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I had the pleasure of participating in the Edison Electric Institute Annual Conference in San Francisco earlier this summer. I spoke on the panel on Solar Power which was the platform for some interesting quotes including my quote from the title of this post. You can see some of the other conference quotes here.

This is a crazy idea. And I wish I was not here. But sometimes the only sane alternative is to be crazy, and sometimes we have things we NEED to get done.

The steps outlined here are all necessary, fundamental, and critical to business growth. groSolar is a fantastic example of what our economic system can do and repeat. Unfortunately, creating 20, even 100 companies like groSolar does not solve our problem. What we need is the integration of all the ideas presented here and more, across the economy. We need a realization that together, as community in the broadest sense of the word, not only do we all thrive, it’s actually the only way we can survive. As I said above, the confluence of events that brings us here today is no less than the need to reorder our economy, restructure the biggest industry in the world (energy), retrain a huge percentage of our workforce, and save our planet.

I’ve said before that I’m an evolutionary technology person (there is no silver bullet), and a revolutionary business person. Of course, I’m evolutionary in a rapidly changing technology driven world, and I’m revolutionary in a market-driven economy. But listen to where we need to go. I warn you that I am not an economist, or even a learned student of business. I am a person operating in this environment, I sometimes feel thrust in from the outside. This perspective has often been useful, as well as frustrating, (some would say dangerous), but it is my perspective on where we need to go. (more…)

Below are some comments from a session I moderated at PV America in Philadelphia on June 9:

The confluence of events that has brought us here today is staggering.

Once upon a time, a husband and wife decided to leave Chicago and return to Vermont to “simplify” their lives, and follow their passion to create a small solar energy company. Then they come to understand the magnitude of climate change, and this couple decides they should work on solving it. (Naiveté has always been a strong suit). And so groSolar began.

Business school case studies will be written about this time in the solar industry, and the business transformations that occurred. (more…)

I am at the North American Climate presenter’s Summit. I am privileged, and burdened, by being one of the 1200 people in the US trained by Al Gore to deliver his climate slideshow. I say privileged because it is an incredible group of people and fantastic training. I say burdened because, well, ignorance is bliss, and not only am I not allowed to be ignorant, I am required to understand and spread both the message of the crisis confronting us and the solutions we must undertake immediately.

We’re getting updated science from some of the leaders in climate science. We’re getting information on human health effects (right now while I’m multi-tasking and typing this actually). We’re getting information on the just released draft of the Waxman -Markey climate bill. And of course, we’re getting motivation and direction for immediate action.

The overriding message is that the time is now, this is the moment. Historians look back through time and note those periods when significant change happened. It is unusual to be able to understand at the time of occurrence, that this is an historic moment in the history of the world. This is such a moment, such a time.
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There is a lot happening in the solar world, and the world of groSolar. New marketing initiatives (watch not only for new graphics, but amazing new price offers in some areas), residential financing (MA and CA), and new technology that makes systems easier to install (read: less expensive), are but three of the areas we are working in. Doing a complete overhaul of our business process and interface to our ERP (NetSuite), while keeping everything running at break-neck speed, is simply business as usual for us.

To continue growing in this economy means that we must not only control costs, but also understand them. The upgrades to the ERP allow us greater visibility, faster, with less effort. We’ve done this before, and as our business continues to grow, we’ll do it again. It is this continued investment in process and systems that continues to set groSolar apart (along with our amazingly broad and deep management team!)

All this, taken together, is what creates what we call “The Speed of Solar”. Hang on tight, we’re not slowing down.

Senator Bernie Sanders has written the following article, just published in The Nation (link to article here) Since it says what I’d like to say, and is well written, I thought I’d post here as well. And I’d also like to note that it’s a priviledge to live in the state of Vermont, with such a great Congressional delegation.

Jeff

Global Warming Is Reversible

by BERNIE SANDERS

“Scientists now tell us that the crisis of global warming is even worse than their earlier projections. Daily front-page headlines of environmental disasters give an inkling of what we can expect in the future, multiplied many times over: droughts, floods, severe weather disturbances, loss of drinking water and farmland and conflicts over declining natural resources.

Yet the situation is by no means hopeless. Major advances and technological breakthroughs are being made in the United States and throughout the world that are giving us the tools to cut carbon emissions dramatically, break our dependency on fossil fuels and move to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. In fact, the truth rarely uttered in Washington is that with strong governmental leadership the crisis of global warming is not only solvable; it can be done while improving the standard of living of the people of this country and others around the world. And it can be done with the knowledge and technology that we have today; future advances will only make the task easier.

What should we be doing now?

First, we need strong legislation that dramatically cuts back on carbon emissions. The Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S. 309), a bill that I introduced with Senator Barbara Boxer and that now has eighteen co-sponsors, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050.

Second, if the federal government begins the process of transforming our energy system by investing heavily in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, we can accomplish the 80 percent carbon reduction level and, at the same time, create millions of high-paying jobs.

Energy efficiency is the easiest, quickest and least expensive path toward the lowering of carbon emissions. My hometown of Burlington, Vermont, despite strong economic growth, consumes no more electricity today than it did sixteen years ago because of a successful effort to make our homes, offices, schools and other buildings more energy-efficient. In California, which has a growing economy, electric consumption per person has remained steady over the past twenty years because of that state’s commitment to energy efficiency.

Numerous studies tell us that retrofitting older buildings and establishing strong efficiency standards for new construction can cut fuel and energy consumption by at least 40 percent. Those savings would increase with the adoption of new technologies such as LED light bulbs, which consume as little as 10 percent of the electricity that incandescent bulbs do and last twenty years.

Transportation must also be addressed in a serious manner. It is insane that we are driving cars today that get the same twenty-five miles per gallon that US cars did twenty years ago. If Europe and Japan can engineer their vehicles to average more than forty-four miles per gallon, we can do at least as well. Simply raising fuel-efficiency standards to forty miles per gallon would save roughly the same amount of oil as we import from Saudi Arabia and would dramatically lower carbon emissions. We should also rebuild and expand our decaying rail and subway systems and provide energy-efficient buses in rural America so that travelers have an alternative to the automobile.

Sustainable energies such as wind, solar and geothermal have tremendous potential and often cost no more than fossil fuels (and, in some cases, even less). Increased production and research should cause sustainable energy prices to decline steeply in the future.

Wind power is the fastest growing source of new energy in the world and in the United States, but we have barely begun to tap its potential. Denmark, for example, generates 20 percent of its electricity from wind. We should be supporting wind energy not only through the creation of large wind farms in the appropriate areas but through the use of small, inexpensive wind turbines available today that can be used in homes and farms throughout rural America. These small turbines can produce, depending on location, more than half the electricity that an average home consumes while saving consumers money on their electric bills.

Solar energy is another rapidly expanding technology. In Germany, a quarter of a million homes are now producing electricity through rooftop photovoltaic units, and the cost of that technology is expected to decline steeply. California is providing strong incentives so that 1 million homes will have solar units in the next ten years. The potential of solar energy, however, goes far beyond rooftop photovoltaic units. Right now, in Nevada, a solar plant is generating fifty-six megawatts of electricity. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the US Energy Department, “Solar energy represents a huge domestic energy resource for the United States, particularly in the Southwest where the deserts have some of the best solar resource levels in the world. For example, an area approximately 12 percent the size of Nevada has the potential to supply all of the electric needs of the United States.”

As a strong indication of what the future holds, Pacific Gas and Electric, the largest electric utility in the country, has recently signed a contract to build a 535-megawatt solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert. This plant, which should be operating in about four years, will have an output equivalent to a small nuclear power plant and will produce electricity for about 400,000 homes. Most important, the price of the electricity generated by this plant, about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, is competitive with other fuels today and will be much cheaper than other fuels by the end of the twenty-five-year contract. Experts in the industry say that dozens of these plants can be built within the next twenty years.

Geothermal energy, the heat from deep inside the earth, is another overlooked resource with real potential. It is free, renewable and can be used for electricity generation and direct heating. A recent report for the US Energy Department by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that geothermal could supply 100,000 megawatts of new carbon-free electricity at less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour, the going rate today. It is estimated that electricity from geothermal sources could provide 10 percent of the US baseload energy needs in 2050.

As the nation at last confronts global warming, it is no time for denial, greed, cynicism or pessimism. It is a time for vision and international leadership. It is a time for transforming our energy system from the polluting and carbon-emitting technologies of the nineteenth century into the unlimited and extraordinary energy possibilities of the twenty-first. When we do that we will not only solve the global warming crisis; we will open up unimaginable opportunities for improving life all over the planet.”

This is the week of “StepItUp”, the campaign led by Bill McKibben one year ahead of the ‘08 elections. The idea being to reaise awareness of climate change and make it a campaign issue. This was certainly a StepItUp week for me personally and groSolar.
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I attended 5 different events in 4 states, making a presentation or being on a panel in each one. That was:

So that was bad for carbon emissions, and good for getting our message out more broadly. And based upon response, I’ll be speaking quite a bit more going forward.

Dori, my wife, co-founder, and continuing partner, was active in getting the StepItUp message out. We had some signs made up and distributed. Photos are just coming in to our website and the StepItUp web site. It’s not too late to add your photo, the action continues! Go to Take Action now and get a yard sign, then follow the instructions we’ll send with it to submit your picture. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it helps get the message out!

As part of our action, we also financially supported the StepItUp actions in Burlington, Vermont and Concord, Massachusetts. groSolar also attended the StepItUp event in Concord, MA. (Thanks Kevin!) Like most locations in New England, the weather was dreadful, keeping numbers down. But what impressed us was that no elected officials failed to show. U.S. Senator John Kerry, U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas and several state legislators were right on time. And the location!!! Just steps from the famous North Bridge in Concord where the first shots of the Revolution were fired. And a few more steps from The Old Manse, the house owned first by Emerson’s father and then by Nathaniel Hawthorne and visited frequently by Thoreau. What would they be thinking today as climate change legislation is slowed in Congress by legislators worried about preserving the carbon-based economy?

About 50 hardy souls braved the monsoon-like weather and delivered their pitch to the political leaders. Kerry said not one more old-fashioned coal-fired power plant should be built anywhere in the world unless it has the latest in clean technology and has the ability to sequester the carbon. He called also for major new funding for solar, wind and other renewables, nothing short of an energy revolution. Thoreau would have been proud.

the whole thing about StepItUp is to START actions, not be the only action. Keep it moving. Stay tuned to StepItUp, and 1Sky. Meanwhile,

Make this the subject of cocktail party, dinner time, and office conversation!

If we all work on this, we CAN not only make a difference, we can make the difference we need to make.

I spent Monday afternoon, for the first time in a long time, on one of our solar installation crews working on a solar energy project in Vermont. And it was an honor to be there for several reasons. First, it’s an honor that the crew still let’s me work with them. They are a great group of people, working through adversity (also called rain), continually smiling. Of course, they let the new guy (me) do the caulking, so my hands will bear the marks of my work for a while (SikaFlex is good stuff. Does NOT come off). This crew was Amos and Hal on the roof with me, Andy at the inverter, and Dan Kinney, (the original Dan of our 4) running the show. Doc managed the logistics, and of course the rest of the groSolar team supported in their standard, but excellent, ways.

Second reason that this was an honor, is the project is for an Extreme Makeover: Home Edition house. The Vitale family has a great and touching story, which you can read more about here, and at the McKernon Group web site, where you can also donate to the family. The entire house is being built in less than a week, 106 hours to be precise, around the clock, through all kinds of weather. I was on site Friday and it was still being cleared of the former house. Today, the house was, well, a house. Not done, but more complete than many I’ve seen that are being lived in! So being involved in providing clean, renewable solar power to this deserving family is a great feeling, and great that groSolar can do it. It’s a theme that runs through a lot that we do. Our page on Social Responsibility tells a lot of what we do, including our work with Habitat for Humanity.

groSolar donated all the equipment and installation labor for the entire solar power system, except for the inverter, which was donated by our new partner, PV Powered.

And third, well, I cannot tell you the third reason it was an honor to be on site, as I’m not allowed to give away story line. (No, I don’t think I’m on camera.) So you will just have to see the show in January (Sundays at 8/7c) to find out what makes us proud to be part of this particular Extreme Makeover.

So Tuesday I will ache. It takes different muscles to stand at an angle on a roof for a few hours. But I’ll feel good and groSolar will feel good, about making a difference in a small way, as we continue making a difference in the larger world.

Sorry for the extended absence. The solar industry is growing rapidly, as is groSolar. We are currently undertaking an additional capital raise to further accelerate our growth, and that is consuming what extra bandwidth I had for writing. If it’s any consolation, I think about writing here often, and sincerely appreciate those who have sent me kind notes of encouragement. I will try to write more often Mom…

The following is a letter I’ve just sent to our local paper, the Valley News. While it’s specific to that paper, it also highlights a continuing and growing problem in our press today. That is the reporting of “balance” rather than “truth and opinion”. Too often today we see opinion framed in the same manner as fact. Using quotes from non-peer reviewed magazines, misstatements about what scientists are saying, and purposely misusing terms to further confuse the subject has become standard fare in the media today. Unfortunately, the problem goes well beyond global warming, and has infected all discourse today. (And yes, I’m going to blame the neo-conservatives more than the “liberals”. One fault, if you will, of liberals is that we tend to listen to other views. Even when we may have our mind made up, we allow others to hold their opinions. Frankly, I do not see that in the neo-conservative side of the media.) The motivation to write this letter came from an editorial cartoon which sows confusion over the difference between climate change and current local weather.

But global warming is the central issue here. While our government may go down in flames if we cannot arrest the decay and subversion currently underway, it is our world that will go down in flames if we cannot arrest global warming. While I desire neither, while I work to avoid both, clearly global warming represents a larger problem, and not one that can be “fixed later”.

Here is the text of my letter, which hopefully will be published this week. I’ve added in a web link to the offending editorial cartoon.

“It concerns and confuses me that the Valley News is still running editorial cartoons that lampoon the concept of global warming. It concerns me because global warming is real, and we have a very limited amount of time to start acting very seriously to limit the effects. Cartoons like the one in Friday’s paper (by Glenn McCoy, http://www.gocomics.com/glennmccoy/2007/07/10/, added reference for Blog) encourage people to not take global warming seriously, and to doubt the conclusions of one of the largest scientific research efforts ever undertaken.

I am confused because I do not know why the Valley News published the cartoon. Was it out of some warped sense of “fair and balanced” or because the editorial staff actually has doubts, or because they found it humorous and think that everyone understands the reality of global warming. (I wish that was true.) “Fair and balanced” does not mean that opinion can be set against fact. While we still have much to learn about climate dynamics and the speed and severity of climate change, there is NO doubt in the broad scientific community that global warming is real, and is largely caused by the actions of people. Yes, there are individual scientists who do not believe that global warming is real. There are also individual scientists who believe the earth is flat, and that aliens inhabit among us. But peer-reviewed science, the kind that gets published in the name-brand science journals (“Science”, “Nature”, etc.) has 100% agreement that global warming is real and that we are causing it. When you trace back the funding for the skeptics, an amazing number turn out to be funded by the oil companies.”

So I hope that the Valley News can present factual news on global warming. It is the most pressing issue of our time, and needs constructive action taken, not misinformation given.”

OK, remember you saw it here first. “Unplanned refinery outages. Almost sounds like the California electric supply a few years ago.” I’ve since heard this on the radio news. (Cannot remember where, I’ve been cross country this week.) Gas prices are now officially over $3/gallon for regular. In the Pacific Northwest, prices were over $3.20/gallon for the same grade. And this coming just about one month after the US Energy Information Agency said that we’ll be seeing lower gas prices this summer.

Lower than what?

With continued “unplanned refinery outages” (oh they learn so fast) just as we’re moving into storm season (seems the tornados are starting out pretty strong this year), I cannot even begin to predict. If we actually get a storm in the Gulf of Mexico, I predict we’ll see $4/gallon this summer.

But it really does not matter. This summer, next summer. We’ll see $4/gallon for regular gas by the end of 2008. The sooner the better, as discussed in my last post, for keeping prices lower longer. Of course, I’m not convinced that lower prices are a good goal. higher prices not only encourage conservation (read as “reduce global warming emissions) but also make alternative fuels more profitable. And nothing drives investment and invention like profit.

So do we attempt to take the lead and seize the moment? Tax gas up to $4/gallon now, and collect the revenues while we wait for the actual price to go up? We could phase it in over the next 3 months. But if a hurricane hits in the Gulf, we might be more than a bit behind the actual price rise.