Inside the U.S. Solar Booms
QUEST: Welcome back. Cloud crude prices are rebounding, crude is up 1.5 percent as oil prices produce a scramble for market share amid shrinking demand. At April 10th it went down, but now it notches back up again. Solar power is also gaining ground. The industry is pretty much responding to what's been seen in other parts of the energy market. As Clare Sebastian look at the fate of solar power in Donald Trump's America.</s>CLARE SEBASTIAN: 65-year-old Norm makes carrying a 40-pound solar panel up a 40-foot ladder look easy. For the former iron worker, this is the good life.</s>NORMAN FILMORE, SOLAR INSTALLER: The pay is OK, it's livable. The working environment, as you can see, is great. The best view in the world.</s>SEBASTIAN: Up on the roof is 21-year-old teammate who got a start right out of high school.</s>NOAH LEONARD, SOLAR INSTALLER: What excites me over other jobs is the fact that it's solar energy. We're doing good for the planet.</s>SEBASTIAN: It's not as easy as it looks. Clearly if you're not keen on heights, this may not be the job for you. But in an economy where skilled middle income jobs have been the slowest to recover, solar is taking off. One in 50 new jobs added in the U.S. last year were in the solar industry, according to the solar foundation. U.S. government figures show solar now employs more than twice as many people as coal. For the founder of Venture Solar in New York two years ago, it's been a wild climb.</s>ALEX ZACHERY, CO-FOUNDER, VENTURE SOLAR: We got started in a 75-square foot office. We now have over 70 employees. We're growing on a weekly basis.</s>SEBASTIAN: The cost of installing solar has fallen by 60 percent in the last ten years. Financing options mean most of Alex's customers pay nothing up front. And there are other incentives.</s>MARK CHAMBERS, DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY, NYC OFFICE OF THE MAYOR: New York city has a tax credit. So, on top of the federal and state tax credits.</s>SEBASTIAN: In fact, New York city is so committed to solar, it's installed panels on the roof of city hall.</s>CHAMBERS: We have a goal to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.</s>SEBASTIAN: A very different approach to the new administration in Washington.</s>DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The alternative is so expensive.</s>SEBASTIAN: President Donald Trump is skeptical of alternative energy, recently signing a new executive order cutting regulation on the coal industry.</s>TRUMP: You're going back to work.</s>CHAMBERS: The Trump administration may have abdicated its responsibility to protect and prepare us for a future full of renewal energy. But New York city has not.</s>ZACHERY: Solar creates jobs. So, although the administration is not necessarily pro-renewable-energy, they're pro jobs.</s>SEBASTIAN: As for Norm, he only has one regret.</s>FILMORE: I should have gone into it sooner.</s>SEBASTIAN: CNNMoney, New York.</s>QUEST: The World Economic Forum on Africa has finished and the focus on sustainable growth across the continent was the key issue. Eleni Giokos was there to host a special panel on how digital payments are creating an inclusive economy, as Africa looks forward.</s>ELENI GIOKOS, CNN AFRICA CORRESPONDENT: What's fascinating about mobile money transfers is that globally, only 2 percent of the adult population actually use this platform. In Africa, it's 12 percent. So, talkers have a really big role to play.</s>STEPHEN VAN COLLER, VP, DIGITAL SERVICES MTN: Why have mobile companies, and I'll use MTN as an example, 26 million subscribers, where is banks like Barclays, et cetera, have got 8 million subscribers in terms of accounts. Why is this that big difference? How can a mobile company deal with so many people but banks can't? Banks were set up in the past for the top end of society. They want to do big transactions and they want clients with lots of money, not clients with very little money and do very little transactions. If you want to get financial inclusion, you have to start bottom up. That's the beauty about digital and computers, is it doesn't matter whether it's one dollar or a million dollars. It does the transaction because it's the same electronic pulse.</s>GIOKOS: So, it doesn't matter if it's a dollar or a million?</s>UZOMA DOZIE, GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CEO, DIAMOND BANK NIGERIA: If we use traditional banking, you won't reach the population you want. It will be substandard financial services. It's just a glorified money transfer. It allows you to save access, credit, get access to the customers. It has to be a collaboration where you bring the tech from the low-cost deployment from telco and the banking knowledge and putting it together, which is what we're doing in Nigeria.</s>INEKE BUSSEMAKER, CEO, NATURAL MICROFINANCE BANK: To me, the essence is changing the cash into digital. The banks have a big role to play. It's not just the payments. It's building up the credit history. But it's also making it very accessible and very easy for customers to use. And actually, that is -- digital is easier than cash in many ways.</s>AISHA PANDOR, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, SWEEPSOUTH: Our business also deals with a platform that connects homeowners with domestic workers. We deal with domestic workers in South Africa who actually for the most part are banked. But they're behavior with banking is that they will get money and immediately withdraw that money because the cost of transacting is so high. To be paying a transaction fee on, you know, a 50-rand that comes into your bank account, it's just paying 10, 20 percent of that on transactions is just not feasible. What happens there is people, yes, they do have bank accounts, they are transacting. Then withdrawing that money and what they're doing with that money and the circulation of that money is all happening offline. I think it's about access but also about the cost of transacting, and people trusting if banks.</s>QUEST: The World Tourism Organization is to get a new secretary general with the election taking place next week in Madrid. Brazil's candidate told me his top priority is to create a positive impact as more travelers seek responsible holidays.</s>MARCIO FAVILLA DE PAULA, CANDIDATE FOR UN WTO SECRETARY GENERAL: The biggest issue for me now is to assure that the growth of tourism takes place in a sustainable way, that it is for all people, developing and developed nations. And sustainability, we have to understand the different pillars, economic, social, and environmental. Part of that are the risk and crisis issues that we have today. We have to ensure that countries are able to deal with those issues. And working together, not in isolation, but working together.</s>QUEST: Would you have come out strongly and forcefully in your statements against the Trump travel bans?</s>DE PAULA: At the U.N. system, particularly the U.N. WTO and those that work in our sector, we have as a principle to be against blaming or pointing fingers against countries as a whole. There are problems, there are problems with individuals. But you cannot finger point countries and say that these are countries that do not deserve to be in the international community. They are all in the U.N. system.</s>QUEST: Right, but let me interrupt you. What I'm asking you is, would you have been in favor, if you had been the sec gen, would you have criticized the U.S., and directly Donald Trump, for his travel bans?</s>DE PAULA: I think what I did was absolutely correct. At that moment, I stood by him and I still think and I will think it was the right position. So, I have to think that I would have done the same.</s>QUEST: The battle for this job has got nasty. There are allegations within the African membership between the two countries' candidates there, there are questions concerning some candidates and whether there has been unauthorized or inappropriate lobbying. How worried are you that this is just turning into a mess?</s>DE PAULA: Richard, from the very beginning, and I've talked to some of the candidates, last year, when I felt that I would stand, and some of them had already announced, and I said, look, we have to make sure that we keep it at the very high level, and I will not criticize any candidate. So that's what I have done so far. Sometimes people ask me about other candidates. I have never talked about any other candidates. So, I think that's the way to be.</s>QUEST: The election will take place next Thursday and Friday. Let's be clear, all candidates have been invited to put their point, as you heard tonight, on this program. A Profitable Moment after the break.