Sterling Planet Interview: Mel Jones & Alden Hathaway

A fantastic interview in Atlanta, Georgia with Mel Jones & Alden Hathaway of Sterling Planet.   Sterling  Planet offers comprehensive carbon neutral solutions for businesses, universities and organizations of all types, bringing together supply and demand side solutions in a rapidly emerging environmental market. We learned about Renewable Energy Certificates and White Tag Certificates, who are the buyers and sellers, the future of cap and trade, helping the Super Bowl go carbon neutral and their community and volunteer work.

Full Transcription:

Q: Can you tell us about Sterling Planet?

Mel Jones: Let me start by saying we started in 2000, and we’re the first national retailer of renewable energy which means that we can sell renewable energy through transparent transactions through utilities. Right now, I have contracts with 123 utilities or directly to businesses over our website or through our sales force that Alden heads up. And we’ve done this for a long time, and we have some of the greatest brands in the world that are clients of ours.

Q: So who are some of your clients and what happens to the money that they invest in Renewable Energy Credits?

Mel Jones: We have companies such as Intel and Pepsi and Cisco in the IT world. We also have sixty-four different college/universities ranging from Auburn University, Duke University here in the South, the University of Utah in the West to Harvard and Yale, including all kinds of small and mid-size universities around the country. We also last year sold seventy-two percent of all renewable energy to the federal government. So we have a lot of great brands, including those that do it because they choose to and because its part of their corporate mission or because they want to bring up a brand such as car or a type of paper or a type of manufacturing process they do. Typically, a hundred percent of their power, they could make it from where it is now to a hundred percent green for probably a premium of five to ten percent more than they’re paying now. Not that expensive.

Alden Hathaway: The idea behind the renewable energy credits which we helped pioneer, it’s not important where the electrons go, it’s important where your energy that you pull off the grid is replaced from. What we do is we go out and we buy renewable energy credits from renewable generators and make sure that generation goes on the grid. And there’s an attestation that comes along with that generation. And that certifies that renewable energy generator on the grid, and it backed off fossil fuel generation. Those certificates are sold to our customers so that they know that when they buy the certificates, they’ve replaced their own energy they’ve taken off the grid with renewable generated energy from biomass, solar, wind, hydro-power sources. The whole idea behind the renewable energy certificates then is to free up the market and make it transparent and liquid. Make it more efficient.

Mel Jones: To finish up the last question, once those transactions happen, when we bring those dollars into our company, then we reinvest them into power projects, all renewable, such as solar… Alden’s working on the largest solar project in the state of Georgia. And that investment of those dollars help bring those projects to bear in a cost-effective way. We’re also doing very large biomass projects across the country and so we reinvest those proceeds into something that, in fact, brings on more renewable energy.

Q: What is the difference between the voluntary market and the utility market?

Alden Hathaway: Talking about the voluntary markets first. In fact, that was the first market to really move green power along. Voluntary programs such as EPA’s Green Power Partnership Program, WRI’s Green Power Market Development Group, and a number of other type of voluntary programs were created in the early part of the 2000 decade. And they worked with companies to make commitments to buy green power, and those commitments were fulfilled by the buying of renewable energy certificates for the most part to achieve their renewable energy goals. That not only legitimized the market of renewable energy certificates to represent renewable energy, kind of the currency, if you will, of renewable energy. But it allowed an investment opportunity to take the monies coming out of the R.E.C. market and plow it back into renewable energy investments. Now we’ve seen states recognizing the validity of the renewable energy certificate as meeting renewable energy goals in the voluntary market, and they’re setting up mandatory, what we call compliance markets or requirements on the utilities to source their own renewable energy, and it gives them a flexibility if they don’t have enough renewable energy in their own portfolio, they can buy credits from the next door utility or somewhere across the state or even across the country to meet their own compliance obligations. So we succeed in both markets. We’re very active in the voluntary market with a national account programs to sell renewable energy through what we call Renewable Energy Certificate or R.E.C. market. And we’re also moving very rapidly into the utility markets where utilities are buying renewable energy certificates to meet their compliance obligations.

Mel Jones: And they use exactly, even though a power plant comes online, like maybe a wind farm, they use the exact same technology and approach where there’s voluntary mandatory. So if we’re selling a wind R.E.C. to Intel or Pepsi, it’s the exact same commodity or tool that if we sell to Detroit Edison which is a large compliant market. They’re buying the R.E.C., too. The only difference may be Pepsi and Intel might not care if it comes from Michigan, whereas the Detroit Utility, DTE, does. And that’s really basically the only difference is where it comes from and what its purpose. It’s the same actual document or credit, but it depends on who’s buying and under what protocol they use.

Q: So is there a difference between Renewable Energy Credits and White Tag Certificates?

Alden Hathaway: Renewable energy credits are what we call the supply side of the meter where generators generate renewable energy into the electric grid. They’re not users of energy. They’re generators of energy. Where white tags are concerned, they’re on the demand side of the meter. That is the usage of energy by an individual, facility, homeowner, and industrial facility and how it uses electricity. The more efficient it is, the more opportunity there is generate what we call are white tags which are energy-saving or energy-efficiency certificates. White tags then are really the same thing as a renewable energy credit or a green tag, that’s why we call them white tags to differentiate them from green tags. And that they’re dominated in megawatt hour denomination. So one megawatt hour of white tag is equal to an environmental impact that one megawatt hour of a renewable energy credit achieves on the renewable energy side. The advantages though of a white tag program is that we’re now getting certificate trading markets into the energy efficiency market, a relatively more mature market than the renewable energy market. And it’s going to help bring cost down because it’s the most efficient way for utilities to meet their obligations to be energy efficient. Credit trading markets have proven to be that, whether it was sulfur dioxide credit trading, whether it knocks offset cap and trade programs to improve the air quality in local metropolitan areas. The renewable energy certificate trading mechanism with utilities is essentially a cap and trade with renewable energy with utilities. What we saw in the renewable energy market is the cost of renewable energy has come down because of the ability to use the R.E.C. So we’ve introduced the white tag as a way to also bring down the cost of energy efficiency aspirations.

Mel Jones: And just like renewable energy certificates bring an extra value for those that compete with fossil fuels. For those projects that are on the borderline or can’t be funded because their payback’s too long, the white tag, or what we call energy efficiency certificates, help bring the costs benefit equation more likely. And then those products goes forward because there’s a secondary market for the credits.

Q: So what kinds of considerations are companies looking for when considering white tags?

Alden Hathaaway: In many cases, it’s additional revenue for them that they didn’t know existed. Because what’s happening now is a company may be thinking about saving energy on their electric bill once invest in some energy efficient lighting to reduce its energy use. And we’re working with already because they’re a green power partner or a member of EPA’s Client Leader’s Program, or we’re already involved selling them renewable energy credits. And we say, “Did you know that you can sell us white tags because we have utilities that need them for other energy efficient opportunities?” So they say, “Hmm. I’m already going to save energy on my lighting bill. But if I sell my energy efficiency credits, I get extra money for it. So it makes the return on investment that much more attractive.” And we can show more energy efficiency as a result of that.

Q: So are white tags and renewable energy credits helping pave the way for a cap and trade system?

Mel Jones: What we’ve seen that if you set it up correctly so the market signals allow people to do things because of market signals, there’s always a buyer and there’s always a seller. One of the nice things about the concept if a cap and trade is implemented correctly, you send price signals for people to move to clean technology. What these do, these give price signals to move to energy efficiency projects which is good for the environment or to do more renewables which is good for the environment. But it’s a market mechanism that basically works because two parties that choose to enter into contracts to make that happen as opposed to typically mandates where you just have to buy an allowance. This is much better for moving the monies to the people who actually make the benefits happen.

Q7: How do you select which projects and technologies to invest in?

Alden Hathaway: We do look at technologies in which and how they can help us generate more renewable energy or white tags certificates. And obviously we’re always looking at ways to get them on the grid more cost effectively. There’s a lot of new technologies out there that because we have certificate trading markets available now to our customers, they can take advantage of it because there’s extra revenue for them. Extra return on investment means more companies will invest in these technologies.

Q8: Can you talk to us about your relationship with the NFL and how you helped them lower the carbon footprint for the Super Bowl?

Mel Jones: The Super Bowl for years has moved into a community, and its footprint in terms of publicity and its outreach among its week or two before the event happens, we were invited in a few years ago to work with the NFL in Miami where they wanted to not only make it a green statement, they wanted to make it a carbon neutral statement. And they asked us, in partnership with the local utility in Florida, Florida Power and Light, to come in and actually make the event carbon neutral. We supplied all the renewable energy credits to make the electricity portion of not only the game itself but the couple weeks leading up including the NFL experience where people come in and kick the balls and throw footballs. But also the actual NFL had volunteers come in and plant trees and do things to reduce what we call the transportation and non-electric park. So we were proud to be the first. The NFL and its teams have already gone forward, and we actually have several football teams we green up their facilities, such as the Eagles and the Cowboys. And also we’re doing an arena such as where the Nuggets play in Denver and Avalanche. So a lot of the mainstream America are starting to learn about renewable energy because many of the venues they tackle or go forward, have been greened up by companies like ourselves.

Q9: What can our audience do to make your initiatives more successful?

Alden Hathaway: Well, what we say is that we’re all about the triple bottom line, about being sustainable. The goal for our audience, your audience would be what can I do to become sustainable. And we focus on ways to achieve that sustainability along this triple bottom line concept that is, one, it’s good for the environment. Two, it’s good for my pocketbook because if it doesn’t pay, it’s not going to stay. And, three, it’s good for social reason. And one of the reasons that we’re bringing the social aspects of this is because we have programs that we work with our national council in which every dollar that they spend for green power, a portion of that goes to investing in renewable energy generation overseas in projects like Solar Life for Africa or projects like World Water, to bring the aspects of renewable generation to the benefits of electric power from clean energy to the poor of the world are one way or another are going to get power, one way or another. And we want it to get it from a clean resource that benefits the earth. So we encourage as part of our sustainability initiatives to our customers that we work with to look at it from a holistic approach, the triple bottom line.

Q10: Can you tell us about your Solar Light for Africa initiative?

Alden Hathaway: Solar Light for Africa is a thirteen-year-old program in which we’ve been taking solar energy to rural areas of Africa, to completely beyond the urban areas that we hear of, names like Johannesburg, Kampala, Uganda, Dar Salam, Tanzania. Well, those cities may have electricity, but you get outside the city areas, there are no electric wires. There’s no electric power. The only source of energy is burning firewood at night or for cooking. And it’s not a lot of it. And so the people struggle to eek out an existence. They also use kerosene for lighting to see by and often strain their eyes to read their schoolbooks. Children have a much harder time getting through school if they’re not on the electric grid because of the lack of access to electricity. So what we do is we go in. We put solar panels on schools, solar panels on community centers, and electric light powered by the solar panels so that school children can read at night. So that they can hold meetings. So that mothers’ unions can do crafts and other things that can improve their income. Charge their cell phones. You know, just charging a cell phone, daily charging a cell phone, maybe four cell phones a day, can double the income of the average rural African simply because they can sell those charged cell phones for those who use cell phones and, believe me, they use cell phones all over the country now. There’s a big infrastructure developing where the communications market is helping this expand. So what we do is provide through the aspects of solar electrification in these rural areas, the access to electricity and the benefits it provides improves income, provide clean water, reduce sickness, and make that part of our renewable and social costs. For every solar system that we install, just six lights, we generate a half-ton of carbon savings per year. And those tons can be then sold back in our market here in America to help offset the environmental footprint that we have here.

Mel Jones: And one of the things that we’re most proud of is we were lucky enough to hire Alden a few years ago where he and his father had set up this international nonprofit. And we allow him to go work into Africa several weeks per summer. But also we believe our clients care about this. There’s a lot to the fact that when you buy renewable energy you’re automatically making the environment better. But because we believe in those triple bottom lines. Not only the bottom line for our investors and our company, but the bottom line for what we call the environmental footprint that all of us live in. If you’re going to get a chance to invest in renewables, we think it should be invested in places not just the big corporations but where it makes a difference on the ground. And like Alden says, a small solar panel sitting in an African village working pump water might save ladies that typically have to walk three or four miles down in sometimes dangerous places, they can then focus on feeding their family or doing other things. And it really also gives the opportunity, we work with missions down there that want to actually communicate with schools here in America. And by having that little bit of solar electricity, they can plug into the day and actually hit the internet through technology. And so we believe, not only the social environment of having people where they actually have clean water and have a place to be able to read and write is be able to communicate and the world is a fast-changing place. A small amount of internet capability in remote places gives kids in America an opportunity to see how others live and then also those people can learn how, not only renewable energy but how communication can cross boundaries is very valuable to all our planet. And we believe in all those things and part of all our work is to try to not only make money and put it back in the projects here, but also we look at the Third World too.

Q11: How can we learn more about Sterling Planet and your partners?

Mel Jones: Well, first of all, you can always go and check this out on our website. But more importantly, we have a tremendous group of clients that range in brands that people buy everyday. We want you to support our customers. Because what they’re doing, they don’t have to, in many cases, have to buy, they’re taking hard-earned dollars and putting it back in not only the environment but social causes. Second thing, this does not mean we have to go crazy and go off the grid. We’re just trying, over time, change the paradigm that would put a new plan in, it might as well be good for the environment beside creating electricity.

Q12: Any final thoughts?

Mel Jones: Well, I always like to say is try to support renewable energy, and I’m so proud of the work we do in other parts of the country. And realize that the environment is not just for certain people. It’s for all of us.

Alden Hathaway: And ask your local utility for green power.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts