November 2023 Newsletter

Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA

Welcome to Megawatt Recruitment’s monthly newsletter to keep you connected to what’s going on in the renewable energy industry in the United States and provide more insight, knowledge, and connection to the people and companies who drive our industry.

What People Are Talking About

• To help establish a domestic industry for battery manufacturing and battery materials production, the DOE plans to release $3.5B in subsidies.
• TotalEnergies reached commercial operations on its 380MW Myrtle Solar project + 225MWh of battery storage near Houston, TX.
• Cox Enterprises, an automotive, broadband, and media company, invested $250M into DSD Renewables alongside Blackrock who has been an investor and majority owner since 2019.
• DOE’s Grid Resilience and Innovations Partnership program awarded $3.5B to support 58 projects in 44 states which will be matched by $4.5B in private and local investment to expand and upgrade the electric grid.
• Concentrated solar company, Heliogen, was delisted from the NYSE on November 8^th for not keeping a market cap of 15M for 30-trading days in a row.  The company now trades on OTCQX under the symbol HLGN.
• Arevon secured 529M financing package for its 150MW solar + 600MWh battery storage project in California.
• WABTEC (Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation, owned by German automotive company ZF Friedrichshafen) deployed the first commercial-scale battery powered train at 7MWh for a mining project owned by Roy Hill, owned by Australian Hancock Prospecting.
• Ørsted deployed a first-of-kind drone that can carry up to 150lbs to bring equipment and supplies to offshore wind projects.
• Ørsted cancels New Jersey offshore wind projects forcing a $4 billion write off.
• The Clean Energy Leadership Institute is taking employer applications for the EDICT Internship Program from now until December 1^st, 2023, which is focused on putting diverse climate talent into 10-week paid internships.

Recent Personnel Moves and Promotions

What the market is talking about: COP28 (Nov 30 – Dec 12)

In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an environmental treaty to combat climate change which was signed by 152 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, informally known as the Earth Summit.  To implement and enforce the framework, the Conference of the Parties (COP) was established as the supreme decision-making body and the first United Nations climate change conference, COP1, took place in Berlin, Germany in March 1995. It has met every year since and has built upon previous meetings with resolutions such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Agreement in 2015.

One of the major outcomes expected from this year’s COP28 conference is the first-ever “global stocktake” (GST) which is a process for countries and stakeholders to take stock of where they are collectively making progress against climate change, and specifically, how they are tracking toward meeting or not meeting their goals set during the Paris Agreement. The stocktake is scheduled to take place every 5 years going forward.

The GST assesses progress on three pillars of the fight against climate change: Mitigation, Adaptation, and the Means of Implementation and Support.  This year, it also produced summary reports on how to phase out all fossil fuels in a just transition, set clear timelines and implementation targets to align all public financial flows with low carbon emissions, and means to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.

Let’s see what the remaining days in the conference bring!  If you are attending or have an insights, let us know.  We would love to hear your thoughts for our December newsletter.

Talent Acquisition Insights: Active Candidate Engagement

Despite predictions earlier this year that we would face an economic downturn, the U.S. economy outperformed expectations in three key areas:

• Economic output: The economy grew at a 4.9% annualized rate in the third quarter of 2023. This is the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2021.
• Labor market: The labor market has been resilient.
• Inflation: Inflation has slowed. In September, total personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation was 0.4%. This is a 3.4% increase over the past 12 months.

Specifically in renewable energy, the Inflation Reduction Act has encouraged growth across the value chain of renewable energy from raw material extraction and processing to equipment and product manufacturing to project development and asset management. For employers, this has meant a more competitive job market where candidates are often already in dynamic and fast-paced jobs, well-compensated, have good prospects for career growth and development, and have built trust equity with their bosses in order to have perks such as flexible hours, remote work, and unlimited PTO (paid time off). Getting these candidates to believe that an interview is worth their time can be difficult and is why active candidate engagement is becoming more important for employers.

While traditional recruitment is linear with a fairly standardized process consisting of identifying, attracting, screening, shortlisting, interviewing, and offering to candidates, employers can differentiate themselves by adding a few engagement points along the way.  Beginning with attractability, employers should always keep succession planning and team expansions in mind and think about ways to engage with potential new hires.  This could take the form of creating a monthly newsletter that is actively pushed out to prospective candidates or hosting a by-invitation-only networking event.  Similarly, once a job opening is confirmed and interviews have commenced, the hiring manager might share an interesting news article about the company directly with the candidate in real time.  In the case of a candidate being local to a company’s office or project site, the employer might extend an invitation for a less formal, in-person meeting such as a coffee or site visit with future peers.  Because technology has made it so easy to conduct the whole recruitment process remotely, in-person meetings are now becoming more of a premium feature of the interview process reserved for senior managers and executives.  Bringing a mid-level or junior candidate on-site can show that you believe in the value he/she will bring to the team as well.

According to LinkedIn, there has been a 20% increase in candidates dropping out of recruitment processes in recent years with one of the Top 3 reasons being that candidates are not having the ability, quantity, or quality of engagement they seek with the hiring manager or company.  So, if you are planning to hire in the next few months, reach out to us at Megawatt Recruitment to talk about how we can help you to optimize your recruitment and engagement strategy so that you do not lose quality candidates from your candidate pool due to lack of active engagement.

Hot jobs!

• Geothermal Engineer, Northeast
• Business Development Manager, Solar Testing & Certification, California
• Director of Finance, Solar Developer, Non-profit, California
• Senior Electrical Engineer, Wind and Solar, Remote
• Partner/Junior Partner, Law Firm focused on Renewables and Cleantech, Remote

View our posts and Apply Now!

Thank you for joining us for another issue of Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA.  We hope you enjoyed it and we look forward to keeping in touch and exchanging ideas, insights, and opinions.  If you are a company considering hiring, we welcome the opportunity to present our services and capabilities. If you are a candidate, please check our jobs page or reach out to us to discuss your background, skills, and future aspirations.