the business there and then to execute our growth plan.

And that’s probably the second biggest decision is sort of the area of the market we felt was underserved, underutilized, which was a distributed generation EPC that can operate. and partner with developers across geographies. So we operate all throughout the US and work with customers. We’ll work with customers and projects in Illinois and in Georgia, and in New York. So that was the biggest decision was no surprise our strategy. What strategy were we going to use because we really remade the company when we purchased Radiance.

And that decision was key for us on just what strategy we were going to take and what part of the market we were going to attack. And I think we’ve been fairly successful in developing that and are still developing it. We learn every day. So for sure.

Wes Ashworth  (10:19)

Yeah, absolutely. Something I wanted to go back to that you mentioned earlier was that solar is the hardest thing you’ve ever built. And not because of engineering, but because of supply chain and labor challenges, which is wild.  But I guess why is that specifically? What are the biggest hurdles companies still need to overcome? And just can you expand on that, just that whole topic a little bit more?

Steve Newby  (10:26)

Yeah, it’s not an easy answer. wish it were, but it’s because it involves multiple things. I think it begins with the solar developers’ decision timeline is long, multi-year. So it’s sometimes across multiple regulatory changes, frankly. We’re seeing one now, right?

Somewhat of one now. So, I think that adds tremendous uncertainty to the folks who own the projects and are trying to get them done, which adds uncertainty to us who are designing and building them as well too. So I think the supply chain, historically, primarily being overseas, adds to the complexity of it, particularly when you add in tariffs and other policies that are trying to protect companies here, but they for sure add complexity to the whole process of developing a project. It’s regulatory-wise, it’s supply chain-wise. Labor is a big issue. Skilled labor in this country is at a premium, no matter what industry you’re in. I don’t think that’s new, other than for somebody us, one of our big advantages is that we do have skilled labor that we move around the country and can bring to bear.

So, but it’s another, that’s an issue that a lot of folks are facing, which is just not enough skilled labor in the space. And it’s exacerbated as we onshore more. Cause we’re using skilled labor to build all the factories and build everything else. So, and then finally you’re building a power plant, right? With thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of little power plants called modules.

You’re trying to connect all together. You’re trying to do it across many, many acres with multiple trades labor on site that you’ve got to coordinate, and your logistics have to be on point on when you get things delivered and how you time things out. So the process and logistics of solar are somewhat unique versus building a big gas plant, building a big pipeline. And those are all things that make it challenging and we’re still trying to we’re in a very dynamic market now we’re trying to figure out really what the cost of power is going to be and how does that get because that ultimately reflects throughout if is what what can you get a PPA execute for what is that and who’s gonna bear that and how’s that how that comes through the whole channel of Supply be an EPC or vendor supplies. So, I think that’s another big challenge we’re facing now for the first time in 25 years, in a power demand, generation demand growth market.

Wes Ashworth  (13:08)

Yeah, big time. Thinking about just the supply chain side of that, right? And you see a lot of people win. Even you saw in the 2020 pandemic, I think supply chain issues became an issue for everybody across the board, overnight. And it was interesting to see the companies that still found a way to succeed in that, got creative, sort of thinking out of the box, and how do we overcome these supply chain challenges and still get product and get our business out there and do what we need to do?

Anything that came up in terms of just maybe a creative way you’ve overcome some of those supply chain issues within solar, or something that you found has worked for you.

Steve Newby  (13:45)

Yeah, I think it’s been, you for us it’s been more labor, and then for us it’s a lot of times we still rely on a lot of our electrical component switch gear, transformers, a lot of those parts and pieces and components still come from overseas. And I think the biggest thing for us has really happened in the last 18 months or, which is diversifying our supplier base and continuing to do that as much as possible.

We obviously tried to onshore as much as possible, too. There are incentives to do that. But just from a diversity of supplier standpoint. And by the way, I don’t think that this is unique to solar. I think you saw after the pandemic, a lot of people, a lot of industries do this, where they got caught where they had one or two suppliers, but they were both in China, or both someplace that you just couldn’t get it materials out of.

And I think we’re no different there. I think we’re diversifying quite a bit and trying to manage it as much as possible. mean, we just did this last week on a project where we flipped sort of a transformer order from one project that it was dedicated to, that it looked like it was going to be late, to another project that we had more time on and we sourced an onshore transformer for that project that had a shorter time period. it’s something we it’s hand combat every day. So things that.

Wes Ashworth  (15:12)

Yeah, no, it’s a big chessboard, right? kind of moving all the pieces in order and strategically thinking about it a few moves ahead, and things that, too. it’s a very complex thing to succeed at. But yeah, you’re doing it, obviously. Transitioning to a couple of different topics as we get into it. So we talked about the future of energy storage and grid transformation. And you said before, the batteries are the key to solar’s next evolution, which I would 100 percent agree with.

What’s the breakthrough that will unlock true baseload renewables, and how close are we to that reality?

Steve Newby  (15:44)

Yeah, I think we’re getting closer for sure. I’m a newbie in a lot of ways to renewables, no pun intended. And, I see it from somewhat of an outsider’s perspective? Or at least a new person’s perspective. For the first time in really, or in the last couple of years, for the first time ever, we have the ability to really store electricity, and pump hydro has been around for a long time. And batteries have been around for some period of time, really in scale and really the technology has gotten to a point where it’s cost-effective as well too. So that’s exciting. I mean, that’s a whole new world, right? I think we’re all still trying to figure out, at least I am and our company is still trying to figure out how it’s all going to be deployed. I mean we’re seeing it obviously in the utility scale space now. I think you’re going to see it in the DG space quite a bit.

I think those models may be different between DG and utility scale. Solar, it’s all going to be, know, the development of the battery market is inherently positive for solar because it addresses one of the biggest issues, which is the intermittency of solar. it helps utilities address that, and others address that. And inherently, it’s going to be positive.

I think long-duration storage is coming longer than four hours, sort of norm is coming, and we’ll see how that gets deployed. And I think a lot of people are waiting to see how that gets deployed. So I think, I think all of those are positive, and I think it’s sort of the next leg. view solar as sort of, we’re in the third stage of growth. The first stage we were, we were taking market share away from coal retire. right? So, generation wasn’t really growing, but we were transferring it or transforming it from coal-fired generation to natural gas and to solar, and solar was taking some of that market share.
The second big growth catalyst was the IRA, where we said, we’re going to really inset for renewable generation. And we obviously put a lot of money in, and states did too, behind that. That was a huge catalyst, again, taking market share away from others, other generation sources. The third is probably going to be the best, which is, meaning, because it’s true market-driven, and in that we now have generation demand that the market is driving, and we need all sources of generation. And I think that generation demand is going to be primarily met with natural gas, solar, and eventually modular nuclear.

I think we’re in that third leg where it’s market-driven now and not just taking market share, but it’s driven by actual generation, electric generation growth, and demand growth. And we haven’t had that in 25 years. So I’m old enough to remember when we did, but we haven’t had it in a long time. So that’s how I sort of view it.

And batteries are gonna fit into that demand growth very well and allow for what we call greening of the grid, and where we are able to put on a lot of renewable generation, and then add flexibility to the grid with batteries to store that and use it when needed. I think that’s sort of where I see batteries playing out. And I think we’re There’s just gonna be, there already is a huge growth market for battery, and it’s only gonna get bigger going forward.

Wes Ashworth  (19:14)

Yeah, I would agree. And I’ve said this before, batteries are kind of in the center of everything, right? storage. It’s hard to have a project where storage isn’t somehow part of the equation. And you’re seeing a lot of that expansion happen, seeing the investments happening in that space as well, too. So and as you mentioned, we’re going into now, it’s a growing demand and growth has kind of got to happen regardless. 

Steve Newby  (19:36)

Yeah, I’ll give you an interesting anecdote. I mean, I was with the utility last week, and big utility, and discussing sort of their peak demand periods. know, we all thought, I thought, I’m sure others listening to this do, know, utilities peak in the summer, right? Hot day in July. And that’s when they hit their peak.

Utility told, sort of, sort of blew me away that they’re also seeing peaks now in the middle of the night in winter. And the reason is more people turn to electric, heat, and they’re starting, and it’s cold in the middle of the winter, and they’re starting to see peaks hit, two, three o’clock in the morning in the winter. And, guess what’s not producing at two or three o’clock in the morning in the winter, solar.

So the ability of batteries to store that during the day, and we’re in the middle of the day in the winter, you’re not using a lot of that, but you are producing solar energy to be able to use that in the middle of the winter. Just an interesting anecdote that I think you’re seeing the demand curve move a little bit on utilities, too, on what they’re seeing on their side.

By the way that meeting happened last week, it was news to us too.

Wes Ashworth  (20:55)

Yeah, it’s relevant. It’s kind of amazing how quickly it evolves. it is a fast-moving industry. in some ways, it’s slow-moving when you talk about projects and things that. But it is evolving really, really quickly in terms of just our usage and what’s happening and everything else.

Steve Newby  (21:15)

Yeah, you’re bringing up a very relevant point, which is that the industry now is a growth industry, it’s moving fast. It hasn’t been that way historically. Oil and gas have been and still are, and the regulatory market is much more dynamic in the oil and gas space, particularly on the crude oil side. It’s state-regulated primarily.

And it’s one of the comments that I have for our public service commission here in Georgia, all the time when I meet with them, is that I think the regulatory framework has to change somewhat, or you’re going to… These utilities are trying to respond to a more dynamic growth market in a framework that was really set up for a non-dynamic growth market. We’re seeing challenges on that front, right? Overall, it’s why you have connection queues that are six years long or some crazy things that.

Wes Ashworth  (22:07)

Yeah, digging into that a little bit. So,, interconnection, connection. Many in the industry focus on just building more capacity, but grid infrastructure is struggling to keep up. What’s the biggest bottleneck when it comes to interconnection? How should companies prepare for these challenges?

Steve Newby  (22:21)

Yeah, think interconnections are, think it’s first, for us, they’re not as big a challenge. In the DG market, they’re not as big a challenge as you would imagine. We’re usually building two to 20 megawatt projects, and they just, they’re just not as big a challenge. Utility scale marks a huge challenge. I think you’re starting to see and are going to see more regulatory changes come out.

By the way, there are challenges for being solar. Solar has just been all of our generation growth over the last several years. That’s changing. Gas is going to become more prevalent. So you’re going to see it there too. I think you’re going to see or have seen, and going to see more, focus on trying to address those interconnection cues. In some places, they’re four or five years. It’s it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. I don’t know how you develop a project in that with where you have to wait five years to get an interconnection agreement.

So I think this is where the feds and state regulators are going to push into and lean into and try to get, and they already are with some of the cluster things happening in the PJM and in the Carolinas as well too. I think you’re gonna see some regulatory changes.

There and look with the power demand that the country is looking at you’re gonna have to, or we’re gonna have some, we’re gonna run into some real problems. There’s a reason a lot of utility-scale developers go to Texas, because there are market reasons, and also just you can get projects online a lot quicker.

Wes Ashworth  (23:35)

Agreed. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s coming if nothing else, as you mentioned, just by necessity, you can hit a point where demand continues to go up, and it’s okay, we’ve got to get new power on the grid, it’s got to happen. So, I think that’ll occur. But it would be nice if it were a little faster.

Steve Newby  (24:03)

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think it can all, I think it’s going to get better. And it’s, this is where regulatory change can help.

Wes Ashworth  (24:15)

Yeah, touched on another topic you hit on earlier, you’ve built and scaled teams both in traditional energy and renewables. I know there’s a lot of similarities, but there are also some differences. What’s harder about attracting or attaining talent in solar, and what can companies do to improve?

Steve Newby  (24:31)

Yeah, I think one of the issues is just, we mentioned it earlier, is just the industry issues of volatility. I think doesn’t help any of us that attract. I mean, when people ask me, I get asked a lot, what are your three top things, challenges, or whatever. Talent retention, and attracting talent and retaining it is one of the top three. All it has been in my career. mean, you’re only,

Your company is only as good as the people who work for it. I think the volatility in the solar industry doesn’t help any of us, frankly. And the regulatory, political whipsawing doesn’t help attract and retain talent. And then just, we’re a unique construction firm, right? We build solar, we build power plants, but we need skilled labor to do that.

So again, just in general, the industry, amongst other industries, is trying to compete for labor that a lot of those other industries are competing for as well. An electrician in the oil and gas space is an electrician can do the electrical work in the solar space. For sure. It’s you’re competing against each other as well to in a situation where you just have a general lack of talent, skilled talent anyway.

So, I’d say volatility in the industries is probably number one. And IRA, I think, helped solve some of the volatility. I think that was one of the good things of it is tried to give the industry some baseline. We still see it day to day. we’re trying, now oil and gas is back to somewhat of a growth platform as well too in areas and I think they’re competing heavily for talent as well.

Wes Ashworth  (26:17)

Yeah, thinking about that. So there’s a major shortage in renewables. We’ve already covered a lot of that in skilled labor. Because what’s the real root cause? Lack of training, lack of industry awareness, something else. And then what do you think the industry can do about it? What are some solutions for how we start to build up that skilled labor in the industry?

Steve Newby  (26:36)

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it’s a core issue for the US labor force in general. I mean, only necessarily solar is affected, but we went through a long period of time where we just didn’t build a lot of things in the country. We off shored a lot of things. A lot of things were sent to other places to be built that were more economical. and or theoretically more economical. So, we lost, and we tried to pivot to a service-based economy and largely have. And now, since the pandemic and since COVID and for a variety of factors, by the way, I think a lot of these are very good ones, we went onshore a lot of that production that we had over the, for a 50-plus years timeframe, offshored.

So, it doesn’t happen overnight. And we have to retrain, wages have to recalibrate, skill sets have to recalibrate, to be able to now build a lot of things in this country. And by the way, that’s not just power plants, that’s manufacturing facilities, that’s all sorts of industrial things that we’re on-shoring. So I think that’s the, it’s core issue with the labor market in general that we’re going to face. It’s inflationary, not deflationary, unfortunately, and solar has to find a way to compete effectively for that labor. And I think we have, and it’s not going to get easier. It’s probably going to get harder in a certain sense.

It’s something we’re quite aware of. it’s something, we invest in our people. You ask, sort of, do we do? Well, we do, we invest in our people. We have our own apprentice program. We have our own training program. And we try to create situations where we’re investing in our employees, also training them, and providing them opportunities. And I think all good companies do that. and try to do that.

So, I don’t know that we’re unique, I think, but we do it as our biggest investment as a service company is our people, right? We don’t own power plants, we design and build them and our people do that. So we try to make that conscious effort to invest in our people.

Wes Ashworth  (28:54)

Yeah, absolutely. Great points there. And I’ll shift topics, just try to cover as much as we can in our short time that we have. But yeah, you sit on the advisory board of Orion Infrastructure Capital. You’ve worked extensively with private equity. You’ve grown and scaled companies. A lot of wisdom and learning there. I’ll ask this question: if a renewable energy startup founder came to you asking for advice on securing private capital, what’s the first thing you tell them to focus on?

Steve Newby  (28:58)

That’s a good question. I think it depends on what area he or she wants to be in, because that depends on what kind of capital you get and who you partner with. But I think the biggest thing is who you partner with and how you want to do that. I mean, ideally, you are able to prove your business plan out first, have some modicum of success, and then be able to show that to capital providers. The space is still heavily investing, still heavily investing in renewables despite a lot of chatter over the last few months. is it still will. It’s a huge growth industry. It’s great for entrepreneurs. It’s going to be great for entrepreneurs over the next decade. And I think the biggest thing is to have your business plan, and prove it out if you’re able to on your own. and don’t be discouraged. gotta, your desire for success has to be greater than your fear of failure, is what I tell a lot of folks who talk to me about this issue, and a lot of young people who want to, everybody wants to be an entrepreneur when they grow up, I guess. I think you have to, you have to be able to take no, you have to be able to take failure. You’re gonna fail.

It’s inherent in starting businesses. and scaling businesses, you’re gonna make mistakes. So you just have to plow ahead and stay true to what you believe in and try to prove it out. if you are able to prove it out, you’re gonna be able to raise capital. capital finds good businesses amazingly. So sometimes it finds bad businesses, also for sure.

So that’s what I would say. And we have a lot of that in this space. mean, there are a lot of people who have started in this space in 2005 who didn’t do a lot and all of a sudden, bam, they’re running, get some tailwinds and they’re running big companies now and have had to learn how to do that. It’s a whole other dynamic of running a big company versus a startup, as much different skill sets.

Wes Ashworth  (30:57)

Yeah, right? Absolutely. What’s the biggest thing you’ve had to focus on as you transition? You’re in the startup phase, and you get further down the road. You’re that small mid-sized company to then going large, as you’re saying. I know it’s very different running that company, a very large, multi-billion dollar company, or a public company, or what have you. As people go through that progression and get to that larger size, from your experience, what’s the biggest thing that you have to change as a leader? to succeed at that level.

Steve Newby  (31:48)

Yeah, I think it’s when you’re starting up, it’s whack-a-mole, and you’re trying to put out fires daily. I think what I tell folks is, don’t be afraid to do that. got to do whatever you’ve got to do to be successful. think I’ve seen people come from large companies to try and try to do a startup and not be successful because they’re not used to it, if I got to be the IT guy, if I got to take out the trash, if I got to do this, I got to do it.

You gotta do whatever, you gotta humble yourself and do whatever you gotta do to be when you’re in a startup phase and you’re trying to scale a business early on, you’re sort of doing that. I think as you move and the business matures or starts to mature some and you start to become a real company and you start to, I think you always have to basically, but more so, start to think about, okay, what are the next key pieces I gotta put in place, be it people. process, a strategy for longer-term success start to be able to focus more on the long term. And then I think as you get bigger, and you’re running it, you’re a CEO or you’re senior management of a company, I think really, the mentality I take is I work for my employees, right? And what I do is I allocate capital, be it human capital, financial capital. They sort of tell me, here’s what we need. And I try to figure out how to get it for them.

That’s what I mean by I work for them. I think you get to the point where you gotta be comfortable getting to the point where you get good people running the business day to day, and you’re figuring out. One, how to support them, but also how to create that long-term sustainability. What’s the next strategic thing we need to be doing, thinking about making contacts with folks that benefit the business and help you longer term.

And some people have difficulty going from tactical early on, a lot of tactical, a lot of hand to hand combat, whack-a-mole, I said, to as you grow, you got to get more strategic and you got to take the view of, now work for my employees, I got to support them, what do they need to be successful in running the company? Because, think if you’re having, as a CEO, if you’re having to run the company day to day, that’s a problem.

Wes Ashworth  (34:00)

Yeah, sure.

Steve Newby  (34:01)

A larger company where you’re having to really dictate that is a sign that there are issues, usually, in my experience.

Wes Ashworth  (34:09)

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think you do see that a lot of really, really sound words of advice there, and some really good stuff in that. We’ve got a little bit of time left. I want to rapid-fire fire kind of hit some key things here. I always love talking about misconceptions. So you mentioned through even even in this conversation, one of the biggest misconceptions about solar is the true economics of the industry. What’s the most common myth you hear, and what’s the reality from your side of the equation?

Steve Newby  (34:36)

Solar is an intermittent resource. And it’s the lowest, it’s definitely the lowest cost of energy when it’s dispatching. I don’t think there’s a dispute on that. we but the industry’s got to realize we don’t dispatch 24 seven. So that needs to be. We need to be, I’m just stating facts. That’s not that’s the reality.

And so in a lot of, even more now, energy demand is 24/7 types of demand with data centers and industrial demand that runs 24/7. I think that’s number one. Number two on the positive side for renewables is that it’s April 1st. And this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, but we’re four-dollar gas, natural gas. That is, we are in what we call a shoulder month Wes which is usually when we don’t use a lot of energy because it’s sort of cool outside and it’s not real hot, not cold enough to burn electric heat pumps. And we’re at four-dollar gas, that’s high. It’s one of the highest shoulder months I’ve seen in quite some time. And if you want to know what’s good for renewables, let gas run up to six or eight bucks, and we’ll see the true cost of natural gas power generation. And all pretty quickly.

Wes Ashworth  (35:28)

Yeah. We’ve also hit on there’s a lot of buzz around on shoring solar manufacturing, all of manufacturing but specific to solar manufacturing. Some say it’s a game changer, others say it won’t make a dent. I guess, where do you stand on it? And then how do see the supply chain evolving?

Steve Newby  (35:55)

Supply chain absolutely is evolving to onshore. We incented that heavily, state incentives, federal, heavy federal incentives. So, people tend to do what you pay them to do. and that’s what they’re doing. And it’s definitely evolving to on-shoring both racking. We own a racking company, we own a solar canopy racking company called Quest. We get all of our materials onshore or in the U S I think you’re seeing it across the board. You’ve seen it for switch gear, seen it for Transformers, just slower, that’s harder to been harder to onshore. I do think it’s gonna make a huge difference, I’m concerned about what that means for costs longer term. I’ve mentioned earlier that it’s not necessarily deflationary, although there are hidden costs in the supply chain. I think that will come out as we move to onshore but I do think it’ll make a dent.

I think it’s huge for the space. think it’s a positive for the space, particularly in this tough time where we’re looking for positive political capital. think Alan Shoring’s been a big one, frankly.

Wes Ashworth  (37:00)

Yeah, no, absolutely agreed. One more here. If you could wave a magic wand, fix one major issue holding the industry back, whether it’s policy, workforce, supply chain, financing, any of the things we’ve talked about, I guess, what would it be?

Steve Newby  (37:11)

We’ve got to eventually do away with the ITCs. I think the political hot potato of the space. By the way, I think politicizing energy overall is the wrong path to take, be it hydrocarbons or renewables. think energy is an actual strategic issue, a national security issue. It shouldn’t be politicized. I’ll say that. think longer term, we’d love to get off the ITC. I’d also love to have more open and freer, and fair trade and not tariffs.

Panels in Europe, panels in Spain are nine cents a watt. Panels in the US are 35 to 40 cents a watt. So, I think those two sort of go hand in hand. So I think if I could make, wave a magic wand, I think we’d all love to have the space be supportive of the demand side of the equation and not the incentive side of the equation, and I think we’re getting there. I think the ITC’s have I think that ITC’s have worked I think it’s a great I think that’s why they’ve been renewed by both Republican and Democrat federal administrations is they’ve worked and and they’ve lowered costs dramatically. And I think ideally, I’d love to get away because I think it creates a situation where it adds volatility to the industry that I’d love to get out of if at all possible.

Someday, you said dream big, someday, we’ll hopefully get out of that, and we can, the space can stand on its own, and we can, and I think it can eventually.

Wes Ashworth (38:43)

Yeah, I agree completely. And I think if I had to choose, it’d probably be something very similar to that. A few more questions in closing. So, when you think about the next decade of renewable energy, what excites you the most?

Steve Newby (38:54)

Wow. I think, as I said before, think the demand side piece of this. So the fact that we have to, we are going through a generation demand that we just haven’t seen in a very long time. And it seems to be, and it’s enormous. I think that excites me. I think the technology revolution and changes that have come and are coming, and still to come in space, are going to create a lot of opportunities.

And are going to be the leader in getting us to a more economical space to get us off tax incentives. It happened in the oil and gas space, by the way. Technology drove efficiency. I think technology is going to drive efficiency in the renewable space. And that excites me. it excites me to see all the stars. I think I love seeing startups. I love to see new ideas. think people are coming to the space, and I think that’s gonna be great.

And then Wes, we’re gonna see a tremendous, as the space naturally, this occurs in every growth, high-growth industry, you’re gonna see tremendous consolidation in the space. So as the space matures, you’re gonna see a lot of consolidation, that’s already occurring, it’s occurring in our world, it’s gonna occur all throughout the value chain of renewables. And I think that’s exciting as well too from just a guy who likes business cases, which I am. I business cases.

Wes Ashworth (40:14)

Yeah, no, agreed. Yeah, it’s a challenging time, right? There are plenty of obstacles and things that and things to figure out. But it’s exciting. I find myself kind of fired up about it every time I talk about it of the future looks pretty promising. And as you said, the demand is there. that’s increasing. So things have got to happen regardless of where you are.

Steve Newby (40:37)

I tell people I started up an oil and gas company during the Obama administration. I bought and grew a renewables company during the Trump administration and have been lived through all of them. So I try not to let the political winds get me down or up too much and focus on creating a sustainable profit. The best way you can do good in this world is you have a profitable business and you do good by your stakeholders, your employees, your shareholders, and your community.

And to do that, you have to have a successful business. And I sort of focus on that versus some of the herky jerkiness of the, it’s hard not to follow it in this space, but I’m to stay, stay positive. There are a lot of positives. renewables is going to, it’s, it is then the generation growth source. will continue to be a large source of generation growth. We cannot bring a gas plant on in a couple of months. That takes a long time, too. So trust me, we’re still in for a lot of growth in this space. I haven’t even been on both sides. I can tell you.

Wes Ashworth  (41:32)

Yep. Yeah, that’s good. I love love all of that. Yes. All Final, final question. If listeners just remember one thing from this conversation, what should it be?

Steve Newby  (41:50)

No, I think what we just touched on, stay positive. I think for those who have been in this space much longer than me. I think they went through a high high of the IRA, and then they went through a low low of sort of getting beat up here over the last few months. I think try to stay out of that, focus on your business, focus on the positives, and we still have tremendous growth in this space.

And take away that, the greatest thing going now is we need a lot of electricity generation growth, period. Forget where it comes from for a second and just say, the amount of growth we need, it’s got to come from multiple places. It cannot be sourced by just natural gas, by just nuclear, or by just renewables. It’s going to be sourced by all three of those. And that’s the big change now is that we’re in a market that is the market is determining our growth, not some policy or some other piece of legislation or change or what have you. It’s truly market-driven now. And we’ve gotten the cost curve to a point where we can compete pretty favorably. and batteries help that, as we mentioned, quite a bit.

Wes Ashworth  (42:52)

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Absolutely. Perfect. Perfect way to wrap it up. was good, That last point. with that, we’ll wrap up the conversation with Steve Newby, CEO of Bravo Infrastructure Group. This has really been a fun conversation. Steve, your journey from oil and gas to building one of the most ambitious solar platforms in the country is a testament to what’s possible when experience meets vision and when bold leadership drives real change in the energy space.

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow Green Giants, Titans of Renewable Energy, share it with your network, and stay tuned for more conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of clean energy. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.