THE CARBON WAR

We are backed by billions 265
Construction could start “within weeks” EDF says. They also report that the
reactor isn’t coming online until 2025 now.
By then, Apple will have been mass producing solar-charged electric vehicles
for five years. Goodness knows what Google will have come up with. Will
the hideously expensive nuclear electricity from Hinkley Point even be needed?
Investec Securities, a broker, immediately tells investors to sell EDF shares
because of the potential for nuclear liabilities.
The UK government has finally admitted that it is subsidising nuclear
power, and will drop its previous pretence that no public funds are involved.
Where this leaves the logic of their argument that they can’t support solar
because it needs subsidies is not clear.
SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive sends me an e-mail as I scan the dramas on
the news sites. He has issues today. He can give me only 20 minutes.
Never mind, I e-mail back. We’ll just have to talk fast.
I do know what it is like to have issues, of course. So does everybody who
has founded a solar company.
I walk the few hundred yards from the coffee stop to SolarCity’s HQ building,
in a typical Californian business park by a typical Californian freeway. But
I have forgotten that there is no such thing as a typical Californian pavement.
Half way there the sidewalk runs out, leaving me walking with my wheelie
luggage along a six-line highway thickly populated by speeding cars and trucks.
In the SolarCity building, the foyer is decked out for Halloween, with
spiders, webs, and pumpkins. I sit waiting, watching a video of staff partying.
It seems they like to dress up for their parties. This they have in common with
the staff at Solarcentury. Maybe it is a solar thing.
SolarCity has other things in common with us. But not capitalisation.
We are a middleweight. They are very much a heavyweight. “We’re backed by
billions”, their website explains. The market capitalisation of SolarCity today
is more than $3 billion.
There are a lot of staff. They file through the lobby, casually dressed without
exception, some in running clothes. The company is expanding so fast that it
tried to hire 500 people around America in a single day last week.
After my machine-gun-fast conversation with Lyndon, I repair to the
Pacific Ocean, half an hour away across the San Andreas Fault and some hills
clad with redwoods. I figure I deserve to treat myself to a decent lunch. On
Half Moon Bay, I find a crab restaurant, watch surfers wait in vain for surf, and
contemplate the hazy curve of the Californian coast. Right now, 2,000 miles to
the south, the strongest hurricane ever recorded is heading for Mexico. Patricia