The new Sunshine State

One advantage 8minutenergy has, he says, is its software, developed in-house to manage the energy harvested from the sun’s rays. For example, using battery storage, the software can customise solutions for utilities that want to provide energy from renewables day and night — not just when the sun is shining.

Industry analysts seem to share his optimism. Shayle Kann, head of consultancy GTM Research, said recently: “This is going to be a banner year for solar capacity being added to the grid in the US. When all is said and done, solar may well be the top — if not one of the top two or three — sources of new electricity generating capacity and, potentially, new generation in the US.”

One hurdle for 8minutenergy is regulation and pushback by authorities around the world. Last month, for example, President Donald Trump imposed a 30 per cent tariff on imported solar modules in what was considered a huge blow to the US renewable-energy industry.

8minutenergy has imported almost all of its solar modules, which account for about one-third of the company’s capital expenditure. At 30 per cent, the company estimates that the tariff could increase the total cost of a solar plant 9-10 per cent in the first year across the industry.

“It will slow down some of the deployment and it will limit our development,” says Mr Hermann of the decision, which is set to last four years, gradually dropping to 15 per cent by the final year. “But it will not reverse anything with regards to the direction of solar power. The trend is irreversible.”

Eric Garcetti, LA’s mayor since 2013, is bullish. “We have ushered in a new culture,” he says. “It is about thinking not just about ourselves but two or three generations ahead, to pay our piece into a global movement while making our own backyard much more resilient to the effects of climate change.”

Mr Garcetti, a slim and slick Democrat with a silver tongue and plenty of ambition, spells out the dangers of remaining passive to the threats of climate change: hotter weather, more extreme conditions, more fires and rising ocean levels which could affect low-lying parts of the city. “In the end,” he says, “the California dream, which is so mythical in movies and television around the world, would cease to exist.”

Authorities are also trying to seize the initiative in Los Angeles, home to the LADWP, the largest public utility of any US city; the second-busiest airport in the country; and a port which receives 40 per cent of containerised US imports.

Mr Garcetti has set a goal of making Los Angeles run on 100 per cent renewable energy — the first big US city to be so ambitious. By 2036, he says, Los Angeles will be two-thirds of the way there, from one-third at present. Its electricity supply could become coal-free by 2025.

California was already blazing a trail before the December 2015 Paris climate agreement — a voluntary UN accord to limit the rise in global temperature this century to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In April that year, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order to establish a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions in California to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030. “With this order,” Mr Brown said at the time, “California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it’s one that must be reached — for this generation and generations to come.”

There are few climate-change naysayers more prominent than Mr Trump. On the campaign trail, he often cast doubt on climate change as a threat, and in 2012 he claimed that it was a hoax invented by the Chinese.

Some critics specifically take aim at California’s efforts. Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish author and academic, argued last year in the LA Times that California’s myriad efforts to combat climate change would end up being “expensive for the state while achieving slightly more than nothing for the planet”.

Mr Lomborg, who does not dispute climate change but instead takes issue with many of the political and economic policies designed to combat it, continued: “Even if California succeeds in making the new cuts and sticks to them for the rest of the century, according to calculations using a standard model of the UN climate panel, they will amount to a difference of .008 degrees Fahrenheit — a minuscule drop in the bucket.”

So why bother at all? What are the consequences of inaction? “Longer droughts, more intense floods, potentially more and bigger wildfires,” says Julien Emile-Geay, associate professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California. There will be “more boom and bust with the implication of escalating costs”.

Gary Toebben, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles area chamber of commerce, says: “We see those change in our climate and we think about them on a regular basis.” He says that most businesses in the southern California region are very focused on how climate change is affecting rain and snow. “In southern California, we have a semi-arid climate and we depend on not just rainfall in Los Angeles, but also on snow and rain in the northern part of the state. We have had six years of drought and one year of reprieve. Now, we are already back in another year of drought.”

Climate change is already affecting the state’s snowpack, which forms in the Sierra Nevada mountains and is the centrepiece of California’s water management. Previously, water fell as snow and stayed in the Sierra Nevada, entering the water system progressively and feeding rivers, but thanks to a warmer climate it is now getting dumped in short — but often intense — bursts of rain.

Another reason to bother, says Prof Emile-Geay, is that there is evidence that strict environmental regulations push companies to innovate, which can translate into longer-term benefits. “These incentives often have the positive side effect of spurring new technology and forcing companies to be more efficient,” he says. “There is no foundation to say that stricter environmental regulations costs jobs. If anything, the data suggest that utility companies have reaped financial benefits from policies such as the Clean Air Act.”

More generally, he points to a cartoon on his office door that he cut out from USA Today. It shows an auditorium with a figure on stage standing in front of a long list of goals such as “energy independence”, “sustainability”, “green jobs”, “preserve rainforests”, “renewables” — and then a heckler in the audience who asks, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”