Independent Engineers Conclude Useful Life of Solar Project Finance Professionals 35, Not 40, Years
LOS ANGELES, CA - In a shocking twist that is expected to shake the industry to it’s core, a recent white paper sent to The Sunion by a consortium of independent engineers has sought to clarify that the IE community’s view that the useful life of solar project finance professionals is 35 years.
“We conducted extensive research using a variety of techniques, including accelerated life testing, lab work, surveys, and physical assessments. All those methods pointed us toward the conclusion that our previous estimation [that project finance professionals could remain useful until they turn 40] was wrong. However, the most conclusive of our methods was simple observation. I mean…have you looked at these PF folks in their late 30’s recently? They are a complete train wreck. Have you chatted with any of them? It’s utterly soul-crushing. For starters, most of them have moderate-to-severe drinking problems, and they are some of the most cynical, defeated, sad sacks-of-shit you’ll ever be forced to spend time with. Here’s a good example: just yesterday I asked one of them what they were going to do for Christmas - you know, like…some friendly chit-chat. And I swear to god here’s what she said: ‘probably argue with some tax attorney’s about the form of PTO letters or the meaning of the word continuous, chase down a bunch of wires sent to the wrong place….and then when it’s done and i’ve failed to achieve my goals, I’ll just softly cry myself to sleep.’ I chuckled, thinking it was a joke, but she didn’t laugh she just stared blankly at the ground in front of her for about 20 seconds, and then took a massive swig from the plastic bottle of Beefeater’s Gin in her right hand while staring at me with her lifeless eyes. Haunting. Truly haunting.”
The paper speaks to the causes of the shortened useful life expectations, focusing on 3 in particular: 1) #REF! errors, 2) Tax equity placement agents who call in early November looking for projects, and 3) when developers or construction people say the phrase “back-leverage” like they know what it means.
Maria Zabotova from Leidos contributed to the white paper. She was also most struck by the observation component of the analysis: “I spent a couple weeks sitting in Longroad’s offices observing two of their senior project finance directors, and I may never be the same. This one guy, Cory - he’s 38 and has been in solar since he was 26 - he came in one morning - unshaven, in a wrinkled shirt, reeking of vodka, already on the phone with his divorce attorney - and without missing a beat started tearing into an engineer for the tiniest of errors in a PVSyst report. Then he disappeared into the men’s room where through the door I listened to him sob in a bathroom stall for about 15 minutes. When he came out, his fly was open, and I caught the end of a phone conversation which went like this: ‘…christ I don’t even know why I bother, you’re going to screw me one way or another, so just pick which one it’s gonna be this time, and lets move on to the next deal where you get a 43% IRR and I make 0.02/W’. When I asked him who he was on the phone with he said ‘honestly I don’t know….could have been Wells, could’ve been Morgan Stanley, could’ve been BofA. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does anymore.’ The corrosion of the man’s soul was beyond my wildest expectations.”
Zabotova recommends taking PF professionals out of service in their mid-30’s. “It’s clear that that degradation curve falls off a cliff around 34…maybe 35. But you can’t repower these people, they are broken beyond repair. Best thing to do is scrap em’. You know…send them off to some superfluous, cushy job, like ‘Director of Sustainability’ at some disingenuous corporation, or encourage them to go start a climatetech company that will never turn a profit, burn through hundreds of millions of dollars, change it’s strategy 8 times in 3 years, and still somehow manage to be more fulfilling than solar project finance.”