Bonnaroo Carbon Shredders – Promotional Video (2009) from Corey Drayton on Vimeo.

To secure a policy environment that allows solar energy to compete and empowers consumers to choose, Rhone Resch declared today, October 27, 2009, in the City of Anaheim, California, a Solar Bill of Rights:

We declare these rights not on behalf of our companies, but on behalf of our customers and our country. We seek no more than the freedom to compete on equal terms and no more than the liberty for consumers to choose the energy source they think best.

1. Americans have the right to put solar on their homes or businesses. Restrictive covenants, onerous connection rules, and excessive permitting and inspections fees prevent too many American homes and businesses from going solar.

2. Americans have the right to connect their solar energy system to the grid with uniform national standards. This should be as simple as connecting a telephone or appliance. No matter where they live, consumers should expect a single standard for connecting their system to the electric grid.

3. Americans have the right to Net Meter and be compensated at the very least with full retail electricity rates. When customers generate excess solar power utilities should pay them consumer at least the retail value of that power.

4. The solar industry has the right to a fair competitive environment. The highly profitable fossil fuel industries have received tens of billions of dollars for decades. The solar energy expects a fair playing field, especially since the American public overwhelmingly supports the development and use of solar.

5. The solar industry has the right to equal access to public lands. America has the best solar resources in the world, yet solar companies have zero access to public lands compared to the 45 million acres used by oil and natural gas companies.

6. The solar industry has the right to interconnect and build new transmission lines. When America updates its electric grid, it must connect the vast solar resources in the Southwest to population centers across the nation.

7. Americans have the right to buy solar electricity from their utility. Consumers have no choice to buy clean, reliable solar energy from their utilities instead of the dirty fossil fuels of the past.

8. Americans have the right, and should expect, the highest ethical treatment from the solar industry. Consumers should expect the solar energy industry to minimize its environmental impact, provide systems that work better than advertised, and communicate incentives clearly and accurately.

How it works is that the employer contributes some money to each system purchased by their employee. groSolar also kicks in a per watt discount for the system (usually around $0.25). Tack on state and federal incentives and any local financing options and the program brings the up-front cost of solar power way, way down.

Check out the video and story from NECN (New England Cable News)

]]> http://blog.grosolar.com/2009/09/10/green-benefits/feed/ 0 http://blog.grosolar.com/2009/08/05/grosolar-connectors/ http://blog.grosolar.com/2009/08/05/grosolar-connectors/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:34:56 +0000 Amanda Gillen http://blog.grosolar.com/?p=112 groSolar is very excited to announce the groSolar Connectors Referral Program!

groSolar has been working hard to invite everyone we can to plug into solar power — and now we need your help. Show your commitment to a greener, cleaner world and help your community join the solar grid!

How to Become a Connector

Logon to groSolarConnectors.com, sign up, and enter the names of anyone you know who may be interested in going solar. We will contact them and offer them a free solar evaluation, and give them a discount off an installed system simply because you sent them to us. You can also become a groSolar Connector by throwing a Connector Party. Invite friends, family, co-workers and neighbors to a themed solar bash where they can see the benefits of solar power. A groSolar consultant will help you set up for your party, provide light refreshments, and also give a solar education presentation for your guests to explain the short and long-term benefits of joining the solar grid. Find out more about solar party’s here.

The Rewards

groSolar will give you $250 for every person that you recruit to join the solar grid, and we will take $500 off the price of a new installed system for your referrals.

Take action to promote the energy of the future by becoming a groSolar Connector.

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.

• Business needs to be part of the solution. Too often business believes it has a right to exist outside of any common good, or that simply “creating wealth”, is enough good. Business needs to understand that creation of wealth for a few at the expense of many, or at the expense of the Earth which is at the expense of many, is not an acceptable, sustainable, or rational model. Business needs to understand that the advance and success of business requires the advance and success of labor and environment, as well as capital.
• Labor needs to be part of the solution. And I define labor in the broadest possible terms, organized and unorganized, represented and unrepresented. Too often labor has become subjugated to the needs of its own management, or to the dictates of its own subculture instead of the needs of its individual workers, business, and the society that we all live in. Labor needs to understand that appropriate skills need to get appropriate pay and benefits, and that in crafting the pay and benefits appropriately, more long term stable work conditions can be created, meaning a better quality of living. If you all knew groSolar’s award-winning pay and benefit plans, you’d understand what I mean by appropriate.
• Capital markets need to be part of the solution. Currently everyone seeks to “beat the market”, and this pushes businesses (and labor) to extremes to make this happen. Of course only half the market can beat the market at any given time, so this is a rather futile chase, creates instability, and leads capital to pursue short term profits and market timing on a grand scale instead of long term success. Capital markets need to accept longer returns. Risk needs to be rewarded, otherwise no risk occurs. But the relentless pursuit of continually increasing margins and profits is, logically, unsustainable economically and environmentally. In the words of the Investors Forum, we need “Patient Capital”. We also need Endeavor Capital instead of Venture Capital. An endeavor attempts to create a solution to a problem. A venture seeks to create something whether there is a problem or not, sometimes creating the problem in order to sustain the venture. It seems we’ve got enough problems, let’s focus our capital on them in a sustainable way.
• Environment needs to be part of the solution. What I’ve said above is that we all need to throw out our preconceived notion of how to work together, and create new thinking. We need to do the same in the environmental movement. That movement needs to understand that if we are to continue to inhabit this Earth in numbers like we do now there must be a plan to do that. And that plan will include building some wind turbines on ridgelines, and some solar power plants in the desert, and some biomass plants in many areas. And they need to understand that the costs to the environment in one area WILL be carried by environmental savings in another. Oh I wish we had enough time to do this slowly, and be sure to not make any mistakes. But the failure of the environmental community to protect us from the worst environmental disaster of them all, saving a few unique species here and there while allowing a mass extinction to start, means that the environmental community needs to join in saying ‘Yes’ to renewable energy development, quickly, and on large scale.
• People need to be part of the solution. We are all labor, we are all business, and we are all capital. But we are all people. Our culture, the way we think about things, needs to change. We need to understand that we have the power to change the world, and that we are, right now, changing it in bad ways. We need to understand that we are told many lies, and we need to open our eyes and see things for ourselves. We need to learn to trust science and learning, not spin and marketing. We need to understand that in America we are given so much, it is our responsibility to lead the world. People need to become motivated by these facts. Only by adding culture into the motivations of business, labor, capital, and environment, can we truly find the balance in the world that we need.
• It turns out that this last one, culture, is the key to it all. With the right culture, labor, business, capital, and environment all understand that they are one, that they each have value as themselves, but only realized if they act as a whole.

And the solution needs to happen fast, and it’s big. Currently, the US solar industry has total revenues of about $3 billion per year. That is only 1/6 of the revenue attributed to US Mother’s Day, and 1/50 of the revenues attributed to a typical US Christmas season. You’ve all heard of Moore’s Law.. We need to grow the solar industry and other renewable industries at a rate equal to Moore’s Law. We need to not rest on our laurels, we need to cast off our laurels so they do not slow us down. We need to think in new ways, we need to break old rules where they are not helpful. Most of all, we need to understand that we’ve just started, and that we need to keep moving, not reflect, contemplate, and consider small demonstrations. The successes of the past years have merely dug the lowest groundwork for us to build on. And while we still think we have enough time to build these industries, we have no time to spare.

Put another way, we need to think as big as big oil. The solar industry’s US revenues are currently equal to about 2 days of ExxonMobil’s annual revenues. That’s based on installing 0.4 GigaWatts last year, a quantity that produces the equivalent of about 1/10 the electrical output of one large fossil fired power plant. And there are some who think we want to grow the industry aggressively to install upwards of 10 GW per year in 2020. That’s 25 times our current annual US installations. That would be about equal to the output of 2 or 3 fossil fired plants. That’s not what I call change, and the math simply does not work to solve our problems. And I for one am working FAR too hard to have this industry not succeed in beating climate change. So what do we need to achieve? My math says we need to get to 125 GW of installations per year, or 300 times what we did in 2008, to make a real difference. That’s HUGE, right? Well, no. It’s about as big as ExxonMobil, one oil company, somewhere around $450 billion of revenue spread over many companies. This CAN be done. But we need to think in those terms. We need to grow at 67% per year, the same as Moore’s Law, about the same as the speed of Prius adoption and cell phone use.

So let’s take those shuttered and soon to be shuttered GM and Chrysler plants and start building wind turbines and solar panels. Let’s retrain their workers for production. Let’s take the skilled people who built production housing and retrain them for PV and solar thermal installation, and let’s train masses of people for weatherization. This all needs an economic kick start from the government, but once started, it will drive itself strongly.

How do we effect this change? (I mean beyond drinking more caffeine?)

A few suggestions:

• To EVERY corporate and personal Mission Statement on the planet, we add the following words to the end “…in harmony with the Earth.” Sustainability must become elemental in business. This is culture change.
• Capital is asked to be creative AND patient, while funding Endeavors, not Ventures. Capital is asked to make new rules, and look for returns in different ways. Shouldn’t SJF get a return from the government for creating or retaining 4900 jobs?
• Government is asked to invest, without a clear immediate dollar return, similar to the investment in land, and public projects during the great depression, and now in GM and Chrysler.
• Labor is asked to bring opportunities and solutions to the table, not demands. Labor can accelerate implementation of these goals as fast as any other sector.
• Business is asked to stop striving for the expected, and break the mold of following the past. What we’ve learned from business’ past is that it’s not sustainable, is typically inequitable, and not very efficient in the long term. How about a complete end to quarterly reporting, a crackdown on frivolous shareholder suits, and the repeal of the requirement to always return the maximum short term dollar to shareholders, no matter what it means for the long term.
• Business, labor, capital and environment are asked to partner to achieve the goals of the endeavor. In other words, we all work together like crazy to save the planet.

I’m just the guy at the front of the room who says thank you for all you all have done, for helping to bring us to this place we are at. But I’m also going to tell you that you are not done, there is no time for rest, and NOW is the time to redouble our efforts and achieve the vision I have laid out above. Together, under this vision, we can:

• Create not just good jobs, but good careers for all.
• Create a business model where there is a component of working for the common good embodied deep in the business mission and actions.
• Use our world’s capital, in all its forms, to create a sustainable home for humankind and all those who we share this Earth with, thus creating a stable economic and environmental climate, so intertwined as to be one.
• Create a world better for everyone than the one we have today.

This is a crazy idea. We will win, not by losing our senses, but by gaining control of them.

We are the people we’ve been looking for. This is the moment. Let’s go do it.

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 examples:

• An entrepreneurial solar enthusiast transitions his solar company into a recycling company when solar tax credits are unwisely rescinded, and then after that success becomes a venture capitalist in order to promote his ideals before his wallet. History will look back on Dave Kirkpatrick as a visionary.
• A woman working to bring social justice through economic and non-economic motivations that help all people, creating a ‘contingency of the whole’ instead of combatants of the parts. Majorca Carter is an inspiring leader.
• Nicholas Parker, Cleantech Group – Parker pioneered the first sustainability-driven private equity fund, participated in one for the first solar initial public offerings, and introduced the clean investment concept to the business community.

Why are we all doing this? Aren’t there easier ways to make money? Aren’t there better ways to have a simple life? (We blew that one!) Sure there are. But is there any more important task and mission at hand than the solution of climate change? While I don’t sleep much as it is, I could not sleep at all if I thought we were not bringing our personal best to the fight and solution.

Of course, that’s not the only reason we’re here. 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. Because as Al Gore said so well almost a year ago, “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.” That’s why we’re doing this, that’s why we’re here.

And this is why the good Lord gave us caffeine.

Each of these tasks is fundamentally impossible given our current economic structures. Fortunately, they are all occurring at once, creating a synergy whereby they collectively present an opportunity for success that does not exist with each item individually. We find ourselves in a situation where we must succeed at them all, or fail completely.

• Without the failure of our economy, we would not have so many workers, at all levels, available to retrain and repurpose.
• Without the climate crisis, we would not have a large enough problem to solve. And that is what our economy is really good at, solving large problems.
• Unless oil and other traditional fossil energy sources were peaking in capacity, soon to decline sharply, and coming from increasingly insecure and unfriendly parts of the world, we would not have the strong cost and continuity incentives to change our energy industry
• Unless all of these were happening simultaneously, we would not have sufficient motivations to solve the climate crisis. As it is, we still need to leverage and reinforce these motivations to create the level of change we need.

As an example of what we need to do, the groSolar story is interesting. What groSolar has done to-date is to create:

• The largest 100% US owned solar distribution company.
• The 4th largest residential solar installation company in the US
• A large commercial systems integrator, pleased to announce today that we are underway with the largest PV project for Progress Energy in North Carolina, a 2.2 MW system.
• The leading downstream brand for solar energy in the United States
• An award winning company for our work environment
• An award winning company for our socially responsible business practices
• A force for policy change at the state and local levels.

We now have about 200 employees, 4 distribution centers with a fifth coming, residential work in 11 states, and a growing commercial channel. We’re the second fastest growing company of any kind in Vermont, and while Vermont is a small state, it’s still a growth rate of 3790+%, over the last 5 years, which is pretty good in any state.

It is our growth rate that has allowed us to more strongly influence policy, and that is a lesson for us all. Legislators truly care about only a few things, and one of the top is job creation. Our growth rate and potential possible future growth rate allowed us to have the force of presence and stature to push through the first legislated feed in tariff bill in the US in Vermont last month, over the Governor’s strident objections. The lesson here is that when we create strong growth, we can use it to create the environment for even stronger growth. And when business and labor work together to create the jobs, our leverage is extended.

We’ve gotten here through a series of three acquisitions and three financings. Our first acquisition was Energy Outfitters, which made us a nationwide distribution company. The subsequent two were regional installation companies, Chesapeake Solar in Maryland, and Borrego Solar residential division in California and Massachusetts. Combined, they have provided us with the foundation to attract investment and grow like crazy.

But the acquisitions did not create the growth, the growth allowed the acquisitions. Through a series of three financings, we have gained the financial foundations to allow us to build the management foundations that can drive, accept, and accommodate the growth. Our management team includes a COO, CFO and CIO, as well as VPs for construction, sales, and marketing. These people bring a diversity and depth of experience and ability to groSolar far beyond what my wife and I could have dreamed when we started 11 years ago.

Our first financing was lead by David Kirkpatrick of SJF Ventures. Working with Dave has been great – not just for our capital raises, but also for our business development, PR, policy, and workforce plans. Dave helped us create a broad-based option plan has been a big assistance in recruitment (there’s that partnering with labor again). SJF has also been active in and supportive of solar industry policy at both the state and federal level. The combination of Venture Capitalist and non-profit organization is perhaps unmatched in the venture community, and is helping to move the capital markets toward where they need to go.

So groSolar has built an incredible management team, backed by very strong financers, supporting a true national brand. It certainly was crazy to think that could happen even five years ago.

Dori and I got into solar because, well, we thought it was cool, and thought we needed some clean energy in our mix. We did not understand the climate crisis. No one understood energy security. And our economy was doing fine, or so we thought. I had not planned on leading formation of national energy policy, or implementation, on working to figure out how to retrain, empower, and strategize with labor, and attempt to finance one of the fastest growing companies in the country. But, that’s about where I’m at.

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.