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Leonardo DiCaprio is the green energy and sustainability industry’s best friend. He’s been using his global appeal to raise awareness on everything from climate change to poverty to endangered species. Moreover, he does it with an authenticity that we don’t get to see from the A-List crowd very often. It’s clear that he’s not supporting these causes because his Publicist thinks it’s a good idea.
Recently, DiCaprio has been letting his fans know about his latest movie “Inception” which is of course, another blockbuster hit. Still, in the midst of all the promotion, he makes his positions on green energy and sustainability part of the conversation. His interviews with the tabloids, late night and daytime talk show hosts, and all the most major of the majors in the entertainment business are never without a reference to his work on the environment and sustainability. Nobody gets out with just a soundbite about his latest project, love life, and what’s next. They hear about his causes, and the fans can’t get enough of it.
By integrating the topic of his philanthropic work into his exchanges with the entertainment media, “Leo” has started a trend that we could only dream about just a couple of years ago. . . He’s making everything from electric cars, to solar power to supporting the preservation of endangered species “cool”.
The production of his latest movie, “Inception”, written by industry titan Christopher Nolan, was produced on sets powered by portable Solar PV provided by Pure Power Distribution. This is a growing trend among producers, the “Greening” of film production.
Yes, this is small-scale energy in the scheme of things, but more important is the influence the introduction of the solar power units are having on the industry as a whole.
Film production costs more than ever. If you want a blockbuster, you’d better be willing to shell out 9 or even 10 figures unless you’re one of those freakishly lucky indie producers . Energy, particularly for films shot in remote locations, can be extremely costly, and here is where we unlock an even more powerful solar story. That it’s about money.
Aside from the obvious environmental benefits (which as an industry I feel we’ve pretty much beaten to death at this point) it makes it a cost issue, magnifying the superior application characteristics and efficiency of PV to the bean counters, exaggerating their reliability in the often harsh conditions.
Let’s hope projects like “Inception” engage more people regardless of what’s driving their interest. For now, just raising the awareness of the general population benefits us all, and is something the solar industry hasn’t been able to achieve without this kind of star-power to get us on the front page.
Now go see the movie. . .
-joe
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A major Solar Farm being built in Arizona. American land, American property, American developer… It all adds up to a brighter future and more jobs here in the US.
Pacific Blue Energy Corp. (OTCBB: PBEC), announced today that the city of Gila Bend, Arizona has shown them a commitment to fast-track a 150 Megawatt solar farm on about 100 acres of land there. Claiming favorable permitting laws, and more importantly… “strong support from town officials and staff” they’re going to be able to expedite the Phase 1 approvals for the project in just two to four months. This is an amazing feat considering that many solar installations of this scale can get stuck in red tape and generally sit for at least two years.
Is the U.S. finally getting serious about it’s commitment to solar electricity? Maybe this is a sign that we’re doing just that. Also, this underscores one of the most important things to know about solar. The fact that the value of adding more solar power to our infrastructure and creating a clean energy economy based on solar and other technologies is favored across party lines.
Yes, we still face an avalanche of problems at the Federal level, and with election cycles in the U.S. coming every two years it’s difficult to get politicians to commit to something that may not sit well with their constituents or biggest donors. Still, the path is getting clearer and clearer with every new project. More and more, people from both sides of the aisle are coming together to make these projects work. Why? because they know that solar creates jobs, and solar jobs are high-paying and sustainable – and that means more people paying more taxes. . .
Of course, let’s not discount the other benefits of building large scale solar power plants such as this one. The energy this plant produces can power up to 30,000 homes. That means lower electricity bills down the road, and less dependence on foreign energy right away. These two issues are of the highest importance to all voters, and this makes it important to keep improving the processes for getting renewable energy, and particularly solar, zoned, permitted, and developed. It’s a sure bet for winning votes.
In a perfect world, the demand for solar and the interest in large-scale deployment in the U.S. would be driven more by awareness of the people, concern for our environment, and for long-term competitiveness with other nations who are currently winning the race to overcome the obstacles created by our dependence on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, we should see the aggressive action by Gila Bend as a sign that the end game of rapid deployment can become a reality fast, even here in the congested, political, U.S. market, regardless of the means or the motivations. It’s now up to us to monitor the progress Pacific Blue is making in Gila Bend, and to hold accountable everyone who made the promise of supporting and fast-tracking this project. Indeed, every victory counts, and inevitably leads to another.
More on this, and how the U.S. is stacking up against other countries in deploying solar in a future post. Stay tuned.
-Joe Boyce
Want to learn more about Pacific Blue Energy? Visit their site here.
Thinking about getting involved in the solar industry yourself? Check out over 400 available solar jobs on the Solar Visionaries career page
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I just read a great article that begins to highlight something that I hear very few recruiters talk about. The lack of effectiveness of resumes.
Lately, in my Executive Search work, I have more and more conversations with candidates about how to market themselves. Yes, the job market is tight right now, even in the burgeoning solar industry, but there has to come a time when job seekers take it upon themselves to get ahead of the competition if they really feel that they’re the right person for the job.
Most conventional recruiters will tell you that they have the responsibility of positioning you to a prospective employer, while this is true, their methods can often be outdated and disadvantageous to the candidate. Recruiters are paid by employers to find the best possible candidates, and in the process of their candidate sourcing, they will inevitably be drawn to resumes that match keywords with a particular job description. This works, but in the case where the true need of the employer goes beyond what is often stated in a job-description, where the qualitative factors come into play as much as the quantitative ones, supreme candidates can be left out of the running completely.
For this reason I’ve been challenging more candidates to move away from trying to convince me that they’re a great candidate based on what they’ve done, but to give me a compelling reason to promote them to employers based on what they’re capable of, and what it is that they really want to do. As I do this more and more, I find that candidates are now starting to self-select themselves, and the ones that make the best case are inevitably very strong contenders.
We’ve all heard the old adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. With this I challenge you all to think differently, to be visionary, to commit yourselves not only to finding a job, but to committing to only finding a position that you’ll be great at.
Confucius said “Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. Now more than ever we need to emphasize this above all else. Let’s be straight, the job market is pretty tough right now, and that’s probably not going to change for a long time to come. Focus yourself on where you will fit in based on what you are great at, and more importantly what you care most about. This will tell you where you can make the greatest contribution to your employer, and put you in a situation where you’re valued beyond just what results you can produce based on your history. In short, it will raise you from the level of “producer” to the level of “asset” to the organization.
This process is a lot of fun too. Imagine doing something that you feel good about every day. Something that you want to continue to think and learn about even when you’re not on the clock… That’s the ultimate way to create job security. Your employer will pick up on these things and be more interested in understanding how he or she can take the skills and passion you bring and put them to best use, rather than reviewing your skills on your resume and evaluating how much you might be able to produce before feeling overwhelmed, burning out, or being lured by another opportunity.
Stay ahead of the competition. Know why you’re the best for the position, the company, and the industry you’re targeting. This will project an aura of trustworthiness and loyalty to the employer that they do not see very often. It will make you special. This will be particularly pronounced in small businesses and start-up organizations who are more dependent on each individual than big multinationals. They are hiring right now, and their top executives are more accessible than those from the larger companies. Most importantly, they’re the ones who can give you the opportunity to grow and fully utilize your skills and passion to make a difference. Align yourselves with them first, and the resume will become a secondary resource rather than the first method of screening you.
More on this in coming articles. In the meantime, check out who’s hiring on SolarVisionaries Career Page.
Have feedback? Leave a reply and let’s discuss!
You can read the article I mentioned here. http://bit.ly/9TN3Z9
Great job, great life.
-Joe
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SolarCity is one of the fastest growing solar installers in the country. With their pioneering “Solar Lease” program, they have made solar affordable for thousands of homeowners just like you and me.
Check out how they can make solar work for you at their website. You can also get to know the man who created the Solar Lease program, David Arfin, in our “Visionaries” area.
Solar is here and now, and SolarCity is one of the companies that’s proving it to the world and profiting from the growth. Definitely one worth knowing about.
-Joe
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Is a Solar Panel Like a Cell Phone?
Unique Infrastructure & Financing Challenges for Solar Adoption in Poor Communities
In 1996 my wife, Nancy Brennan-Jordan, and I returned to the United States after six years of very fulfilling work in rural Chile. The majority of that time was spent in a small town about five hours south of Santiago, the country’s capital. We rented an adobe house on a dirt road for $50 a month and remain good friends with the humble family who own and now live in that house. Carlos and Angelica Aedo have three sons; Rodrigo, Carlos Jr., and Luchin. In 2007 I had the opportunity to return to Chile as a translator for an eight day educational tour of New York farm leaders. I spent an evening in that house we rented, as I placed the couple dozen New Yorkers in the homes of other campesino farmer friends to round out their educational experience of the Chilean countryside.
It was great to see the Aedo family. Still poor, but full of life, one of the most shocking changes was to count five cellular phones in the family; one for each person. These phones were functioning in a fairly isolated rural area, where there had been one phone within a ten mile radius. The father of the family, Carlos Sr., was working in Santiago, but the family simply called his cell phone to let him know the gringo was back visiting after ten plus years. We talked with little regard for the number of minutes or minimal cost, despite the family’s continued poverty.
More recently, in March 2009, the ubiquity of the cell phone’s presence in poor parts of the world was brought home to me on a trip to Haiti related to the “Let’s Share the Sun Foundation”, which Nancy and I founded to facilitate the installation of solar in remote and poor areas of the world. In a letter to friends and family after the trip, I wrote, “A fitting analogy to the reality of solar energy is the fact that despite the extreme poverty, the poorest of people have cell phones in the poorest parts of Haiti. The community leader that was speaking with us about the fishing cooperative took a cell phone call in the middle of his presentation! Like telephone lines and cell phones, in the absence of electricity infrastructure, solar power offers the opportunity to bring electricity to very poor parts of the world, like Haiti, at a small fraction of the infrastructure investment.”
A couple of the solar pioneers interviewed for a special feature column that ran in PVNews related to solar in the poorest parts of the world have disagreed with significant parts of this analogy. Neville Williams, the founder of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) and the Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO), relayed his opinion, “I know that the potential of solar electric has been compared to the cell phone in developing countries, where the cell phone has become ubiquitous, but the cell phone industry has a much more centralized structure that allows it to work for cell phone companies. The solar industry does not have such centralization yet, nor will it be easy to achieve.”
I raised the same question to Dr. Russell deLucia, the Founder and President of the Small Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund, who tends to agree with Neville Williams. Dr. deLucia begins, “Our organization helps finance the supply chains and basic infrastructure to facilitate small scale sustainable development. Very few people have been able to accomplish what Harish Hande (Solar Electric Light Company – India, PVNews Sept. 2009) and Richard Hansen (Soluz, PVNews Nov. 2009) have in their respective efforts. SELCO and SoLuz have been able to combine financing for both solar installations and some of the key infrastructure investments that make wider scale deployment possible in poorer communities. Picking good partners is key. This is why we have partnered with SELCO in India. Most people are not inherently interested in serving the poor on an ongoing basis. Service support after installation is also key to long term success. Up to now there have been very few solar cell and module manufacturers interested in building supply chains that go all the way to the poorest communities on earth.”
Dr. deLucia continues, “Compare that supply chain reality in solar to the people in the oil business, particularly Shell and Mobile, where the oil companies build out infrastructure to provide markets in the most isolated parts of the world.”
In addition to centralization, Neville Williams highlighted the fact that many are too poor for even the most basic solar installation without significant financing support, and that most solar installation projects in the developing world have been implemented by entrepreneurial initiatives, where the skills needed to scale up from initial startup years are distinct from the skills needed to take those start ups to scale. Dr. deLucia concurs that many are too poor, calling this situation a “poverty trap”.
Then how can so many of these extremely poor now afford cell phones? A September 24, 2009 Special Report from The Economist delves into this question, restating this inquiry in the article title, “How a luxury item became a tool of global development”. The Economist asserts, “The spread of mobile phones in the developed world, together with the emergence of two main technology standards, led to economies of scale in both network equipment and handsets. Lower prices brought mobile phones within reach of the wealthiest people in the developing world. That allowed the first mobile networks in developing countries to be set up, though prices were high.” Bringing this quote back to our Chilean rural community, the one phone within ten miles was a mobile phone that was so expensive to use, poor neighbors only used it in emergency situations.
The Economist continues, “The next big step was the introduction of prepaid billing systems, which allow people to load up their phones with calling credit and then talk until the credit runs out. Prepaid billing saves operators sending out bills and chasing up debts… Once the switch to prepaid was made, the biggest barrier to broader mobile access became the cost of a handset… the price of a basic model steadily fell, from around $250 in 1997 to around $ 20 today. As handset-makers became aware of the scale of the opportunity in the developing world, they turned their minds to producing low-cost models. And for those who still could not afford their own handsets, help was at hand in the form of microfinance.” The Economist goes on to ask, then answer, “Does the spread of mobile phones promote economic development? At first the evidence was anecdotal. There were stories about farmers and fishermen phoning around to see where they would get the best price for their produce and fish, for example.” This was exactly what we observed in Haiti with our fisher cooperative presenter. The Economist then cites micro and macro-economic research that has quantified the dramatic impact cell phones have had in poor countries. The research affirms Columbia University’s Earth Institute Director and Development Economist, Jeffery Sachs’, assertion that the cell phone has become “the single most transformative tool for development.”
The Economist article is worth a read at http://www.economist.com/specialreports/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=14483872. It goes into more detail than we can here, but my hope in raising the comparison between solar and cell phone penetration in developing countries is to encourage a dialogue and analysis of the similarities and differences between the two. I am inclined to believe that legitimate barriers that experienced people like Neville Williams and Dr. Russ deLucia point out will be overcome as the solar industry turns its attention to such a substantial subset of the world’s population that currently has little or no access to electric power.
Early in 2009 I participated in a briefing session on the solar industry to a hedge fund considering investments in solar companies. The presenter accurately summarized the “Anatomy of a Shakeout“ in the solar industry that indeed has been taking place this year. Vast amounts of solar panels would be stockpiled and/or scrapped. I jumped in to say, “Let’s not scrap all that product; surely some of it can be redirected to developing countries in ways that do not distort markets, but help achieve real improvements in poor peoples’ lives.”
Dramatic drops in prices, technologies that leapfrog right over phone land lines or grid tied systems, financing solutions that combine new entrants’ desires to gain new markets with microfinance programs that allow people to start using new technologies, much quicker adoption than any would have estimated just a decade ago. Enough similarities to consider how solar might learn from cell phone adoption in the poorest parts of the world.
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Job Transitions in the Solar Industry
Transitioning to a new job and career is comparable to moving into a new home. Items need to be packed, a time line needs to be followed, and then everything needs to be unpacked and re-established at the new location. While most people have a general idea of what this consists of, there is actually quite a bit of loose ends that need to be taken care of. Jacqueline Crowe, HR Manager at BBC Worldwide in New York City, confirmed that the following items should be resolved during a job transition:
- Benefits. Be aware of when they end and when new employers’ benefits will kick in. Also, be aware of the differences in coverage and costs.
- Cobra. Be sure to ask when the old company will send the necessary paperwork.
- 401 K. Usually the old 401 K can roll over into the new 401 K account, but a comparison should be conducted between both plans. Also be aware of whether or not the plan is a Roth IRA or not.
- Non-compete Agreement. A recent requirement is that companies require that new hires sign a non-compete agreement. This limits the individual’s right to work at a competing company for a period of time, protecting the company’s rights and ownership of any products or ideas that are generated by the new employee. This also gives them the right to sue the employee should this agreement be violated in any way.
- Vacation and Bonus Payouts. Ask about vacation payout from the old company. If the departing employee is due any bonus payments or prorated bonus payments, the employee should take it upon themselves to seek these out.
- Record of Employment. If the departing employee does to have a job lined up, ask for record of employment to show when applying for unemployment.
- Termination Policy. Confirm whether or not the employer discloses the reason for termination as a policy.
- Back up sensitive files. Be sure that any personal e-mails or sensitive documents have been backed up and saved before resigning from the old employer.
- Biz critical roles. Be aware of the fact that anyone in a biz critical role (sales, for example) will typically be escorted out immediately upon resignation.
Good luck with the job hunt!
Leah Ben-Ami
Contributing Editor – Solar Careers
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As the economy changes, new job applicants have to change with it. New consumer and business trends not only have a significant impact on what positions employers are trying to fill, but how they determine whether or not to even select a 
candidate for an interview.
This was news to me.
As an MBA May 2010 graduate, I assumed that I should follow the usual procedures used when I graduated with my BA in 2006. I started working on my resume and cover letters with the MBA Career Development counselors, and started sending my resume and applications into the abyss of job databases belonging to a variety of competitive companies. Days passed, months passed, and I received no replies.
“Hmm,” I thought. “It must be the recession.”
Then I started talking to some friends of mine, some of which worked more modern, smaller companies, and some of which worked for well established Fortune 500 companies. They all told me the same thing—that I wasn’t applying to jobs the right way. This was news to me, since I thought I was following all of the proper steps. So, over the course of a month I had my friends look at my resume, offer advice, and put me in contact with Human Resources representatives from competitive companies allowing for me to take advantage of information interviews. This is what I learned:
If you are interested in working for a specific company, try to find a contact via social networking sites or through personal relationships. My friends suggested using LinkedIn heavily to determine who I knew and in what industries. After doing some research I found that I was connected by one or two degrees of separation from companies I was interested in. LinkedIn clearly displayed who I knew and how, so it was easy to figure out who to contact. I also gave my resume to friends and family members at different companies, who would keep me in mind if they heard of any job openings.
Make sure that your resume is selling yourself—in the right way, and to the right industry. After talking to a head hunter at a company of interest, I was asked if “Administrative Assistant” was a necessary title on my resume. I was confused as to why this was even an issue, and she informed me that this title could have actually been hurting my applications more than I realized. Despite my MBA and work experience, this title was representing less experience than I actually have.
The “cookie cutter” cover letter might not be the way to go depending on the culture of the company. I was highly interested in applying for a position with a small and vibrant start-up company that I met at an MBA career fair, who allows for companies to use their product as a promotional tool by creating scavenger hunts all over Boston. During our conversation, they asked me to write a “kick butt” cover letter and think outside of the box. So in addition to submitting a traditional cover letter, I also submitted my cover letter in the form of a scavenger hunt—allowing for me to better understand their product and submit my cover letter in a unique way.
“Work Experience” isn’t necessarily just what you get paid to do. I had been a board member of a non-profit for over a year, and essentially helped launch the non-profit from scratch. But I assumed that this was not in any way related to work experience since it was volunteer work, so it only received one line on my resume at the very bottom. Another head hunter strongly suggested putting this position at the top of my resume and be more descriptive, since the work experience gained from my board position might be more relevant than my current full-time position.
As the solar industry changes and new start-ups enter the market, it is important for applicants to use their connections to their advantage and apply to jobs in a more modernized way.
What has your job-search experience been so far? Share your knowledge and experience with our group by posting a comment!
Leah Ben-Ami
Contributing Editor – Solar Careers
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