Jenny Chase

Solar analyst with BloombergNEF, goose keeper. Author, "Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon". All opinions my own. She/her.

Book (edition 2) available through all major booksellers, or directly from my publisher on https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/Q0437

Last Notes

2026-03-12 09:40:08 UTC

The reason I regularly feel compelled to defend the energy / climate progress of the UK (the country of my birth) is that the UK is actually doing pretty well. And you would not know that from the UK news! It's a British trait to believe we must be doing badly, our efforts are in vain, nothing we do will ever work - but it's not true here! All the 'green crap' is genuinely reducing the UK's demand for fossil fuels, and also its CO2 emissions!
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-emissions-fall-2-4-in-2025-as-coal-hits-400-year-low/

2025-06-07 18:12:57 UTC

Can't move, goslings on feet.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/643/432/775/764/526/original/278509bf8e1aa3b0.jpg

2025-05-06 19:21:17 UTC

I have never yet used ChatGPT or equivalents. I do understand that, for specific and bounded uses in the hands of someone knowledgeable, they can be a timesaver.
I am meant to take a corporate training on them. As basically a machine for putting words and numbers into meaningful and pleasing configurations, I resent this in the same way a smart plough-horse might resent a tractor.
But mostly I fear the effect of huge volumes of plausible, often personalised misinformation.

2025-03-24 10:04:00 UTC

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Thing that is true: solar panels are now almost unbelievably cheap, and batteries are going the same way.
Do not underestimate this factor. I do think we will have abundant electricity when it's sunny, and possibly even from spring to autumn.
That is still a constrained condition. Industrial decarbonization and winter remain hard problems. Sustainable aviation fuel is *incredibly* energy intensive, absolutely dwarfs the likely needs of AI and data centers.

2025-03-24 08:47:49 UTC

I feel like I should read Ezra Klein's Abundance. Apparently I'm quoted in chapter 2, and it is relevant to my interests, and I don't think one should ever have an opinion on a book without having read it. Also a lot of the criticism of it seems to be ad hominem / tribal solidarity dancing rather than analysis, and I disapprove of that.
But, ugh.

2025-03-18 11:05:00 UTC

A typical photovoltaic module sold in 2024 was mono TOPCon with 22.7% efficiency, at a price below $0.10/W.
A typical solar module sold in 2012 was multi AlBSF with efficiency of 15.4% and a price of about $0.87/W.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/114/183/101/409/702/734/original/5c373bafa490fd32.jpg

2025-03-07 07:58:24 UTC

Apparently a famous chess joke, via @npub136q…5683 telling it to Small Child this morning:
The great chess master (and opera composer) Philador was much sought after in his Paris home by players wishing to challenge him. This annoyed Philador, so he trained a monkey to play chess. The deal was that if you could beat the monkey, you could play against Philador.
One day the monkey was playing against a man in Philador's lounge, while the composer worked undisturbed in the room next door.

2025-02-23 19:14:40 UTC

I think a lot these days about how for my parents, 'being informed' means that they watch BBC News most nights and read the Observer on the weekend.
No social media. No absorption of news via random people who want you to be outraged or are angry that you're not angry enough for them.
They vote, and they spend a lot of time helping old people in their village get to doctor appointments, and they help with the Parish magazine.
...it increasingly feels like they have the right way of it.

2024-11-29 16:12:02 UTC

Lol at the job title / subject mismatch.
But yeah, total wind build this year is likely to be about 124GW. Solar's likely to be about 599GW, but remember solar capacity factors are 9-30% and wind capacity factors are usually 30-60%.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/113/567/114/268/718/360/original/de286a2e50a38efe.jpg

2024-11-22 06:32:53 UTC

Good morning, and everything's under 20cm of snow.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/113/525/202/469/607/070/original/c49da21560299da0.jpg

2024-11-15 09:40:03 UTC

Switzerland got 97.6% of its electricity from clean sources in 2023, says Nicolas Fulghum of Ember (which I trust).
He adds that "a crucial challenge is a growing mismatch between supply and demand in winter months", which, yeah. We are adding a lot of heatpumps and I can confirm that solar output does not meet much of heatpump demand.
https://files.mastodon.green/media_attachments/files/113/486/296/817/482/961/original/7064e8fa2b6f2495.jpg

2024-09-28 11:35:48 UTC

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26. Decarbonizing aviation is hard. The CEO of Lufthansa said in 2023 that running its fleet on sustainable aviation fuel made from electricity would take half Germany’s current electricity demand. BNEF thinks this an underestimate.
27. Direct electrification of aviation would be better. BNEF research did track orders for 989 electric aircraft (mostly small ones) as of early 2022. Fingers crossed.
(Paywall,
https://bnef.com/insights/30267 ).

2024-09-28 11:35:15 UTC

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25. Electrification of transport is far better than biofuels; for example, as the speakers discuss on this podcast, it takes about 300 acres of farmland to run petrol cars on corn ethanol the same annual distance as electric cars running on one acre of PV.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-going-on-with-biofuels#details

2024-09-28 11:22:51 UTC

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1. To opinions! Solar is the cheapest source of bulk electricity in many countries, and the quickest to deploy, and now you couldn't stop it being built if you wanted to. The limits to PV build in most places are grid access, permitting, and sometimes installation labour.
2. Nearly 20 years ago when I got this job, I thought maybe solar would one day be 1% of global electricity supply. Last year it was 6% worldwide, and rising fast.

2024-09-28 11:22:23 UTC

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It's the book I should have read before trying to get a job in renewable energy. Reviewers describe as “to the point, important, and taught me a lot” and “surprisingly entertaining, don’t be put off by the title”.
I have put out this thread once a year on social media since 2017. You can view the 2023 thread below, and from there it links to previous threads. So you can see what I got wrong, or at least changed.
https://mastodon.green/@solar_chase/111313269230960064

2024-09-13 11:25:01 UTC

This is a really random question but: has anyone got a decent photo of a solar fence (ie where solar panels are the actual fencing material) that I could use with their explicit permission, citing them? It could literally be a snap of your neighbours' solar fence (without anything privacy-violating in the background).
This is for a TEDx talk at the end of October.

2024-08-25 12:28:59 UTC

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In defence of posting this. On my Mastodon account I;
- post Bloomberg solar research that is normally behind a $$$ paywall, which I no longer post to X
- post about getting drunk and taking a live goose to a party (he was a bit sulky but he's a retired exhibition goose, he wasn't hugely stressed and he was back with his family 15 minutes later).
I mean, that's the deal.

2024-08-24 18:59:37 UTC

Got drunk. Said goodnight to a neighbour's party and returned to say goodnight again with a live goose under one arm.
Not answering questions about solar forecasts.