Jenny Chase is the manager of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s global Solar Insight Service. She joined BNEF mid-2005 and launched the Solar Insight Service in early 2006, and now runs the team from Bloomberg's Zurich office.
Jenny has conducted or overseen all the research of the Solar Insight Service over its five-year lifespan. This has included PV experience curve analysis, which enabled the team to make a definite prediction of an upcoming sudden 35-40% fall in crystalline silicon module prices, a year before it happened and while most analysts were expecting slow 5-10% per year price slides. The timing of the price decline in early 2009 was predicted by BNEF’s solar team with some accuracy in 2007, based on global supply and demand analysis.
The team, comprising eight analysts on three continents with backup from BNEF's international resources, conducts regular and rigorous price surveys across the PV value chain, the industry’s only Silicon and Wafer Forward Price Index, detailed and timely analysis of policy and its implications for the solar sector, and extensive technology and economic analysis of PV and solar thermal electricity generation. Jenny is the author of BNEF’s quarterly PV Market Outlook, which draws together updates and output of proprietary models to give a detailed account of demand, supply, price, margins and investment activity in the PV industry.
The team also conducts continuous ad-hoc research and data provision on the hot questions of the day for many of the leading financial institutions, utilities, developers and manufacturers.
Jenny has been cited in The Economist, New York Times, Financial Times, and Nature on various topics pertaining to solar, and has been interviewed on Bloomberg TV and BBC radio. She is a regular speaker at European and international solar conferences.
Jenny has also worked on consulting projects regarding the cost targets for CPV, strategies for module sales in the Italian market, and cost projections for solar thermal electricity generation as well as cross-sector clean energy projects.
She holds a BA in Physical Sciences and an MSci in Physics from the University of Cambridge, England.