Sungevity was founded by a group of friends who came together with a common vision to “make it easy, make it affordable.” Their unique talents make the business model possible: co-founder and President Danny Kennedy is a former campaign manager for Greenpeace; co-founder and CEO Andrew “Birchy” Birch is a former banker and BP Solar Executive (who also holds a master’s degree in photovoltaics); Chief Development Officer Patrick Crane is a former marketing guru from the social networking giant LinkedIn; and co-founder and Chairman of the Board Alec Guettel inspired Danny to start the renewable energy company. (Thank you, Alec.)

Based out of Oakland, Calif., the sunshine crew uses technology as a convenience, allowing them to lease solar energy like one would lease a car, providing affordable and accessible solar power to places as far as Australia.

An example of the iQuote system.

Sungevity’s iQuote system allows you to obtain a quote remotely, and their unique financing structure allows you to lease your power so there are no costs up front. Think of it like booking a vacation through Expedia versus going to a travel agency — your specific needs are met on your budget and on your time. In this instance, you also save energy and money. And in some cases, if you produce more energy than you consume in a year, some utility companies will pay you back. Seem too good to be true? I spoke with Danny Kennedy to find out how they do it.

What prompted you to found Sungevity?
We wanted to make solar power easy, affordable and attainable to more people. In particular, taking away the up-front costs, which was a big barrier to adoption historically, and making it easy and hassle-free …  so we innovated the online business model we have that really makes Sungevity unique.

What sets you apart from other solar energy companies?
Using modern technology and leveraging the internet … we built software that allows us to mesh up the satellite view or top down image with aerial photographs which come at an angle from an airplane and through that we can get the angles which give us the pitch of the roof and the circumference of the roof and those angles are important to calibrating what the production of that solar panel will be on your roof and how much electricity you’ll get out of it. So, effectively, we are able to image an aerial system without going to your home. And the level of engineering is as accurate or more accurate than the manual process. That, in turn, allows us to go out and get the financing solution that we have now, which is the solar lease, which allows you to pay for the electricity supply rather than paying for it up front.

How are you able to lease energy instead of obtaining money up front?
We partner with third party financiers to create funds that pay for everything that goes into installing and inter-connecting a homeowner’s solar system. We always wanted to do a lease-like solution, take away that up-front cost. The history being that you would pay for the whole thing. We had to pioneer the strategy of using the internet and get that going with the inside selling that goes with this [call center-based sales.] Before we launched [in 2008] that had never been done. Now most of the industry is doing call center-based sales, but when we started that was just unknown.

Why is it important to make solar energy more mainstream?
We want to create value in the economy. The book that I’ve written ["Rooftop Revolution"] is really about how solar power is going to create a whole new economy and save people money in their homes, create jobs…. It’s just a smarter better way to power society. A more modern reliable technology than the fossil fuel-based system that we’ve inherited from the 19th century.

There are several ideas out there about how to increase awareness and popularity of renewable energies, such as carbon taxes and financial incentives. What do you think would help advance the movement?
The main thing is certainty. One of the problems with a lot of policy making over the years — and this is what I used to do for my bread and butter for two decades almost — is that they kind of shift the goal post, change the policy, use this policy incentive and that incentive, whereas the current sources of energy have had a fairly stable playing field for a long time. So, one overriding request is that we let this business flourish on solid ground and not keep changing the rules of it. We can talk about different policy settings and structures, but … in the last ten years it’s grown into a multi billion dollar business with 100,000 employees and allowed us to have what’s called net metering, which allows us to sell electricity into the supply, into the grid. That net metering concept is a matter of regulation of the public utility commissions in different states and it is sort of under attack right now. The utilities are asking them to take that away from us. If you take that away it’s hard to create the stability to attract investment and to build growing companies and continue to serve customers easily.

Of course, there are people with vested interests, but … there’s a whole new cycle of innovation happening, solar panels, solar leasing … these businesses are growing like gangbusters. We’ve got to get in front of it and support the job creators and the new economic opportunities that are coming with that. What is more about energy independence than letting a family in America produce their own energy? Or some of it? Harvesting the sunlight falling on their own home.

Where do you see solar energy in five years? What role do you hope to play?
Solar energy is going to be huge in five years time. Just in the years since we’ve been in business, we have exceeded expectations as an industry in terms of jobs created, dollars saved, the cost structure of electricity. Sungevity will continue to grow as a business because the curve will continue. I think there will continue to be all sorts of new additional bundles of service. Just like simple computers that could word process suddenly became connected to one another though the internet, then came the platform to all sorts of software and new services. So to, the distributed architecture of solar power in every home, being involved in energy, will create more technology innovation and more finance innovation, bringing new value and new services we couldn’t have conceived of before. Here we are engaged in the creation and consumption of this service called electricity. There will be more other ways and business models of serving more people for less with solar electricity.

I believe Sungevity will definitely be at the forefront. We are an innovative company … with a unique team that combines business savvy and technology. Patrick is now helping us think through what’s next for solar as a social network, almost gamifying this spread of solar service. (And, of course, there’s the book.…)

What needs to happen next?
To move on in the conversation, make people think of it as a lifestyle choice. We need to get over the hackneyed debate of the 20th century that this stuff doesn’t work, it’s not ready. It’s powering millions of people’s lives today. It’s a 100 billion dollar business, today, it employs 100,000 Americans today. Let’s move beyond that knee-jerk debate and recognize this is neither left or right, it’s out front. It’s what’s helping America move forward, creating jobs, saving families money. We are the good news story of American entrepreneurship succeeding. That’s what we should be recognized by and for and not some kind of whipping post for the culture wars.

What do you want people to learn from your book and where can they get it?
There is a sunny side up to the story of solar and how we make electricity going forward. The price is coming down enormously which makes it the best way to move forward. The way they can get involved is with activism or entrepreneurship.… Sungevity is part of the story, but we’re not all of it, by any means. There are millions of businesses that will grow in the next decades to rewire the world with this cleaner better way of getting electricity. That’s a huge good news story for the economy.

“Rooftop Revolution” will be available on Amazon.com or in bookstores starting Sept. 4th.

Note: The book also includes a forward by retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, (former supreme commander of NATO) who emphasizes that a solar-based electricity supply with less dependence on foreign sources of fuel is a more secure one.

When an activist and a militant agree on an agenda, the message seems clear: “Solar is where it’s at right now.”

Main photo and additional image credit: Sungevity.com

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We spoke with Rohre Titcomb about the company and sustainable apparel.

How did Five Bamboo begin? What first inspired you?

Zahlen, Xtehn, Vehro, Qxhna and I have always loved collaborating on things. As kids, it was tree houses and forts, then ski jumps, and now it’s companies. We’re a good team because we all have different skills and aren’t afraid to tell it like it is. The kind of openness and honesty we have with each other allows for extremely productive disagreements.

In 2005, we founded our first company, a sports apparel company called Five Ultimate. Along the way, we realized that business can be a great vehicle for change. Our society needs to find a way of living that will allow us to exist and thrive within the ecological limits of our planet. So, we decided to pair our knowledge of the apparel industry with our passion for the environment to create a bamboo clothing company deeply rooted in sustainability. We try to provide consumers with quality, affordable apparel that treads lightly on the planet. Our hope is that, even in a small way, we will shift the apparel industry in a more responsible direction, and educate our customers on the environmental impact of the clothes they wear on a daily basis.

Bamboo fabric has a bad reputation in the sustainability world because of the processing involved. Can you explain how your process is different?

Gladly! Unfortunately, the majority of the bamboo apparel currently available on the market today is produced via the viscose process, which is chemically intensive and produces harmful byproducts. However, we make our fiber using the closed-loop lyocell process. Throughout the lyocell process no harmful chemicals are used, no harmful gases are released, and virtually no waste is created. The water consumption in the viscose and lyocell processes is very similar, but doesn’t come near to the impact of growing cotton. Cultivating cotton is extremely impactful because of the water, fertilizers and pesticides required. Soil erosion and water depletion are severe problems in cotton-growing areas. In contrast, bamboo thrives without the aid of fertilizers or pesticides, and is self-propagating, which means no cultivation is required.

To make our bamboo fiber, we mix raw bamboo pulp with a nontoxic organic solvent solution. The organic compound NMMO isolates the cellulose, leaving us with a thick mixture, which is sent through a shower head-like fixture (a spinaret) and rendered into filament form. What comes out is our fiber, ready to be spun into thread and woven into fabric.

Of course, everything has an environmental impact. We’re just trying to make clothing in a way that has the least impact possible. Sustainability is a moving target.

Do you think the rest of the apparel industry will follow your example?

We certainly hope so! There’s much room for improvement, and this industry is finally starting to see that. The Eco Index and Higg Index are good indicators of this. Action and intention don’t always go hand in hand though.

Do you plan to use any other fabrics than bamboo?

We currently use some organic cotton in our t-shirts, and know that we may have to add other materials into our fabrics to broaden our product offerings. In the short-term though, we’re just focusing on offering high-quality bamboo lyocell clothing.

Part of your mission is to partner with customers, communities, nonprofits and others to engage in causes — can you share an example of a partnership, or something you plan to do?

Our most exciting partnership at the moment is with the Bumbershoot music festival, a three day festival over Labor Day weekend here in Seattle. We’re running the merchandise program at the festival this year. In years past, all of the apparel has been made from conventional cotton, so we’re excited to work with the organizers to reduce the environmental impact of their festival by making the apparel items out of bamboo lyocell instead of cotton.

What products do you offer, and how do you plan on expanding your product line?

We design casual lifestyle bamboo apparel. We currently offer dresses, t-shirts, light jackets, skirts, leggings and Bamboxers. Our products are versatile yet stylish, and incredibly comfortable. We plan to expand our offering to include a full range of lifestyle apparel all the way from dress shirts to jeans. We want to provide variety so that our customers can complete their wardrobes with our environmentally responsible apparel and can wear their environmental values on a daily basis.

What needs to happen now?

For consumers: Change the way you wash and dry your clothes. Approximately 60 percent of the life cycle impact of an item of clothing occurs in the use phase. Wash cold. Hang dry. Also, buy less.

Want to try it out?

We’re giving away some sustainable clothing from Five Bamboo. One lucky winner will be able to choose from one skirt or two pairs of Bamboxers/Bamboxer Briefs. To enter, simply answer the question “Which Five Bamboo articles of clothing are named after Titcomb siblings?” Please email your response to Lisa@Revmodo.com by midnight EST on Thursday, Sept. 6. Winner will be chosen randomly from all applicable entries.

Disclaimer: Five Bamboo will supply complimentary clothing for the giveaway winner.

Photo credits: Five Bamboo

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We spoke with Grossman to learn about his experience with environmental reporting and glacial melt.

Your book Deep Water details your journey across Australia with several scientists studying the Pliocene era. How did you get involved with that project?

It was a long process. The trip was actually in 2009, so it’s been a little while. Part of the reason why it took that long was because there was a lot to learn after the trip.

I had actually met Maureen Raymo, the lead scientist, a few years before the trip. We got together every once in a while and chatted about climate issues. One day, she told me she was going to Australia, and said she thought it might be interesting for me to come along. We figured out a way where it would be worthwhile for me to do that by getting a grant together from the National Science Foundation, which paid for me to produce some videos about her work.

We’re working on three videos. The first is about the process of finding samples in Australia, called “In the Field.” The second is the process of finding out how old those samples are, called “In the Lab.” And the third one is making sense of it all, once they figure out they have samples from the right age, so it’s more about the theory.

A lot of people probably have a hard time wrapping their minds around sea level rise not being uniformly spread out. Could you explain why water does not rise equally across the globe?

If this planet was only water — a complete round sphere with a layer of water around the planet — that water would be thick. And if you brought a pipe in and added more water, it would get even thicker. Now, if you stick a couple continents on there that are a fixed distance from the center of the planet, the water would go up and down on those shorelines. The land moves up and down with respect to the center of the planet, and the water is also moving up and down.

There are many reasons why the land moves up and down, and those movements happen on many different scales. We know certain parts of the world, like the area around New Orleans, is actually sinking fairly fast. It’s sinking fast because the sediment is compacting, which is brought down by the Mississippi River. Under normal circumstances, that sediment would be replenished by more sediment from the river, but the levees prevent that from happening. In comparison to other parts of the United States, sea level is rising faster there because the land is sinking. If you’re standing on a sinking piece of land, you’ll notice the ocean is rising.

There are parts of the world where land is going up. It’s most exaggerated in Hudson Bay in Quebec. It was covered by an ice sheet in the last ice age. The enormous weight of the ice sunk into the land, and then when it melted the land began to rise back up. Because the mantle is not very supple, it takes tens of thousands of years for the crust under where the ice sheet was to rise back up. In those areas, sea level can actually fall even if it’s rising elsewhere in the world.

We hear a lot about general glacial melt, but your book clearly separates the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. What makes the Eastern sheet so different?

The Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet is different from the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet because most of the Western sheet is grounded underwater. If you look at a picture of Antarctica, it looks like one giant white mass, and you can also see the Transantarctic Mountains. If you picked up the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, you would see land underneath. But if you removed the western side of Antarctica, you’d mostly see a bunch of islands with water in between. The sea is relatively shallow there, and the ice sheet is mostly sitting on the floor below sea level. It’s like if you put an ice cube in a bowl and several inches of water, it will just float on the top. But if you put a big chunk of ice in the bowl, it will sit on the bottom. Sitting on the ocean floor is what makes the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet much more prone to collapsing and getting disrupted.

Last month we saw Greenland’s ice melt at an incredibly fast rate. Where is all of that water going?

I’m not really sure where it’s all going, but there are two main factors to take away from that event. One is that a lot of the surface area melted, but it’s not a lot of water. What’s disconcerting about this is not that all of a sudden Greenland produced a lot of water. What’s important is that it is widely believed the water on the surface of Greenland and Western Antarctica plays a very important role in how ice streams move. The theory is that a glacier is defined as permanent ice that flows. The ice is always flowing, but it’s solid ice that’s flowing. It moves very slowly from the interior of the ice sheet out to the sea.  Scientists are not entirely clear on how fast it could flow in the future, but they agree that it speeds up when water drops to the base of the ice sheet and makes the bottom more slippery, allowing the ice to move faster. It flows through cracks in the ice sheet, so when you have 97 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet above freezing temperatures, that means more water will flow through these cracks to the base, making it more likely these glaciers will speed up.

The Greenland Ice Sheet has progressively had more water on the surface during the melt season since its been monitored. This was a highly unusual event, but it’s just part of a larger picture, which is that Greenland is melting more each summer. The amount of dripping from the surface or through cracks really matters because of how it affects ice streams. What will cause sea level to rise is if the ice streams flow faster, which break off into the sea and eventually melt. These ice streams, if we set them in motion, will add a large amount of potential water to the ocean.

Note: Lisa invited Grossman to create and answer his own question here.
How about you ask me if reporting on all this makes me depressed and lack hope?

It’s sometimes depressing to report on these issues because much of the public seems to believe the science is controversial, even though the basic science of climate change is so clear. Although there are many questions that need to be answered, like how fast sea level could go up this century, the basic shape of what’s going on is clear. Carbon dioxide is increasing, the planet is warming, and all sorts of things are being caused by that. To look around and have so little attention paid to this subject, and to see the motivations of dedicated scientists questioned, and hear it all called a hoax — that’s depressing. It’s possible things are set in motion right now that will be unstoppable in the future. We can’t be leisurely about it. The public needs to come to grips with the fact that this is the crisis of our century, and that something needs to happen.

Europe uses half as much energy as America. They come here and like coming here to indulge, perhaps in an SUV on a road trip because our gas is cheaper. It’s like someone with a healthy diet going to a steakhouse. It’s kind of nice to indulge sometimes, but they live comfortable and satisfying lives from what I can tell. We can too, because there are models to cut significantly back in terms of transportation, how we heat our homes, and how energy can be used. I hope we’ll adopt existing technologies and make advancements to help us confront this, and not put us back to another era. It’s going to cost money, and we would have to live a less lavish lifestyle. I suspect when my kids are my age, they won’t be flying in airplanes as often and with as little forethought as I do. The point is, it’s technically feasible, and it could be done without going back to pre-industrial society.

What needs to happen now?

I would never dissuade anyone from conserving energy personally or trying to encourage alternative energy, but I think the scale of this problem is large enough that we can’t leave it to the goodhearted people of the world to solve. Their efforts will be overwhelmed by people who have huge carbon footprints. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from taking those measures, but I don’t think anyone should be comforted by taking those measures.

This has got to happen on a governmental level. For example, I may choose not remodel my house with better insulated windows, but I’d vote in favor of a policy that made energy so expensive that it would make economic sense for me to put those windows in. We need policies that encourage us to do things to reduce our carbon footprint. We have to make dirty, carbon-dioxide-producing sources of energy — like oil and gas — more expensive, and subsidize clean kinds of energy — like wind and solar. It’s has to happen at a governmental level. But there’s hardly any movement in that direction today. That’s partly because responding to climate change has become a partisan issue. That’s unfortunate, because we need to get our act together. I didn’t used to be think that monetary incentives are the way to go. But I realized everyone has a price they’re willing to spend to do some good. If you change the price structure of things, people can be influenced to adopt green kinds of energy and to use energy more efficiently.

Image credits: Dan Grossman

Video credit: Maureen Raymo

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In their Green New Deal, Dr. Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, are proposing an ambitious plan to put 25 million Americans back to work with green jobs, thereby building a strong, sustainable economy by rerouting tax dollars away from corporations and Wall Street and towards local communities.  She is the only candidate to vocalize the need for the federal government to support local food systems and to recognize publicly the clear link between what we eat, the environment we live in, and our health. She is also the only candidate calling for an end to drilling for oil and the use of fossil fuels, not to mention the only one to be arrested for protesting against housing foreclosures.

Stein and Honkala will not be on ballots in every state, hurting their already slim chances of making it to the White House. But as the first ever Green Party member to qualify for matching federal funds, they will likely influence the policies of whoever does end up sitting in the Oval Office.

Dr. Stein managed to squeeze some time into her busy schedule to answer some questions about her policies to make food and clean technology drivers of a thriving green economy.

Q: What role do you see food playing as a driver of the economy and social change?

A:  We see food as really an integral plank of what we call the Green New Deal, the centerpiece of our agenda. It’s a program to create jobs and solve the economic emergency that we face, at the same time that it solves the climate emergency, which as you know, has huge food impacts. We’re seeing that right now with forest fires, with the heat waves and with the drought. Specifically we’re looking at massively rising food prices right now. The grave concern is that this is going to cause a real food shortage, especially in corn but potentially in soy and wheat, the other basic staples of the American food system and really the world food supply.… It’s really important that we have a secure food system and that it be resilient, and we know that agribusiness as a food supply is not secure. The industrial food system is highly dependent on water and on fossil fuel and pesticides, which are derived from fossil fuels as well, so we badly need to have a sustainable food system. Yet, our tax dollars subsidizes the agribusiness industrial food supply. So we’re calling for a shift in those tax dollars to be able to jumpstart the small farms, the community farms, community sustainable agriculture, all different ways to ensure we have a healthy, secure food supply.

Q: In some urban areas, like New York City or San Francisco, it can be very easy to get fresh food. But what about places like Detroit or Baltimore?

A: There is actually a wonderful renaissance in food going on in those very places, in some of the most poor and devastated urban areas. And this is without the support that it needs. So instead of directing all of our tax dollars to the GMOs and the industrial food economy, you can imagine how well the local food economies will do if we start to put some of our support actually into that economy. It’s been having to fight tooth and nail to survive, but when you begin to support it because it provides security, and the quality of food that we really need, that industry is really going to take off.

Q: Where does the federal government fit into local food systems? The food economy is Milwaukee is very different from the one in San Francisco.  How can the federal government support all of those systems?

A: What we’re suggesting is a job creation program that actually puts resources into the hands of local communities. So the federal government directs those resources to the local communities, but the local communities themselves decide. They decide what kinds of jobs are sustainable, and I think it’s pretty clear that food is a common denominator and everybody needs it. Even in the areas where agribusiness is thriving, local people don’t have the fruits and vegetables, and the foods that they really need.

Q: How can the federal government phase out our reliance on meat raised on CAFOs?

A: I think it really comes down to what we as taxpayers decide to do with our tax dollars.… There are these systems that are very entrenched right now, that rely on our tax dollars, rely on subsidies that are harmful to our water systems, to the land, they are polluting and when you raise animals on CAFOs, the nutrients in the animal change, they also require antibiotics which is very dangerous. They are force fed so they’ll be fat… All these traditions really degrade the nutrition, and they can be quite harmful. They lose their omega 3s and instead gain a lot of saturated fats, which are problematic.  So we are subsidizing a food system that makes us sick.  The food that comes out of this system is high fat, high calorie. We need to align our health with our food system.

Q: What do you see as the most promising advances we’ve made in clean technology?

A: I think it’s pretty clear that the biggest bang for the buck right now is in conservation. So, for example, power and heat systems that reduce energy loss at the source are helpful. But in addition, reducing energy loss at the point of utilization is really critical. So we need the whole spectrum of efficient devices as well as insulation and weatherization. That alone could save us a huge amount of energy and put a lot of people to work, weatherizing our homes, government buildings, schools, businesses etc. So there’s a lot to be done just at the very simple technologies of insulation, weatherization efficiencies. Add to that solar hot water, heat, and solar energy production. Wind, of course, is also very important.

Q: Do you have any policies that will induce small businesses or individuals with limited cash on hand to make large upfront investments in green energy? 

A: Yes and there are some very good programs around the country and I’ll name two of them.  One was in the Bay Area, basically the city subsidized the cost of solar installation and then allowed the renters/users to pay them back through the cost differential in their energy prices. That sounds like an obvious way to go. It will take some resources to do that, but that’s what the Green New Deal is about. It’s all about making those resources available, providing money to jumpstart these good programs. Another one, called the Feed-In Tariff, what’s used in Europe. It provides a payment to the source that provides their excess energy that they’re not using, so they’re making an income right away.

Q: How do you respond to voters whose interests are aligned with your policies but worry that a vote for you is one less vote for Obama and could lead to a Romney presidency.

A: Here’s what I’m really worried about. If you go into the voting booth and you vote for either Wall Street-sponsored candidate, you are giving a mandate for four more years of these policies, which are not just taking us in the wrong direction, they are accelerating in the wrong direction… Obama embraced the “Drill, baby drill” policies of George Bush. He has built more oil pipelines than any other president, he’s opening offshore oil, the Arctic wilderness, the Gulf, our national parks, more mountaintops for coal – he’s become Dick Cheney basically on the environment.  If Romney were in power, people would be mobilized to fight for what we need. What I worry about is when there’s a Democrat in power, people go to sleep or they’re told to be quiet. I want to win the White House and turn it into a Green House.

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