Solar Capacity Continues to Grow Faster Than Natural Gas, Coal, and Nuclear

During the first three quarters of 2023, solar grew faster than all other energy sources.

This, according to the latest Energy Information Administration report, which shows solar provided more than 42% of total new domestic generating capacity. 

To put that in perspective, 38.2% of total new domestic generation capacity came from natural gas and 4.7% from nuclear.

While total solar capacity only sits at around 6%, the sector continues to grow faster than everything else: natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, geothermal — you name it.  

Of course, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that this is largely because so much private capital continues to flow into the market.  In fact, this year alone, more than $1 billion per day will be invested in solar, coming in at a total of $382 billion.

To put that in perspective, investment in oil production will come in second to solar at $371 billion.  This, by the way, is the first time this has ever happened. 

But it’s not just venture funds and family offices ponying up for a piece of this action.  Individual investors — mostly billionaires — are investing record amounts in solar.

Jeff Bezos is in for about $2 billion …

Uncle Elon is in for $2.6 billion …

And Warren Buffett has more than $4 billion of this solar action.

Of course, these guys are billionaires, so they tend to get sweetheart deals on financing.  They have for a long time through what’s known as private solar royalties. 

They're pretty ingenious, actually. 

When a solar project needs financing, billionaires are offered the opportunity to put up a few million in exchange for a cut of the profits generated from the project.  Those profits come in the form of monthly payments that continue for the life of the power purchase agreement, which is usually between 15 to 20 years.

If you’re unfamiliar, a power purchase agreement is a contract between a generator of electricity, which in this case is the solar project, and a customer, which is typically a utility company.

The utility company needs electricity to sell to its customers, so it buys that electricity from an electricity generator, and that electricity generator is able to generate electricity through projects that are funded by billionaire investors. 

Or at least that’s how it’s been for decades.

But thanks to a recent SEC rule change, regulator investors — not just billionaires — can now profit from these private solar royalties, too. 

In fact, if you were to put just $100 per month into one of these private solar deals, you could earn as much as $98,325.

With gains like that, you can probably see why billionaires have been making money hand over fist from these private solar royalty deals.  Particularly when they can go in for millions of dollars at a time. 

And by the way, if you were to go in a bit higher than $100, maybe bump it up to $500, you could be looking at a total take-home of as much as $491,625.  

That’s nearly a half million dollars!

Every person I’ve shown this to has been blown away by how easy it is to get these monthly income payments.  But don’t just take my word for it.  Look at the numbers for yourself in this analysis of the top paying private solar royalties.

To a new way of life and a new generation of wealth…

Jeff Siegel

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Jeff is the founder and managing editor of Green Chip Stocks. For more on Jeff, go to his editor’s page.