As many as five projects nationwide will be funded through the 2021 infrastructure law, with at least two projects set aside for solar farms, the White House said Tuesday.

The White House also said it will allow developers of clean energy projects to take advantage of billions of dollars in new bonuses being offered in addition to investment and production tax credits available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The bonuses will “incentivize more clean energy investment in energy communities, particularly coal communities,” that have been hurt by a decade-plus decline in U.S. coal production, the White House said.

The actions are among steps the Biden administration is taking as the Democratic president moves to convert the U.S. economy to renewable energy such as wind and solar power, while turning away from coal and other fossil fuels that produce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The projects are modeled on a site Biden visited last summer, where a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts is shifting to offshore wind power. Biden highlighted the former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, calling it the embodiment of the transition to clean energy that he is seeking but has struggled to realize in the first two years of his presidency.

“It’s very clear that … the workers who powered the last century of industry and innovation can power the next one,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, whose agency will oversee the new grant program.

Former mining areas in Appalachia and other parts of the country have long had the infrastructure, workforce, expertise and “can-do attitude” to produce energy, Granholm told reporters on Monday. “And now, thanks to President Biden’s investments in America, we have the resources that can help them bring this new energy economy to life.”

Up to five clean energy projects will be funded at current and former mines, Granholm said. The demonstration projects are expected to be examples for future development, “providing knowledge and experience that catalyze the next generation of clean energy on mine land projects,” the Energy Department said.

Applications are due by the end of August, with grant decisions expected by early next year.

In a related development, the Energy Department said it is awarding $16 million from the infrastructure law to West Virginia University and the University of North Dakota to study ways to extract critical minerals such as lithium, copper and nickel from coal mine waste streams.

Rare earth elements and other minerals are key parts of batteries for electric vehicles, cellphones and other technology. Biden has made boosting domestic mining a priority as the U.S. seeks to decrease its reliance on China, which has long dominated the battery supply chain.

One of the two universities that will receive funding is in the home state of one of Biden’s loudest critics, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a fellow Democrat who has decried what he calls Biden’s anti-coal agenda. Manchin complained on Friday about new Treasury Department guidelines for EV tax credits that he said ignore the intent of last year’s climate and health care law.

The new rules are aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on China and other countries for EV battery supply chains, but Manchin said they don’t move fast enough to “bring manufacturing back to America and ensure we have reliable and secure supply chains.″

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, also slammed Biden last year after the president vowed to shutter coal-fired power plants and rely more heavily on wind and solar energy.

The powerful coal state lawmaker called Biden’s comments last November “divorced from reality,” adding that they “ignore the severe economic pain” caused by higher energy prices as a result of declining domestic production of coal and other fossil fuels. The White House said Biden’s words in a Nov. 4 speech in California had been “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended” and that the president regretted any offense caused.

“No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant. So it’s going to become a wind generation,” Biden said in the speech in Carlsbad, California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”

Biden has set a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Monday that Biden believes U.S. leaders “need to be bold” in combating climate change “and that includes helping revitalize the economies of coal, oil and gas and power-plant communities.”

The product, sold by Sunvilla Corporation exclusively at Costco warehouses and website under the name “10’ Solar LED Market Umbrellas,” had LED lights located on the arms of the umbrella and a black solar panel battery puck at the umbrella’s top.

The solar panel pucks have a mark that reads “YEEZE 1” or “YEEZE.” The umbrellas were sold in a variety of colors between the dates December 2020 and May 2022.  

If someone is in possession of one of these umbrellas, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a statement that they should immediately stop using the umbrella, remove the solar panel puck from the top and then place the puck in a spot away from the sun and combustible material. Also, the statement said the puck should not be charged with an AC adapter.  

The company has received six reports of the lithium-ion batteries overheating, with three of the reported incidents occurring while the puck was charging in the AC adapter indoors, and two reports of the pucks overheating and catching fire while attached to the umbrella.

There has been one reported injury due to smoke inhalation as a result of the pucks overheating.  

Purchasers of one of these recalled umbrellas can return them to Costco warehouses nationwide for a full refund. If it is not possible to bring the recalled umbrella to a store, then consumers should contact  SunVilla to learn how to obtain a refund.  

Consumers can contact SunVilla by phone at 866-600-3133 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time Monday through Friday, and by email at LEDrecall@sunvilla.com.

More information can also be found at https://sunvilla.com/pages/recall or https://sunvilla.com/ under the red banner “Important Recall Notice.”  

The European Union should not enter into any new gas supply contracts with Russia, in order to lower its dependence on Russian natural gas, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.

The recommendation is part of a 10-point plan published by the Paris-based organization following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Other recommendations from the IEA include:

• Using alternative sources of gas, from the EU itself and countries such as Norway and Azerbaijan.
• Speeding up the rollout of new solar and wind projects.
• Maximizing generation from nuclear and bioenergy.
• Encouraging consumers to lower their thermostat by 1 degree Celsius.
• And accelerating the replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps. The full list can be read here.

“Nobody is under any illusions anymore,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement Thursday.

“Russia’s use of its natural gas resources as an economic and political weapon show Europe needs to act quickly to be ready to face considerable uncertainty over Russian gas supplies next winter.” 

The IEA’s plan provided what he said were “practical steps to cut Europe’s reliance on Russian gas imports by over a third within a year while supporting the shift to clean energy in a secure and affordable way.”

“Europe needs to rapidly reduce the dominant role of Russia in its energy markets and ramp up the alternatives as quickly as possible,” Birol said.

The EU is heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas. Russia was the biggest supplier of both petroleum oils and natural gas to the EU last year, according to Eurostat.

“Europe’s reliance on imported natural gas from Russia has again been thrown into sharp relief by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February,” the IEA’s report said, going on to acknowledge that its analysis highlighted some trade-offs.

“Accelerating investment in clean and efficient technologies is at the heart of the solution, but even very rapid deployment will take time to make a major dent in demand for imported gas,” the IEA said.  

“The faster EU policy makers seek to move away from Russian gas supplies, the greater the potential implications in terms of economic costs and/or near-term emissions.”

Among those speaking during a live stream to launch the IEA’s report was Kadri Simson, the EU’s commissioner for energy.

“The war in Ukraine has made our dependence on Russian gas supply and its risks painfully clear,” she said. “We cannot let any third country destabilize our energy markets or influence our energy choices.” 

In a separate statement accompanying the publication of the IEA’s report, Simson said next week would see the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, “propose a pathway for Europe to become independent from Russian gas as soon as possible.”

Thursday’s recommendations follow on from the IEA’s announcement on March 1 that its member countries would “make 60 million barrels of oil available.”  

On Thursday, Birol stressed this was an “initial” move. “I wanted to say, very clearly, that we have more than enough stocks to take further action if warranted.”

Toward the end of February, Germany halted the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline designed to bring natural gas from Russia directly to Europe.

Birol and Simson’s assertions that Europe needed to reduce its reliance on Russia for gas chime with comments made to the BBC by the EU’s climate chief, Frans Timmermans, on Thursday morning.

“We need to wean ourselves [off] of the dependency on Russian gas and oil and we need to do that much quicker than we had anticipated,” he said.  

Timmermans told the BBC that the European Commission would “make proposals next week to make that happen as soon as possible.” Pressed on how this would be achieved, he said energy resourcing would have to be diversified.

“But we will most certainly have to speed up our transition to renewable energy, we need to do much more on offshore wind, in solar, in biogas, in geothermal, so there’s a lot we need to do and we need to do it faster than we had anticipated.”

There were “no taboos” in this situation, Timmermans said. “You’ve seen that also the German government, determined to move very quickly towards renewables, has also said that in this situation we might have to stick a bit longer with coal or with nuclear.”

TotalEnergies is buying SunPower‘s commercial and industrial business, the two companies announced Wednesday evening.

The $250 million deal includes $190 million cash up front, plus another $60 million to be paid if an extension to the solar investment tax credit is passed, a company spokesperson said. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter.

TotalEnergies is SunPower’s majority owner, holding a 50.8% stake in the company.

The move comes after SunPower announced a restructuring in October aimed at doubling down on the residential solar market, which the company said is larger, more profitable, and growing faster. The company said it planned to offload its commercial and industrial business as part of that restructuring.

“The sale enables SunPower to focus on creating a superior residential experience, increase our investment in product and digital innovation, and reach more homeowners,” SunPower CEO Peter Faricy said in a statement.

France-based TotalEnergies said the deal allows it to expand its renewable energy footprint in the U.S.

SunPower’s Faricy said in October, when the restructuring was announced, that the commercial and industrial unit had generated interest from potential buyers, although he did not give any names.

In November Faricy again said that the business had attracted buyers, and said the company would provide an update on a potential buyer by the end of the December quarter.

“The business is very healthy,” Faricy told CNBC in November following the company’s third-quarter earnings, “despite the fact that it’s had a couple of challenging quarters, mostly due to project slips tied to all the same supply chain and labor issues.”

Shares of SunPower gained 6% on Wednesday after strong earnings from solar company Enphase Energy boosted the solar sector broadly. But shares are down nearly 18% for 2022 through Wednesday’s close, and have declined 65% over the last year.

Plans for a streamlined, residential-focused business come after the company spun out photovoltaic module maker Maxeon Solar in August 2020.

Plans for a huge project aiming to produce green hydrogen and ammonia have been announced, with those behind it hoping construction of the first phase will begin in late 2023.

On Tuesday, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced details of a partnership with Spanish companies Naturgy, Enagás and Fertiberia. Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, is also involved.

The firms will work together on Catalina Phase I, which will be made up of 1.7 gigawatts of wind and solar in Aragon, northeast Spain, and a 500-megawatt electrolyzer able to generate more than 40,000 tons of green hydrogen annually.

A pipeline will link Aragon with Valencia in the east of Spain, sending the hydrogen to a green ammonia facility. CIP said this ammonia would then be “upgraded” into fertilizer.

Project Catalina will eventually look to develop a total of 5 GW of combined wind and solar, producing green hydrogen using a 2 GW electrolyzer.

The scale of the overall development is considerable. “Once fully implemented, Catalina will produce enough green hydrogen to supply 30% of Spain’s current hydrogen demand,” CIP said.

Details relating to the financing of the initiative have not been revealed. CIP did say, however, that Project Catalina would make what it called a “significant contribution” to Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, or PERTE, on renewable energy, renewable hydrogen and storage.

In Dec. 2021, the Spanish government said PERTE would mobilize resources amounting to 16.37 billion euros, around $18.54 billion. According to authorities there, the private sector will supply 9.45 billion euros, with 6.92 billion euros coming from Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries. It can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it green or renewable hydrogen.

Over the past few years, a number of firms have undertaken projects related to green hydrogen. Just last week, energy major Shell said a 20 megawatt hydrogen electrolyzer described as “one of the world’s largest” had begun operations.

In Dec. 2021, Iberdrola and H2 Green Steel said they would partner and develop a 2.3 billion euro project centered around a green hydrogen facility with an electrolysis capacity of 1 gigawatt.

While there is excitement in some quarters about green hydrogen’s potential, the vast majority of hydrogen generation is currently based on fossil fuels.

In recent times, some business leaders have spoken of the issues they felt were facing the emerging green hydrogen sector. Last October, for example, the CEO of Siemens Energy told CNBC there was “no commercial case” for it at this moment in time.

And in July 2021, a briefing from the World Energy Council said low-carbon hydrogen was not currently “cost-competitive with other energy supplies in most applications and locations.” It added that the situation was unlikely to change unless there was “significant support to bridge the price gap.”

The analysis — which was put together in collaboration with PwC and the U.S. Electric Power Research Institute — raised the question of where funding for such support would come from, but also pointed to the increasing profile of the sector and the positive effect this could have.

For its part, the European Commission has laid out plans to install 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzer capacity in the European Union by the year 2030.

Tesla reported fourth-quarter results that came in stronger than expected on Wednesday. Shares fell as much as 5% in extended trading on Wednesday after the automaker warned supply chain issues could persist throughout 2022, but later rebounded into slightly positive territory.

Here’s how the company performed:

• Earnings (adjusted): $2.52 per share, vs. $2.36 per share expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv
• Revenue: $17.72 billion, vs. $16.57 billion expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv

Revenue rose 65% year over year in the quarter, while automotive revenue totaled $15.97 billion, up 71%, according to a statement.

Energy generation and storage revenue was $688 million, which was down 8% and below the StreetAccount consensus of $815.1 million. It was the lowest revenue for that division since the first quarter of 2021.

Net income, at $2.32 billion, was up some 760%, and Tesla said it had a 27.4% gross margin, compared with 26.6% in the previous quarter.

“Our own factories have been running below capacity for several quarters as supply chain became the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through 2022,” the company said in a shareholder deck.

CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s earnings call that he expects Tesla to remain “chip-limited” in 2022, and that the company would introduce no new vehicle models this year as a result.

“We will not be introducing new vehicle models this year. We will still be parts constrained.” He said the company would instead work on engineering and tooling to create those future vehicles.

Shareholders had been waiting for progress updates on the company’s long-delayed heavy duty Semi truck and experimental Cybertruck pickup.

The CEO also said the company is not currently working on a $25,000 compact electric vehicle, contrary to the ambitions he announced at a Tesla Battery Day presentation in 2020.

Musk alluded to ongoing supply chain issues in a tweet Last November, writing, “Oh man, this year has been such a supply chain nightmare & it’s not over! I will provide an updated product roadmap on next earnings call.”

Despite those challenges, Musk said, Tesla had been making quite a few cars in Austin and Berlin starting in late 2021. He noted, “In Texas, we’re building Model Ys with the structural battery pack and the 4680 cells. We will start delivering after final certification of the vehicle which should be fairly soon.”

Tesla’s first U.S. factory in Fremont, California, achieved record production in 2021, the company noted. The company aims to expand capacity at that facility beyond 600,000 cars per year.

In its shareholder deck, Tesla revealed that it has expanded its experimental driver assistance systems testing program, dubbed FSD Beta, to around 60,000 users in the U.S.

“Full Self-Driving (FSD) software remains one of our primary areas of focus,” the company wrote. “Over time, our software-related profit should accelerate our overall profitability.”

The California DMV and federal vehicle safety regulators at NHTSA are both investigating Tesla’s approach to testing new, and unfinished driver assistance features with customers on public roads in the US. The California DMV is also investigating Tesla’s use of the term “Full Self-Driving” to describe its premium, driver assistance package.

A spokesperson for the California DMV told CNBC in mid-January, “The DMV shares the concern held by many other safety stakeholders about the potential for driver inattention, misunderstanding, or misuse as these systems become more prevalent.  Industry, government, safety organizations, and other stakeholders must work together to ensure that automated driving technologies are developed, tested and ultimately rolled out in a manner that builds public trust and provides for the safety of all road users.”

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated Tesla’s automotive revenue for the quarter. It was $15.97 billion.

California regulators are reviewing proposed changes to solar incentive programs that would cut the state’s solar market in half by 2024, according to a new report from energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s proposed decision, released on Dec. 13, would reduce payments granted to solar customers for the excess power they generate, which is known as net-energy metering. The proposal would also add monthly hookup charges for customers.

This would increase the payback period for solar systems, or how long it takes for the system to pay for itself. This metric is a key consideration for those deciding whether to switch to rooftop solar.

Under the proposed changes, the payback period would more than double from between five and six years to between 14 and 15 years, according to Wood Mackenzie’s analysis of charges from PG&E and Southern California Edison, the state’s two largest utility companies.

“For both utilities, the payback periods under NEM 3.0 go way beyond the 10-year threshold,” said Bryan White, co-author of the report. “Beyond this threshold, customers are less inclined to invest in solar projects and installers are less motivated to sell them.”

The firm forecasts the state’s new residential solar installed capacity would drop 42% between 2022 and 2023, and another 10% in 2024. That year, new annual residential installed capacity will be about half of 2021 volumes, sinking to its lowest annual output since 2014.

Given California’s leadership role in terms of renewable energy buildout, the effects of the updated NEM policy would extend beyond just the state, having “major implications” for the entire industry.

The CPUC’s proposal has faced significant backlash from solar companies, renewable advocates, and even Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Its final decision was expected on Jan. 27, but has since been delayed. The five commissioners are not bound by the December proposal, and the commissioner who wrote the proposed decision has since left CPUC.

In another blow for the industry, the Investment Tax Credit, which supports renewable energy projects, will decrease beginning next year. An extension of the ITC was part of the Build Back Better plan. However, the ITC has typically received bipartisan support and was last extended under the Trump administration, which means it could still be extended without the Build Back Better plan’s overall passage.

“Ultimately, the NEM 3.0 PD and the ITC stepdown will create a challenging business environment in the near- to mid-term,” said White. “Many solar companies will not survive this double whammy of policy headwinds, resulting in significant consolidation in a contracting California residential solar market.”

A subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy has released details of plans to develop a $3.9 billion project in Iowa that would incorporate both wind and solar power.

In a statement Wednesday, MidAmerican Energy, citing a filing to the Iowa Utilities Board, said the Wind PRIME development “would add 2,042 megawatts of wind generation and 50 megawatts of solar generation.”

In addition, MidAmerican said it was proposing what it described as “feasibility studies” centered around technologies such as energy storage, small modular nuclear reactors and carbon capture.

If Wind PRIME was granted approval, MidAmerican — which has its headquarters in Des Moines – said it planned to wrap up construction “in late 2024.”

According to the American Clean Power Association, wind was Iowa’s “largest source of electricity generation” in 2020.

The United States is home to a well-developed onshore wind sector. According to the ACP a total of 16,836 MW of utility-scale, land-based wind was installed there in 2020. “The amount of new wind capacity in 2020 is more than three times the amount installed in 2010,” the ACP says.

Offshore wind is a different story. America’s first offshore wind facility, the 30 megawatt Block Island Wind Farm in waters off Rhode Island, only started commercial operations in late 2016.

Change looks to be coming on that front, however. Last March, the Departments of Energy, Interior and Commerce said they wanted to roll out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by the year 2030.

In Nov. 2021, ground was broken on a project dubbed the United States’ “first commercial scale offshore wind farm.”

A material science start-up, Ubiquitous Energy, is raising tens of millions of dollars to turn windows into surfaces that capture solar energy. The California start-up announced on Tuesday it closed a $30 million funding round, including an investment from consumer window and door manufacturing giant Andersen Corporation, bringing its total funding raised to $70 million.

Ubiquitous makes a coating for windows that uses semiconducting materials to convert sunlight into electricity. The coating is just nanometers thick and tiny wires connect the solar window to electrical systems where the energy is used

The pre-revenue company will use the most recent funding to do manufacturing research and development work, CEO Susan Stone told CNBC. Ubiquitous aims to be producing at scale by early 2024, Stone said.

When they get there, “we’ll be able to make floor to ceiling glass,” Stone said. “We can turn skyscrapers into vertical solar farms.”

Ubiquitous is also targeting the home residential market, which makes the Andersen investment particularly strategic. Andersen is a private company and doesn’t disclose its financials, but did tell CNBC it had revenues exceeding $3 billion in 2021.

Andersen was particularly impressed with Ubiquitous because its solar film is clear and unobtrusively integrated into the window frame.

“While there are competing solar window technologies under development, most have tradeoffs in transparency, color, viewing area obstruction, haze, or energy efficiency, making it challenging for consumers to accept them as alternatives to standard windows,” wrote Prabhakar (KP) Karri and Karl Halling, who led the company’s investment in a response to CNBC’s query.

Stone knows that this transparency is key to success.

“They have to look indistinguishable from traditional windows, or we won’t see mass deployment,” said Stone. “Aesthetics is our guiding light.”

30% more expensive than regular window glass

The $30 million raise is a bridge to get the company ready to manufacture after more than a decade of work. Ubiquitous was founded in 2011 and its technology was born out of work done by scientists and engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michigan State University.

Since then, more investors and consumers have come to believe that addressing climate change is an urgent priority. Ubiquitous and its investors are relying on this sense of urgency to spur demand for its product despite its higher cost — the solar-electricity window panels are projected to be about 30% more expensive than regular glass that goes into windows once production gets to scale, Stone told CNBC.

The solar glass is also less efficient than traditional solar panels, which operate at a maximum of 22% efficiency — a measurement of the amount of sunlight that falls on the surface of a solar panel and is converted into electricity.

Ubiquitous has a window in its research and development pipeline that will offer about 10% efficiency, or “about half of conventional solar,” Stone said, but its theoretical maximums are about two-thirds the potential efficiency of regular solar panels.

Part of that lower efficiency is just because windows are vertical, while solar panels lay horizontally, allowing them to collect more direct sunlight.

“But we enable a surface that wasn’t generating power already to generate electricity,” Stone said. “The glass has always been passive, and we’re making it active here.”

By 2050, Ubiquitous hopes to have one billion square feet of its window glass installed globally.

That’s an ambitious goal, and Stone is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead.

“The things that keep me up at night are things like, ‘Can we meet our production timeline?’ ‘Will we find that the that exact right manufacturing location that allows us to break ground on our timeframe when we want to? Will that ramp to production go as smoothly as we think it will?'”

While Stone is focused on executing architectural glass right now, that’s only step one of the longer-term vision.

“We have amazing applications in all kinds of industries, like consumer electronics, like automobiles, and even agriculture,” Stone said. “So we’re not stopping at windows.”

Companies from Dow Chemical Company to the now defunct BP Solar have given the solar shingle a shot, but many of these products are no longer on the market. Solar shingles have been expensive to manufacture and install, and are not yet as efficient as regular solar panels. That’s kept them from breaking into the mainstream.

Now GAF Energy, the sister company to one of the largest roofing companies in the world and a division of privately held Standard Industries, is launching a new solar shingle effort. It just released a product called Timberline Solar, which the company says will be cheaper and more reliable than Tesla’s Solar Roof. It just won the Best of Innovation Award for Smart Cities at CES.

What sets GAF Energy apart

“We’re part of the world’s largest roofing manufacturer. We have access to materials that typical solar companies don’t have access to,” said Martin DeBono, President of GAF Energy. “No one has ever specifically tried to make a solar product that a roofer can install. And we’ve done it, and our product goes on with just a nail gun. It goes on twice as fast as typical solar.”

Timberline Solar can be nailed to the roof just like a regular shingle, which GAF Energy says will reduce the complexity and cost of installation. At 17 inches tall and 64 inches long, the shingles are also larger than Tesla’s, meaning there are fewer parts to manufacture and fewer individual wiring connections, which the company expects will also decrease costs while increasing reliability.

However the larger and bulkier design also means that GAF Energy’s shingle doesn’t blend in as well as Tesla’s product, which is nearly indistinguishable from normal roofing material.

GAF Energy says its deep ties to the roofing sector will also help it save on sales and marketing expenses, since the company can attract solar customers from the large pool of people already coming to GAF for a new roof.

“The natural moment to actually put solar on a roof is that moment when you’re already about to replace your roof. It makes literally no sense to put brand new PV on an old roof that’s well into its warranty,” said David Winter, Co-CEO of Standard Industries.

Winter says that one out of every three asphalt shingle roofs in the U.S. is a GAF roof. “So we’re the people that are sitting at the proverbial kitchen table with the homeowner at that moment that they need to replace their roof, where we can introduce the idea of solar.”

According to Wood Mackenzie, customer acquisition costs usually make up 23% of the total cost of a residential solar system, so saving here could be key.

GAF Energy also touts the fact that it assembles and partially manufactures its shingles at its facility in San Jose, California. While the company imports its PV cells from Thailand, it believes that having some domestic manufacturing is advantageous.

“What that allows us to do is take improvements in our product from the lab and get them to instantiate in the product very, very quickly,” DeBono says. Alternately, teams would have to fly overseas to execute changes. “And what you see is changes to your product take quarters and years, literally, whereas here it takes hours and days.”

Questions remain

Only real world performance over the product’s 25-year warranty will show if GAF Energy has really cracked the code to an affordable and reliable solar shingle product.

GAF Energy did not provide CNBC with specific pricing information, though DeBono estimated that on average, Timberline Solar could cost about twice as much as replacing a roof with normal asphalt shingles.

“Let’s say in many parts of the country, you have a fifteen thousand dollar cost for the roof. Getting a solar system, adding that would be another fifteen thousand,” DeBono said.

Getting a $30,000 solar roof would be far cheaper than anything on the market today, and could cost less than getting a new roof plus regular solar panels.

For comparison, Tesla’s projected cost for an average-sized 1,700 square foot Solar Roof in the Bay Area is about $40,700 before solar subsidies. But Tesla’s product has been known to cost much more than initial estimates. The company was hit with a class-action lawsuit last year after it dramatically hiked Solar Roof prices for customers who had already signed contracts. (Tesla later told some customers it would reverse the price increases, according to legal filings.)

The efficiency of GAF’s shingles in a real-world environment is also an open ended question, since previous solar shingle products haven’t been comparable to regular panels.

“They fundamentally operate at a lower efficiency,” said Barry Cinnamon, founder of Silicon Valley-based solar installer Cinnamon Energy Systems. “And the reason is that they’re flush with the roof and the roof is hot. And so hot solar cells don’t work as efficiently as cooler solar cells in conventional modules.”

GAF Energy says that it’s using high-efficiency mono-PERC cells, which perform better than traditional monocrystalline PV cells at high temperatures. Yet given the Timberline Solar shingle’s dimensions and its stated 45 watt capacity, in ideal conditions it would still generate less energy per square foot than Tesla’s latest 71.7 watt shingle or an average-sized 300 watt solar panel. Because GAF Energy’s shingles overlap, each one has a lot of inactive material. The company claims that if you look only at the active solar cells, its shingle’s efficiency is on par with Tesla’s shingles, though still less efficient than a standard solar panel.

At the time of CNBC’s interview with Cinnamon, GAF Energy’s shingle had not been released. But speaking about solar shingles generally, he was doubtful that they would ever appeal to the masses.

“I really don’t see anything that’s going to change with any of these factors that are going to make it a widespread mainstream product. I think it’s always going to be a niche product like a fancy sports car.”

Yet Gabriela Bunea, Senior Vice President of Solar R&D at GAF Energy, maintains that Timberline Solar will be able to compete when it comes to cost, efficiency and reliability.

“It is my hope that maybe in five, ten years when you are thinking about changing your roof, you will pick the solar roof, because it makes economic sense, because it’s attractive and because you will have the same warranty as the rest of the roof.”

Watch the video to see CNBC’s early look inside GAF Energy’s R&D and manufacturing facility in San Jose, California, where it’s assembling Timberline Solar shingles.

–Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

Solar business Lightsource bp is to partner with Portugal’s Dourogas on a number of projects centered around green hydrogen production.

In a statement Thursday, Lightsource bp — which oil and gas giant BP has a 50% stake in — said the partnership would see the two firms “explore the potential of eight green hydrogen sites.”

The idea behind the collaboration is that solar facilities from Lightsource bp will be used to power electrolyzers Dourogas has developed.

Green hydrogen produced by the partnership is to be “injected directly” into the Portuguese gas grid, Lightsource bp said.

The collaboration’s first project has benefited from a 5 million euro grant ($5.65 million) from the European Union’s Portugal 2020 fund.

Hydrogen, which has a diverse range of applications, can be produced in a number of ways.

One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source, such as wind or solar, then some call it “green” or “renewable” hydrogen.

“We’ve always believed in solar as a vital tool in decarbonisation,” Miguel Lobo, who is country head for Lightsource bp in Portugal, said in a statement.

“When used to generate green hydrogen, it becomes an entire energy transition toolkit.”

“The clean energy locked into these hydrogen molecules can immediately cut the footprint of industries, heavy transport and heat in ways electricity alone cannot,” he added.

The notion of integrating hydrogen with existing infrastructure is starting to gain some traction.

Back in July, Marco Alvera, the CEO of Italian firm Snam, outlined a vision for the future of hydrogen, saying the “beauty” of it was that it could be easily stored and transported.

Speaking to CNBC, he spoke about how current systems would be used to facilitate the delivery of hydrogen produced using renewable sources as well as biofuels.

“Right now, if you turn on your heater in Italy the gas is flowing from Russia, all the way from Siberia, in pipelines,” he said.

“Tomorrow, we will have hydrogen produced in North Africa, in the North Sea, with solar and wind resources,” Alverà said. “And that hydrogen can travel through the existing pipeline.”

While there is excitement in some quarters about the potential of green hydrogen, the vast majority of hydrogen generation is currently based on fossil fuels.

In recent times, some business leaders have spoken of the issues they feel are facing the emerging sector.

In October, for example, the CEO of Siemens Energy told CNBC there was “no commercial case for green hydrogen” at this moment in time.