“Subsidies like the DOE’s guarantees can incentivize firms to prioritize short-term gains over long-term compliance. Sunnova’s aggressive sales tactics, which targeted vulnerable consumers, were enabled by its belief that federal backing insulated it from accountability.” (Issac Lane, below)

MasterResource has chronicled the rise and fall of the large, government-enabled rooftop solar company, Sunnova Energy International, Inc. Led by the toothy Enron-ex John Berger (who made millions of dollars at the expense of just about everyone else, including taxpayers), Sunnova is yet another case study of business failure under political capitalism (versus free-market capitalism).

Previous posts have been:

• Solar Bust: PosiGen Joins SunPower, Sunnova, Mosaic Solar, September 8, 2025
• Sunnova’s Enronish Ending, July 16, 2025
• Sunnova Declares Bankruptcy June 10, 2025
• Sunnova EVP’s Exit: Self-adulation Within a Taxpayer Bubble June 4, 2025
• Sunnova Hype pre-Bankruptcy May 8, 2025
• Sunnova’s Net Zero for Stockholders (last ESG report of a ‘second-hander’ company) May 7, 2025
• John Berger: “Lifetime Achievement Award” for Sustainable Energy Future April 1, 2025
• Sunnova Going Solyndra?

Ed. Note: How did a major energy trade association/ lobbying group come to support climate alarm and forced energy transformation, reversing its prior position? The story gets back to an ex-Enron executive who imported Enron’s political capitalism model to the electricity industry, to flip the script.

“Breaking ranks with others in the electric-power industry, [James “Jim” Rogers in 1988] supported legislation putting caps on sulfur-dioxide emissions. ‘Some of my guys thought I was drinking the environmental Kool-Aid,’ he said later. ‘But I said, “Let’s shape this, let’s make some money”.’” (Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2018)

“I made money on sulfur [dioxide], and I’ll make money on carbon [dioxide].” (Bloomberg Businessweek, June 3, 2010)

“The Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing the electric power industry,” a recent New York Times article stated, “said that if without a federal role in regulating greenhouse gases, states and cities could ‘attempt to fill that perceived void through increased regulatory requirements that could vary significantly from one jurisdiction to the next.’”…

“… my passion for bettering human lives via improved access to energy is unwavering.” (- Chris Wright, below)

It is a topsy-turvy new energy world where reality bats last. With the physics of energy overcoming the ‘magical thinking’ of renewables and deep decarbonization, and with a push in the U.S. under Trump, the Paris Accord (‘a fraud really, a fake‘) is going the way of the Kyoto Protocol. The forced smiles of Climate Week in New York City last month will be harder to maintain at COP 30 in Brazil. Perhaps it will be the last one as more and more countries exit, just as businesses have from the decarbonization alliances.

The new reality and politics has a central world figure in Donald Trump. But behind Trump is the Secretary of the U.S.…

“I’ve yet to meet a blue-collar worker at a cleantech conference, nor have I met one at cleantech dinner tables. The industry needs to ditch its self-righteous virtue signaling and stop relying on handouts.” (- a Cleantech veteran, below)

“Is this really the climate movement’s next chapter?” asked Stephen Lacey, cofounder and executive editor of Latitude Media, a publication “covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.”

If so, it will end in nothing more than further alienating voters. The progressive approach to climate mobilization has largely failed to build durable coalitions and policies. The election of Trump clearly showed that kitchen table issues matter most. We are in an extraordinary moment where people are struggling to pay their energy bills — and this is the answer? I agree with Michael Liebreich that we need a deep, pragmatic climate reset.