Here’s a little snippet to kick off the the launch of The Green Light Distrikt – Boulder, an interview I did with Lauren Coyne from Namaste Solar about six months ago.

We’ve been kickin’ around Boston for the past couple months and now I’m curious how things are going in other US cities. We’ll do much the same thing that we did in Boston, recruit young cleantech pros that are working in the industry that are interested in joining our community. I’ve been speaking with James Moreau who is going to start writing soon. Stay tuned for his first post, the goal is to get a follow up with Namaste and potentially get some video footage. Also, if you’re in the Boulder area and interested in joining us, contact me.

Here’s the story.

Alteris Inc, a New England based company, was named to Inc 500, 500 fastest growing companies with about 1000% growth. While I was skimming the list I noticed that Namaste Solar had grown over 2000% in the same period, so I was curious about their growth.

I contacted Namaste and Lauren nicely and quickly responded to me.

Lauren is a co-owner, and in charge of education and community outreach. We had a great conversation, and it lasted about 40 minutes. I had to split the interview into two parts due to the constraints of uploading.

Here’s the interview

Nameste Solar Interview Part 1

Namaste Solar Interview Part 2

For your reference here’s an overview of the questions I asked during each part.

Part 1:

• How did you get into the industry? What’s your story?
• How did your experience getting the Colorado state incentives passed give you skills and information that were helpful in landing the job with Namaste?
• You’ve grown so fast, what was the source of your growth? What challenges has that created for your company and how have you dealt with them?
• You mentioned that the new incentives were a large part, but it seems like you have grown much faster then the industry and your competitors, what’s the reason for this?
• What are unique aspects of your business model?
• Describe the co-ownership model? It seems unique and gives you a clear social dimension do your business, why and how was that business model chosen and how do you keep that structure with growth?
• How does co-ownership affect the day to day decision making process?
• Looking to the future, do you plan on expanding into other markets other than Colorado with your current business model?

Part 2:

• What hiccups do you see in industry growth in Colorado?
• Has financing of residential systems drastically changed the Colorado market? How?
• What are you most excited to see happening in the industry in the next 5 years?
• What advice would you give to people, current graduates, career changers who are outside of the industry looking to get in?
• You mentioned training and workshops, are there any particular things you’d like to see when going through resumes?
• Within a solar company, do you see more opportunity on the sales, design or installation side?

Here are some of my reflections and conclusions after speaking with Lauren.

1. She’s really nice. It was about six months ago that we spoke, but I still remember this.
2. She has a really insightful explanation into the role of state incentives in Colorado and how the feed-in-tariffs with Excel energy work
3. They donate 1% of revenue to develop solar on non-profits every year regardless of their profits.
4. It’s clear that career changers need to stand out from the crowd and do something to show their passion for the industry. If they’re looking to get into the industry just to make money, it won’t make your attractive to companies, you need to be dedicated to the mission.
5. The largest that stood out is it seems that Nameste Solar put their money where their mouth is. Here are some examples:

• They operate a low emissions fleet
• They operate in LEED certified building, zero waste buildings
• Co-ownership model has clear social impact. At that time we spoke 47 of their 62 employees were co-owners.
• Donate 1% of revenue, NOT profit

All in all, I want to thank Lauren for speaking with me. I was great to learn about the Colorado industry and I’m looking forward to seeing if James can get some video footage of some of their installations.

What did you think about the interview?

Chris

Last month I had a phone interview with James Peret, the inventor of the VegaWatt. In the first part of the audio interview we talked about their ideal customers and industry landscape. Currently, the VegaWatt has a little to no competition in the restaurant industry or even in the micro waste to power industry. Any restaurant that makes more then 30 gallons of grease per month is a perfect customer and there are no other current or feasible more profitable ways for them to get rid of their waste.

In this section James discusses why the VegaWatt is a billion dollar opportunity as there are more then 13,000 restaurants in the United States, then you can easily add all the ones in Canada, and Europe to that number and it becomes clear how the VegaWatt is going to be a seriously profitable invention. James is clearly a small, thoughtful, well spoken and amazing inventor. Not only will it be profitable, but it also has a huge environmental and social benefit.

Have fun listening to our discussion!

The $O Billion Dollar Opportunity

In the discussion we talked about:

-Why getting into every McDonalds is not the Vegawatt’s goal

-The number of  us restaurants and how this is a billion dollar opportunity

-The greatest societal benefit is making mom and pops shops more profitable

-How the VegaWatt is an equivalent is increasing revenues by 25% and how that vastly helps local shops

Enjoy!

On a scale from 0 to 10, how awesome do you think to the VegaWatt is?

The Vegawatt was invented by James Peret in Boylston Massachusetts. The system turns waste vegetable oil in restaurants into electricity and hot water. The value proposition is simple, they can lease a unit for $435 a month and save over $800 in electricity and fuel you need to buy. Or, you can buy it and get all your money back within 2 years. Simple. Profitable. Green.

The VegaWatt was a runner up in our Boston’s Top 10 Clean Tech Companies competition so I decided to interview the inventor, founder, and CEO James Peret as I organize profiling the winning companies (stay tuned for this, we’re going to be gathering some amazing video interviews and content of their offices and clean tech installations)

The interview is in five parts (so stayed tuned for the rest of the parts!) and the first part I wanted to share with you is where we talked about the Vegawatt’s customers, why they might not buy it, and why the system doesn’t really have any competition.

We talked about a relatively few number of items in this section but James goes into depth and provides great insights into the questions I asked and the competitive landscape in the waste-to-power industry. Listen to it here:

Vegawatt’s Perfect Customers and Industry Landscape

In this section we discussed:

-Why restaurants would NOT want to purchase a Vegawatt

-What their perfect customers look like

-What determines how big of a Vegawatt system a restaurant gets

-Why the Vegawatt has NO competition

-The reason that the system is never a primary heating source and is always supplementing a primary system

The results are in! Here is the list, according to you, the community, of your top 10 favorite Boston clean tech companies.

For 2010, I decided I wanted to profile some awesome clean tech companies in Boston. As I started to make my list of favorite companies it became really large, 26 to be exact. Also, I realized I knew what companies I loved but I wanted to know what companies you LOVED. The obvious decision was to create a competition. Thus, Boston’s top 26 clean tech company competition was born. We received over 200 votes and I’ve been in contact with many of the companies already.

In 2010 I will be contacting and profiling one company per month. We received tons of votes but not many questions to ask these companies.

So, I still need your help! If you have time, leave a comment answering the question:

What is one thing you want to learn about these companies or ask their CEOs?

Stay tuned as a profile these companies in 2010. It’s going to be really fun.

Without further ado, voted by you here is the top 10 company and the 5 runner ups.

1. Harvest Power
2. Wakonda Technologies
3. Alteris Inc
4. groSolar
5. VegaWatt
6. Zip Car
7. EnerNOC
8. First Wind
9. Greentech Media
10. Evergreen Solar

In case you were curious, here are the 5 runner-ups

1. Emergent Energy Group
2. A123
3. BigBelly Solar
4. Blu Homes
5. Alt E

So, I still need your help! If you have time, leave a comment answering the question:

What is one thing you want to learn about these companies or ask their CEOs?

Thank you! You’re awesome

Voting for Bostons top clean tech companies is going well, but I need more questions to ask the companies.

We started this competition 4 weeks ago because we wanted the communities feedback. I know the companies that I LOVE but I wanted to know who everybody else LOVED. So, we decided to create the Bostons Top 26 Clean Tech Company competition out of it. If you haven’t voted, but are interested go to the link and vote for your TOP 3 favorite companies. The companies with the Top 10 votes will be profiled in 2010 started in February.

The feedback has been amazing, we’ve received over 200 votes and I’ve already been in contact with Alteris Inc, Wakonda Technologies, Big Belly and the Vegawatt about profiling them.

Here’s the one problem. I have not received a lot of questions to ask the companies. I have plenty of questions that I want to ask but I really want to answer questions that you’re curious about. So, I need some questions?

Here’s what I would suggest:

1) Take a look at the Top 26 companies, and vote for your 3 favorite.

2) From the 3 your voted for, what do you most want to learn about them? Put these questions in the comment section of this post.

You’re the best

This is the first video post for The Green Light Distrikt and am really excited about it, along with a site re-design that will be completed by the time I return to Boston from Toronto. Last week, I went to a local Boston area Green Drinks event. I met some great people, reconnected with others that I haven’t seen for a while and saw a great discussion by Chuck Levin, Director of New Generation Energy that gives a great snapshot of the energy efficiency and green energy industry. Chuck discusses how the government is affecting the industry, what’s working and having trouble and lastly what New Generation Energy is working on. The posts will be split into two separate posts and I plan to be collecting a lot more great video content of events around the Boston area.

Also, please vote for your Top 3 favorite Boston clean tech companies. The top 10 vote receivers from the list of the top 26 of Boston clean tech companies will be profiled each month on The Green Light Distrikt in 2010 starting in February.

Please leave your comments on the video, I’m excited to hear what you think.

In part 1 Chuck discusses:

• The history of New Generation Energy
• Their mission to help small business and non-profits become more energy efficient
• The parts of the clean energy industry that are working well:
• 1)Role of big banks, finance, utilities scale generation.
• 2)Role of Tax Equity type investments and who uses them
• 3)Where Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) fit in
• What is not working well
• 1) The place for lower values projects, organizations with no tax appetite
• 2) Problem with small organizations; cheap energy, no capital or long term planning
• 3) Why for profit enterprises have not focused on this group, how NGE addresses this opportunity
• How Renewable Energy Notes work
• The ways that NGE helps organizations as directly as possible
• Why adoption rates of using state incentives programs for efficiency is so low

Who is your favorite clean tech, green tech company in the Boston (or New England) area? I’ve listed the TOP 26 below and we want your feedback. The TOP 10 companies that receive the most votes will be profiled each month in 2010. Voting ends on February 1st, please see the list and survey below.

It’s 2010! The breakout year for The Green Light Distrikt. In 2009, I completed my first interview with Massachusetts based Nexamp and have just compiled all clean tech industry events in Boston. Now, we want to hear from you.

There are tons of companies to choose from. Recently, Boston has been rated the number one US city for innovation.With the close proximity to universities and financial markets its no wonder. Life Sciences, hi tech, and now clean tech entrepreneurs and innovators are driving the movement and putting Boston on the map.

I have chosen 26 of my favorite organizations below that are based in the Boston area (and two from New England) that are true innovators in the clean tech space. They range in industries from trash, to renewables, to green building and media with both for and non-profit, public and private companies.

I need your help, please fill out the survey below to let me know:

1. What 3 companies do you think are the coolest and want to learn about?
2. If you have time, leave a comment answering the question: what is one question you would ask their CEOs?

26 of Boston’s Best Clean Tech Companies

BigBelly Solar – Needham, MA

Makers of the worlds only solar powered trash compactor

Zip Car - Cambridge, MA

The worlds largest network of rent by the hour, car sharing network.

A123 – Watertown, MA

Designs and manufactures advanced batteries for electricity storage

EnerNOC – Boston, MA

Worlds leading provider of demand response energy solutions

Emergent Energy Group – Boston, MA

Develops community-based alternative energy. Winner of Business Week’s Top 25 under 25 competition

Alteris Inc – Boston, MA

New England’s largest solar installers

NEXUS Green Building Resource Center – Boston, MA

Boston’s Full-Immersion Green Building Resource Center

Preserve – Waltham, MA

Design and produces kitchen ware, tableware and personal products made from 100% recycled plastic.

HeatSpring Learning Institute - Cambridge, MA

Leading provider of Geothermal Heat Pump training to US building professionals

Little Foot Energy – Somerville, MA

Turnkey renewable energy provider

URGENT VC - Boston, MA

Building green companies for green cities

Vegawatt – Boylston, MA

The worlds only vegawatt. Turns waste oil into electricity and heat

Alt E – Hudson, MA

Do-It-Yourself Online Retailer of renewable energy products

Green Guild – Brookline, MA

Boston’s leading energy audit and weatherization contractor

Izzit Green – Waltham, MA

Your source for the good green stuff. Leading providers of green reviews on consumer products.

Greentech Media – Cambridge, MA

Provider of high quality content on the clean tech industry. Research, news, events.

Evergreen Solar – Marlboro, MA

Designs and Manufacturers solar modules.

Solectria – Lawrence, MA

Designs and manufactures solar inverters.

First Wind – Boston, MA

Develops, Owns, Operates Wind Farms in the Northeast, West, and Hawaii

Blu Homes -Waltham, MA

Makers of green prefab homes

Harvest Power – Waltham, MA

Innovated organic waste to power solutions for community.

Energy Circle – Freeport, ME (still in New England!)

Best source on the internet for information, how to guides, and home energy efficiency products

groSolar – Burlington, VT (even though they’re not from Boston, they were cool and local enough to make the list

Provides complete solar energy solutions for homes, businesses, and contractors in New England and California

New Generation Energy – Boston, MA

Offers community investment options in renewable energy and energy efficiency

Wakonda Technologies – Woburn, MA

Wakonda Technologies is developing proprietary solar electric technology that is more efficient than crystalline silicon and more cost effective than thin film alternatives.

American Superconductor – Devens, MA

American superconductor develops propriety technologies used in the generation, tranmission and end use of energy with a focus on alternative energy.

Remember, I need your help, please fill out the survey below to let me know:

1. What 3 companies do you think are the coolest and want to learn about?
2. If you have time, leave a comment answering the question: what is one question you would ask their CEOs?

I’m going to use this information to determine which companies to profile first and also what to ask them.

It seems like there are renewable energy companies getting started everyday. Barriers to entry are relatively low and government incentives are creating an almost wild west like feel in the industry, anything goes and gurus are popping up everywhere. I wanted to learn about a company that is on the cutting edge of the clean energy industry and see what I could learn from a seasoned industry professional. Finding experienced clean energy professionals with years of experience is a rare and difficult to do, very few of them exist in such a nascent industry. Two months ago, I interviewed Job Abe, VP of Business Development for Nexamp, to learn more about the clean energy industry from his perspective. It was a great interview, I learned a ton about Nexamp, their story, what is happening in the industry and where the opportunities are for growth.

Why Nexamp?

Nexamp is “a full service clean energy solutions company.  Nexamp analyzes, designs, finances, builds and maintains clean energy projects that reduce energy costs and carbon emissions for businesses, governments, and homeowners.  Our solutions include renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy management.”

There are plenty of renewable energy companies around Massachusetts; Alteris Inc, GroSolar, Sunlight Solar Energy to name a few of the larger ones. In my opinion, Nexamp has one of the most robust business models in the clean energy industry. No, I do not work for Nexamp, nor am I getting paid for saying this. But I do think that their approach to the industry, focus on technical exellence and having a sound business model is on the cutting edge.

I was first introduced to Jon when I worked at the NEXUS Green Building Resource Center in downtown Boston. Over the past two years, I’ve seen him speak at Babson College, and the yearly NESEA conference in Boston. Jon is very friendly and knowledgeable and he is well versed about the clean energy, electric, and renewable energy industries.

Who is Jon Abe?

Jon is a vice president of Nexamp in charge of business development. Prior to joining Nexamp, he worked at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Renewable Energy Trust where he managed the $68 million Commonwealth Solar program. He also was responsible for the Small Renewables and Large Onsite Renewables Initiatives which support development of distributed wind, hydro, and biomass combined heat and power projects. He has worked as a project manager and senior consultant at KEMA and XENERGY, where he was responsible for business development and management of renewable energy project development and distributed energy resource consulting projects. He serves on the Board of the Green Roundtable, Policy Committee of the New England Clean Energy Council, and Cambridge Climate Protection Action Committee. Jon received his bachelor of arts from Cornell University where he was an IBM Watson Scholar.

Interview Highlights

In the interview we talked about a number of things.

1. How Jon got involved in clean energy.
2. Nexamp’s business model. What makes them so special and how are the different from the rest of the companies.
3. How they deal with increased competition from the traditional trades.
4. How they created their vision and what their development plan is.
5. What clean energy solutions currently have the best return on investment for their customers.
6. What the obstacles for industry growth are, and insights into the future of the industry.

Jon Abe’s Story into Renewable Energy

• Jon discusses his journey and how he ended up in the renewable energy industry

Nexamp’s Business Model

• Jon discuss Nexamp’s business model and how it compares to other renewable energy companies. Like I said, there are many renewable energy installers and energy efficiency companies and more entering the market every day, so I wanted to learn how Nexamp competes. Jon discusses how Nexamp competes with more specialized renewable energy installers and how their clients are looking for a one stop shop for all their clean energy needs including renewable energy, energy efficiency, financing, planning, and IT.

Nexamps Clean Energy Road Map

• I learned that central to Nexamp’s business model is their clean energy road map. I asked Jon to describe what it is, how it works, and why it’s a key differentiator for them.

Competition from the Traditional Trades

• From my work at HeatSpring, I know that there is a huge influx of companies from the traditional trades entering the clean energy industry as they have a lot of the technical skills and needed licensing to compete in the industry. I wanted to see what Nexamp feels about the increased competition and how they stack up.

Development Plan

• Currently Nexamp operate their integration services mainly out of New Englad, but I wanted to learn how they plan to grow their business beyond this region.

Company Vision

• Vision is one of the most important pieces of culture for small companies. I wanted to find out how Nexamp’s vision was created and established.

Obstacles to Industry Growth

• The industry is growing by leaps and bounds but there will surely be issues. Jon weighs in on what he sees as any potential problems.

Highest Commercial ROI

• Jon discusses what options have the best ROI these days for their commercial clients.

Insights into the Future

• Everyday there’s a new news article about the development of thin film, organic PV cells, and various other technologies. I wanted to hear from Jon if any of these technologies will become commercially viable, if they transform the industry and what his insights into the future are.

Why Nexamp has the best business model in clean energy

1. Stickiness with the customer: More specialized renewable energy companies have very little stickiness with their customers. Their business models are similar to many other construction subcontractors – roofers, plumbers, flooring specialists, etc – in that after the job is completed they move on to the next customer and never see them again. They make money by doing more projects, faster, and don’t have a source of recurring revenue. Nexamp’s Clean Energy Roadmap creates a multiple year relationship with their clients that can extend ten years or more. So when a sale is made they will be profiting from it many years down the road.
2. Clean focus on return on investment: All companies will say this but rarely do they offer the services to back it up. The reality is that customers don’t care about the technology that is being used, they care about reducing their costs (electricity usage) and being moral (carbon reduction), and because Nexamp’s business model offers a portfolio of services including energy efficiency, renewable installations, and energy management, they can offer the services that reduce costs most effectively. A company that only installs solar PV systems cannot do this, because energy efficiency will almost always be more profitable first.
3. Morally responsible. In my opinion, companies that just focus on solar PV or wind are slightly irresponsible in the sense that these technologies are very expensive and energy efficiency should be invested in before renewables are installed. Nexamp’s business model allows them to decrease energy usage in the most cost effective means regardless of the technology being used.
4. One stop shop. The rapid growth of the clean energy industry is creating a lot of mis-information and muddiness in the industry. Everyone is saying different things and it sometimes can be hard to find a straight answer. By delivering all the services in one place Nexamp will make the process much easiesr for their customers.

A Place to Improve?

There are many benefits to offering a host of clean energy solutions. I believe, like Jon Abe that it delivers maximize value for property owners and also the environment, but it also has some implications for branding and sticking out from the crowd. I decided to do an informal survey with homeowners and other strangers around Boston. I wanted to find out if Nexamp was a household name. I surveyed 16 people (granted a small sample size) and only one had heard of Nexamp. However, 9 had heard of GroSolar, Alteris, and Solar City (which doesn’t even do business in Massachusetts). It might be possible that Nexamp isn’t targeting homeowners as heavily as commercial clients but homeowners do go to work during the day. It raises the question how do you stand out when you do everything?

Conclusion

Out of the whole interview the quote that resonated with me the greatest was Jon’s insight into the future of the industry. He said “is the way that energy gets delivered to the home going to drastically change? Probably not, what will change is the business models of how energy gets delivers.” Clearly, Nexamp is creating a new business model in the clean energy space, but I think this is good advice for other industries. There are many more opportunities in new business models then new technologies. After all, technology does not matter if people will not adopt it, and the good business models figure out how to change peoples behaviors.

Did you like the interview?

What do you think about Nexamp’s business model?

The main reason I started blogging was to document the conversations I have with the really interesting, visionary, and smart people in the clean technology industry so I could share them with you.

I have found interviews and discussions to be the BEST ways to learn information and gather insights that I couldn’t possibly find anywhere else. Personally, it’ fun to continually meet new people. Professionally, it is one of the easiest, and more useful ways to gather information if you’re looking learn, start a business or get a job.

Here is a list of companies and/or people that I plan to interview and have discussions with in the next year and why I think they’re awesome. Without a doubt this list will change or grow as I meet people, go to conferences, and as time passes.

The list will also help me to be accountable and keep track of my progress!

Please let me know what you think of my list and if you want me to interview a person or company that is not on the list.