BusinessWest

In Its New Home, EcoBuilding Bargains Models Its Mission

For the past decade, the ReStore has been an increasingly popular source of recycled building materials, saving money for professional contractors and do-it-yourselfers alike, all while easing the burden on landfills. The store, now renamed EcoBuilding Bargains, has outgrown that space and will soon move into a much larger building nearby. And the way that structure is being renovated provides an effective case study in the value of green construction and energy efficiency.

John Majercak wants to lead by example.
And when EcoBuilding Bargains — formerly the ReStore — opens its vastly expanded retail center in Springfield later this fall, he’ll have the ideal showcase to demonstrate how homeowners and contractors can make profitable use of recycled materials and save money through energy efficiency.
Because that’s how the new store is being built.

The building in question — a century-old structure on Warwick Street that was originally home to the National Biscuit Co., then Steiger’s, and most recently a warehouse for Kavanagh Furniture — is being expanded and renovated from top to bottom, eventually tripling the retail space of the ReStore’s original Albany Street site and quadrupling its total area.
“When we purchased this property,” said Majercak, executive director of the Center for EcoTechnology in Northampton, which operates EcoBuilding Bargains, “we undertook an environmental remediation process. It was built at a time when energy costs were not a big deal, but were an afterthought. Now, it’s a modern building that’s going to use, by the time we’re done, about a third of the energy a building this size would normally use.”
That feat will be accomplished with an array of improvements — encompassing roofing and siding materials, insulation, and the systems that heat, cool, and illuminate the space — that promote cost savings through energy efficiency. Those strategies, combined with the copious use of recycled materials throughout the building, effectively turn it into an educational model of the store’s very mission.
At the Center for EcoTechnology, a 65-employee, 35-year-old nonprofit that provides practical solutions for going green at home and work, “our motto is, ‘we make green make sense,’” Majercak said. “And this is one example of that. By lowering our own operating costs and teaching people who come through here why we made these green improvements — and what they can do in their own homes — we’ve made this a teaching store as well.”

Do It Yourself

In the decade since it opened, the ReStore — which, at its core, trades in recycled building materials, with the twin goals of saving contractors and do-it-yourselfers money and reducing the burden on landfills — has become increasingly popular, to the point where it has outgrown its space on Albany Street.
“The store sells low-cost building materials so people can fix up their homes,” Majercak said. “We get all kinds of stuff from other people’s homes and remodeling jobs; they donate it or hire us as a contractor to do the deconstruction ourselves.
“Over the years, we’ve just seen an incessant demand for what we do,” he continued. “Our store is now so stuffed, you can barely walk through. We know we can serve more people in a bigger facility and do more of our mission. Customers are going to be much better served by this building, which will have more parking and wider aisles. And with a new, computerized inventory system, we know what we have; it’s much easier for the customers and donors who work with us.”
The efficiency improvements — part of a $900,000 energy retrofit, a significant portion of the total $3.1 million project cost — begin on the exterior of the building, including a white roof to deflect heat and insulated panels lining the building that interlock in a way that seals out all air leakage. EcoBuilding Bargains will also “superinsulate” its roof, Majercak explained, using insulation donated from MassMutual when that company installed a solar array on its roof.
“They took their old insulation off because they needed to use a different system, but it’s fine, and they donated that to us, saving us at least $40,000 in insulation costs, and it’s helping us save a lot of energy,” he said. “There are all kinds of different details that all tie together to make the building really well-insulated.”
In addition, the 3 million-BTU, oil-fired boiler in the basement is being replaced with a 500,000-BTU gas unit, while infrared tube heaters located throughout the structure will heat building occupants but not the air.
“Say you’re in the sun, with the radiant heat — that’s what this feels like, the sun hitting you,” Majercak said. “For a big, open space, it’s very efficient because it allows the air temperature to be lower even though you feel comfortable. And in the offices, we’re using heat pumps to take advantage of the difference between outside and inside air.”
That model of efficiency extends to lighting as well; much of the store will feature sensor-controlled lights that maintain a low level when no one is around them, but become brighter when someone walks in. “That saves energy, too,” Majercak said.
In addition, “we’re using reused materials everywhere — we reused timbers, sliding glass door panels, the flooring is recycled … these are all examples of reuse, and that’s what we’re all about.”
The goal, besides reducing costs while greatly expanding floor space, is to demonstrate the types of changes people who visit the store can make in their own homes.
“It’s been a lot of fun, actually,” Majercak said. “We can walk around and talk to people and show them it is possible, and there are benefits to it. We use household examples, too — no one uses infrared tube heaters, but for homeowners, we have workshops and examples of products they can use in their homes, as opposed to stuff used at the commercial level.”

Dollars and Sense
The simple fact that the ReStore needed a new home testifies to the growing popularity of its ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ model.
“People who shop here do so because of the great deals, or they believe in the mission of keeping stuff out of landfills, or both,” Majercak said. “When we opened this up 10 years ago, there were maybe a dozen or two stores like it in the country. There are about 800 now, and we have our own association; I’m on the board of it.
“It just makes sense on so many levels,” he continued. “People — we Yankees, especially — are frugal and don’t want to throw something out if someone else wants to use it, but they also don’t want it sitting around their basement, either. What’s caught on is the whole concept of going green and the fact that there are societal benefits to doing those things. That’s exciting to me because, at the Center for EcoTechnology, we have a host of green services we can offer people, and now we can showcase them and tell people about them using this facility.”
Majercak expects the business to continue to grow, both through public awareness of the store and in its deconstruction efforts, which have “really taken off” in recent years.
“We’ve worked with Kent Pecoy, R.J. Chapdelaine, Dan Roulier, and some the other big builders around the area. They’ve used us for deconstruction, and we’re working throughout Southern New England and New York now, doing jobs,” he told BusinessWest.
“I think it’s something whose time has come. People shouldn’t just crunch up their house and throw it away. That’s catching on, and will be a big source of material for us over the next couple of years.”
EcoBuilding Bargains is reaping more than just new business, however. About one-third of the $3.1 million building rehabilitation is being funded by a capital campaign, while another third has come in the form of a low-cost mortgage from Westfield Bank; government funding covers a little less than one-third as well.
“The amount of support we’ve gotten to do this project is pretty phenomenal,” Majercak said. “We’ve always tried to operate this store as a self-sufficient nonprofit, so we can cover our costs through the revenue we generate.”
In addition to the capital-campaign support, “a number of businesses have contributed monetary resources or products or in-kind services — lawyers, architects, all kinds of vendors,” he noted. “All the gas pipe was donated from local pipe suppliers. People have been very kind and very supportive.
“When we knew we were going to expand,” he continued, “we chose purposely to stay in Springfield because this is our target market, and it’s also mission-consistent to fix up an older building — but also because we have such great support from the community, the government, and residents. It’s just a great place to do business.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

Initiatives Strive for Success Far Beyond the Classroom

As the chief coordinator of Greenfield Community College’s Renewable Energy/ Energy Efficiency Program, Teresa Jones told BusinessWest that these are exciting times to be in higher education.
Speaking to the ‘community’ component of her school, where she is also an associate professor, Jones said that “our economy in Greenfield and the surrounding area is a step ahead of many other areas with regard to sustainability and green thinking.
“But as an educator,” she continued, “I think the question I always go back to is, how does a community college contribute to job growth and economic development?”
GCC is one of the Pioneer Valley’s green beacons in developing student programs that strive for a role not just in the evolving green economy, but also in the much-needed pragmatism of job creation.
UMass Amherst has embraced sustainability on all levels, from the administration to the student body. The university has set a goal to become carbon-neutral by the year 2050, and over the last decade has reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 30%. Within the academic departments, a notable example is the Green Building program in the Department of Environmental Conservation, which has been actively involved with students and the region’s construction sector.
At the Isenberg School of Management, Bill Woolridge is the chair of the Management Department, and he told BusinessWest how the class he teaches has evolved over the years to become more attuned to the changing priorities of green consciousness.
He carefully stressed the Amherst campus’s thorough approach to sustainability. But his department is aware of what he called “the bigger picture.”
“In most schools’ management curriculum,” he explained, “there’s that course that speaks to the role of business in the broader social environment.
“I hadn’t taught that in quite a while,” he went on, “and about six years ago decided that I would. As I started to become reacquainted with that material, I realized that addressing sustainable issues is really the challenge of the current generation of students.”
The area’s ivory towers don’t envision a role in a green economy that is relegated only to the classroom, however. At Holyoke Community College, Keith Hensley is the executive director of Workforce and Economic Development, and he has designs on nothing short of transformative educational roles for both the school and its students.
HCC has partnered with two organizations to broaden the school’s certificate and training programs within a green economy — with both real-time results for jobs in the marketplace and opportunities for businesses to embrace sustainable practices that also help the bottom line.
For this article, BusinessWest asked people within these schools to explain their own green report cards. Jones was speaking of her own school specifically, but could just as easily been including the goals of her colleagues at other colleges, when she noted that “GCC, above all, serves as a convener for the community. We bring together diverse interests, talents, energies, concerns, ideas, and insights.” It’s that type of thinking that’s making this green curriculum as successful in the job market as it is in the classroom.

Certifiably Green
Hensley said that HCC’s current roster of green programs took root a few years back.
“About two years ago, we partnered with the Hampden County Regional Employment Board,” he explained. “They had applied for a workforce grant from the state for energy conservation — for certain types of training, such as weatherization and insulation, solar-boiler technician training, and energy-auditor training.”
The projected outcomes for the grant were job placements, he said. While the school charted the most success of any institution in the Commonwealth also receiving those funds, “it still wasn’t as much as I would have liked to see.
“What that told us, when everything shook out, is that there currently are not enough jobs in those particular occupations in the state,” he said. “And what we did was take a look at the entire sustainable, energy-efficiency, renewable-energy field as it stands right now, and we homed in on a few things.”
The Green Communities Program, from the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Affairs, strives for signatory cities and towns to reduce their overall carbon footprint. Among 72 others, Holyoke and Springfield have signed on. Hensley cited that legislation, as well as an overall environmentally minded population in the Pioneer Valley, as two factors in HCC’s redesign of its green programming.
“And we also looked at the economy as it stands right now,” he said. “Unlike other parts of the country, our manufacturing base is still there. So, with decreased product demand that comes from a bad economy, it’s pushing manufacturing employers to think innovatively, figure out how they can cut costs.”
To meet these needs, HCC has forged partnerships with two organizations: HospitalityGreen LLC, a New York-based consulting firm, and the Energy Conservation Training Co., which specializes in numerous aspects of professional training and certification.
With HospitalityGreen, there are four short yet intensive courses: “Green Facilities Training for Managers,” “Introduction to Green Purchasing,” “Getting to Sustainability Through Changes in Waste Contracting,” and a “Green Custodial and Janitorial” course.
“Participants get a ton of online tools when they go back to their own facilities,” Hensley added. “And we also advise them on how to approach owners and managers of the company, to get their suggestions through.”
Also with HospitalityGreen are two full-day classes for the restaurant and hospitality industries. A core of information will tell participants what it means to be green, and how sustainability affects business.
“The attendees from the companies will get a few days of training, and they go back out to their employers and start doing their audit,” he said. “The bottom line here is to save the businesses money, but also to get a designation as a green restaurant or a green hotel. That has huge implications, especially in this area, where people are environmentally conscious.”
With ECONTC, Holyoke Community College has implemented a series of courses for the building trades. Using metrics set by the Building Performance Institute, a national organization for energy-efficient standards, the classes include “BPI Building Analyst/Envelope Training,” “BPI Heating Professional Training and Certification,” and “Residential Energy Services Network and Home Energy Rating Systems Rater Training and Certification.”
“For all this new programming,” Hensley said, “our mission is twofold. It’s to help companies save money, or make more money, in the case of green-lodging and green-restaurant certification. We expect that those companies who get certified will get more business. And on the other hand, it’s to help companies and homeowners who will be impacted by these trained people, to be included in what it means to be a green community in this region.”

Talkin’ ’bout an Evolution
Back in the 1970s, Woolridge said, when he was the age of his students now, environmental issues were an academic niche in business schools.
“We would talk about EPA rules and so forth,” he said. “It was seen as a compliance issue — an obligation. One of the costs of doing business was to adhere to these government strictures. But that has all moved to the front burner. It’s something we can’t put off anymore.”
Meanwhile, the class he has been teaching is constantly evolving. “The way I teach the course, and the way many others around the country do, is that it’s more an opportunity than an obligation,” he explained. “This is a challenge for this generation and the next generation of business leaders as to what is going to fuel economic growth over the next decades — solving our social and environmental problems on a global scale.”
When asked the name of the class, Woolridge laughed. “Even that’s in flux. It has officially this year been called ‘Social Responsibility and Sustainability.’ This semester on the syllabus, I’m tweaking it, though, looking for the right label. Some of us are calling this ‘Sustainable Enterprise.’
“It has some historic analysis,” he explained, “but it has more of what I would call an examination of sustainable business practices. We use something known as the Socrates database that has 2,500 large businesses profiled, and they have done pretty comprehensive analysis in many areas, particularly with regard to the natural environment, social issues, their governing structures, and so forth. So we look there to get a sense of how industries are doing, relative to these dimensions, and how specific businesses within those industries are doing.
The other important component in the class is to identify the business opportunities presented by these challenges, he added. “This is the challenge for the next generation of business leaders.”
Ideally, Woolridge envisions a certificate program in the undergraduate Business school for Sustainable Practices. “Fairly soon,” he said. “Maybe at the beginning of the next academic year.”
Add to that a class in social entrepreneurship. “This concept is generally about creating new enterprises to solve social issues. Overall, our goal here is to give students perspective, skills, and, for those students going on to small business or entrepreneurship, a sense of the opportunities that do exist.”
UMass Amherst has the critical mass of demand for classes in this field, he said, and a labor market which will support this in future job placements. “It’s impossible to quantify in any real numbers,” he said, “but I know, if we build it, they will come.”

Community Action Plan
An important aspect of GCC’s green classwork translating into actual jobs, Jones said, is that those same employers were part of the original team helping to create the program.
The RE/EE Program at GCC originally started as a $372,000 Workforce Competitive Trust Fund grant, in partnership with the Franklin/Hampshire Regional Employment Board. However, more than 40 regional organizations, from nonprofits to small businesses, also collaborated on the course design for certificate and degree programs.
“The businesses know the program intimately, but also the people that are coming through it,” she explained. “My husband is a small-business owner, and I know for a fact that this is absolutely critical. Here, a business knows who they’re getting, what they know academically, and what their capacities are. A lot of businesses in our area are pretty small, so in the hiring of even one employee, you want to make sure that the match is pretty good.”
Jones cited two examples of substantial outcomes from the GCC program. NorthEast Solar Design Associates in Hatfield started out, she said, with “a really smart husband-and-wife team.” They were one of the businesses involved in developing the school’s curriculum and, in short time, hired students from the program. In the last five years they have expanded to six full-time workers.
“Prior to their involvement here,” Jones said, “they were an established solar company, but not really growing. They are doing major commercial photovoltaic installations. And when in short time you grow to six employees, that is huge growth for a small company. Even though it may be small for some people, this amounts to a massive repositioning of their company.” And the business is expected to hire three more in the near future.
Another key partner with GCC has been the 82-year old Sandri Companies, based in Greenfield. A number of GCC students have gone on to work for Sandri, and Jones cited the company as an example of keeping up with the changing face of a traditional industry.
“They are adding whole new divisions to their enterprise, from wood-pellet burners, weatherization, and solar to energy audits,” Jones explained. “When a company of their size looks into the future to determine how they will continue to stay relevant, this is how you do it. You bring people into your company who know these technologies. You don’t just pay lip service, but get people who can manage these technologies and continue to expand your market.”
And that same logic, she said, applies to her department at GCC. “As we head into the future, it’s a much broader market than I think anyone could have thought.”
Expanding on the role her school plays in the realm of sustainable practices and green initiatives, Jones gives GCC good marks. But the work continues to evolve, and to stay successful and viable in the unfolding green economy, schools need to be as responsive as the business community.
“We listen for where there are places we might contribute directly, for ways that our faculty, staff, and administration can catalyze the creative and entrepreneurial energy that resides in our region,” she said. “Our program is a reflection of that vibrant energy, and continues to respond and change with the rapidly emerging green industries of the 21st century.”

As Gas Prices Rise, Green Commuting Catches On

When trends collide, habits sometimes change. In a time when about three-quarters of American workers drive to work alone, gas prices have crept alarmingly high. Meanwhile, more Americans are becoming aware of the environmental impact of motor vehicles — and the health impact of spending too much time sitting in them. That’s why many companies are seeing (and in some cases encouraging) an increase in the number of employees carpooling, walking, or bicycling to work. To proponents of ‘green commuting,’ such practices just make sense — and feel good, too.

Back in the mid-1990s, when MassMutual started encouraging ‘green’ commuting options, such as carpooling and bicycling to work, only a few “diehards” participated, said Joyce Beaupre, operations support and employee services.
Of course, “there wasn’t as much awareness then, or as much need, with gas prices low,” she noted. “Now, it’s much more popular.”
Indeed, how times have changed. With gas prices soaring above $4 per gallon earlier this year, and still hovering above $3.50, commuting takes large chunks out of family budgets, so doing whatever it takes to reduce those costs makes sense for many workers.
But gas prices are only part of the incentive to carpool at MassMutual, which has established other perks for fuel-conscious commuters. On a campus of about 3,500 employees, good parking spaces are at a premium, and workers who carpool at least three days a week (284 of them last year) have access to a lot just a few steps from the building.
In addition, employees enjoy 40% discounts on public transportation, access to a vanpool program, and secure bike racks — as well as shower facilities — for those who choose that more physically demanding option.
“That goes up and down with the weather, although a few hardcore individuals come in rain, shine, sleet, or snow on their bicycles. We’re very impressed with them,” said Sean Anderson, assistant vice president for facility operations and director of corporate green initiatives.
But it’s not just large companies with incentive programs seeing a rise in environmentally conscious commuting.
“A third of our business bikes or walks into work, and about 45% carpool,” said Jason Mark, president of Gravity Switch, a Web-development company in Northampton. “It actually feels really good. One woman here says she’s so glad she doesn’t own a car. A year and a half without a car, but she has friends and neighbors who work in the same basic area.
“Another woman commutes in with her husband, which gives them an hour, round-trip, every day with each other,” he added. “Sometimes they take the motorcycle, sometimes the car. You can’t chat as much on a motorcycle, but it’s still good, quality time, and it’s hard to carve that out in your day.”
Mark bicycles to downtown Northampton from Florence every day, about a two-mile ride, but he deflects credit for creating a green-commuting culture at Gravity Switch. “I think the reality is that we’ve all looked at it and come to the same decision from different perspectives: personal lifestyle, the environment, good health … those are all good reasons to do this.”
Anderson agreed, when asked why green commuting seems to be on the rise. “The easy answer is that it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “There’s no downside.”

Hitch a Ride
MassMutual is one of about 400 companies in Massachusetts that have developed alternative-commuting programs in conjunction with MassRIDES, a program of the Mass. Department of Transportation.
“We have local coordinators working with companies to help them with their plans,” said Jennifer Solomon, marketing manager at MassRIDES. “If they’re looking to be more sustainable, we can show how transportation fits into that and what they can do to enhance their programs. And certainly, companies with parking issues also want to cut down on the cars coming to the workplace.”
In addition to incentive programs for carpooling and bicycling, the agency offers an Emergency Ride Home program for carpoolers who need to leave work suddenly, and a Safe Routes to School program, which aims to identify opportunities for young people to walk and bike to school.
“Our main goal is to reduce congestion and improve air quality around the state, and we do that in several ways,” Solomon told BusinessWest. One is a national ride-sharing rewards program that MassRides has adopted. NuRide, as it’s called, is a free service supported by sponsors who provide special offers — restaurant coupons, retailer discounts, event tickets, etc. — in exchange for walking or biking to work, carpooling, vanpooling, even telecommuting.
The idea, again, is to reduce global warming, traffic congestion, and energy consumption, Solomon said. “We really want to promote green travel and also reward folks who are already going green.”
MassRIDES offers plenty of statistics showing why such incentives resonate. For example, the average Massachusetts household spends more on transportation than it does on food. According to AAA, commuting to work by car costs about $54 in total vehicle expenses per 100 miles.
That’s a lot of cars to fuel, maintain, and repair; according to a government survey, of the 3 million people who commute in Massachusetts each day, more than 73% drive to work alone.
Meanwhile, according to a 2005 report from the Texas Transportation Institute, the total annual cost of traffic congestion in the U.S. is $63 billion, which takes into account 3.5 billion hours of delay and 5.7 billion of wasted fuel, as well as the loss of worker productivity.
On the other hand, biking or carpooling to work “is a very positive part of our lives, from spending time with family and friends to being generous to the environment,” Mark said. “People always say, ‘I’ve got this commute,’ and they roll their eyes. But for us, the commute is a much more positive thing.”
Mark used to live within walking distance of Gravity Switch and started biking after he moved a little farther away. “The only thing that’s changed in my life is that I dropped 10 pounds and kept if off without going to the gym. With a family of four, it’s hard to go to the gym; this way, [fitness] just becomes part of my lifestyle.”
The health benefits of bicycling are well-reported. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asserts that the gradual replacement of walking and cycling in the U.S. with driving, even on short errands, has contributed to an increase in heart disease and obesity. Indeed, according to the CDC, about a third of Americans are obese, and another third fall into the overweight range.
Those trends appear to start young. According to MassRIDES, 42% of students walked or bicycled to school in 1969, but that figure was down to 16% in 2001. Meanwhile, the percentage of overweight children ages 6-11 tripled from 1976 to 2004.
The benefits of hoofing it or pedaling extend beyond obesity prevention, however. According to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, walking to work may cause a 20% decrease in the risk of developing breast cancer and a 30% drop in the risk of heart disease, as well as cutting the chance of developing diabetes in half.

Electric Company
For those who work too far from home to walk or bike, one way to combat high gas prices is buying an electric car, but their use is not yet widespread in the Commonwealth, in part because upfront costs tend to be much higher than for comparable cars with conventional engines.
They haven’t caught on yet at MassMutual, either, even though the company installed charging stations on its campus after a few employees inquired about it. So far those ports don’t get much use, but Anderson thinks it’s only a matter of time.
“It’s the chicken-and-egg idea,” he said. “If we don’t have the equipment, people will be less encouraged to buy the cars. So it’s a small investment from us, so that, when people buy the vehicles, they can charge them here at no cost to them.”
Meanwhile, the company’s on-site amenities at its Springfield and Enfield campuses include day-care facilities, gift stores, pharmacies, a credit union, fitness centers, walk-in medical clinics, dry cleaning, shoe and jewelry repair, tailoring, hair-salon and barber services, and more — all of which allows employees to scale back the time they spend driving around to errands. The net savings? More than 240,000 gallons of gas a year, along with the decreased emissions.
Such efforts add up, Solomon said, to make Massachusetts a cleaner place, and perhaps a less stressful one each rush hour.
“Employers are looking for these things,” she told BusinessWest. “Becoming more sustainable is a major motivator these days.”
Putting a few bucks in gas money — or more than a few — back in the wallet certainly doesn’t hurt. After all, there’s more than one way to go green.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com

Alteris Renewables Sells the Public on Clean and Green Electricity

Ron French calls it “an elegant solution to an horrific problem.”
He’s talking about solar energy, and specifically referencing the benefits that a homeowner can expect to recoup, both financially and on a higher plane, from a switch to clean and green power.
French is the President of the Wilton, Conn.-based Alteris Renewables, a company that is steadily harnessing the Northeast market’s demands for solar and wind-powered electricity. By its current name it’s just a handful of years old, but the sky is the limit for this company that recently was named to Inc. 500’s 5,000 list as the fastest-growing renewable-energy company in the Northeast, with 1,000% growth since 2005. And that pace isn’t dimming, either.
The path that has brought Alteris to this sunny spot includes several formerly successful, independent solar installers. French himself was formerly the president of Solar Works, out of Montpelier, Vt. Meanwhile, in this area, one of the first solar businesses in Western Mass., Kosmo Solar in Springfield, merged with Solar Wrights out of Rhode Island. Riverside Partners, a Boston-area private equity firm, bought the managing interests in these firms and merged them. A new star, Alteris, was born.
While Solar Wrights had been focused on the residential market, becoming the leading solar provider for New England, Solar Works was the dominant force in commercial, larger-scale installations. Puma, Timex, United Natural Foods, Hannaford’s Grocery Chains, and many other corporate headquarters were outfitted by Solar Works in the years following that company’s beginnings in 1980.
Since that merger, Alteris has kept pace by adding two New York-based businesses to its ranks — Albany-based Renewable Power Systems and ISI Solar in New York City. In addition, French said, some organic growth — how he differentiated hiring new people to enter new geographic markets — has brought Alteris to both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
So, how does a business that is primarily based on solar installations for homeowners and small to mid-sized commercial buildings chart this kind of enviable growth? As they say in real estate, “location, location, location.”
The Northeast is an extremely attractive market for solar, French told BusinessWest. “There are high electric rates, a knowledgeable population in both residents and business owners,” he said. “People are predisposed to proactive environmental solutions. All the right factors are here.
“You couple that with very favorable state incentives, and this is an incredible market for solar demand,” he added.
The Commonwealth is one of the nation’s leaders in sponsoring financial initiatives for solar power. According to French, “Gov. Patrick has been very pro-renewable energy and has set up a program to help fund it in a bigger way than ever, to help reduce the payback time for commercial customers and allow for third-party investors to make a ROI if they own the solar arrays and sell the power back to the landowner.”
Perhaps the most famous of these third-party investors is called Sun Run, and because of the state incentives here and a handful of other states, originally California, solar power primarily for homeowners has never been more accessible.

The Case for Solar
Andreas Schmid is a solar-energy specialist for Alteris whose beat is Western Mass. Sun Run has kept him “very, very busy” since it began offering its services in April 2009, but he was able to sit down with BusinessWest to explain just how this program is helping to fuel his company’s bright future.
Most people call the Sun Run program a “solar lease,” he explained. That company, a partner with Alteris in this venture, installs at little to no cost the solar panels for homeowners or for-profit businesses (the case for nonprofits is a bit more difficult to sell, because of available tax incentives), and sells the electricity back to the property owner at a fixed cost — far less expensive than their prior electrical rates. Schmid calls this a “win for all parties involved.
“You pay nothing for the system, it’s maintained and monitored for you, it takes away all of the issues and questions people have with solar — the ‘how do I know if it works, will it produce enough energy to offset my investment?’ questions,” he explained.
“And it gives people more comfort financially,” he continued, “immediately giving them savings from what they had been buying from their power company. It’s clean energy, no emissions, no politics involved in fuel, no paying our money to foreign countries that might not like us. No transmission loss, or lines that trees can fall on. It helps the community because it’s providing local jobs. Also, the panels might be produced in the U.S.”
Some very basic elements need to exist for potential Sun Run customers, he said, meaning good credit and a reasonably south-facing spot on the property, either a roof or space for a ground array. He called the term ‘solar lease’ a bit incorrect, though.
“It’s more a power-purchase agreement,” he said. “If you leased a car, you’re paying a fixed monthly payment, and that’s that. A power-purchase agreement is more like buying the miles you’re using, rather than a fixed monthly cost.”
In the two years since the Sun Run program came to Massachusetts, Schmid said, homeowners are finally understanding that a traditional obstacle to solar — a perceived prohibitive cost — is finally being surmounted. At this time, 100 homes in Western Mass. are sun-powered, and he expects that number only to go higher, exponentially.
When asked why, he simply said, “easy.”
Counting off a list, he went on, “coal-mine disasters, oil in the Gulf of Mexico, Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan, rise in the cost of electricity from energy companies this year, a rise in the cost of gasoline. With Sun Run, you have a fixed price for your electricity that is significantly less than what your power company will be charging you.”
But, he added, “just general awareness is increasing. People are hearing about this from their friends; I’ve got 100 households that are thrilled with these systems, so their friends, neighbors, their town, everyone around them, people are driving by and seeing it on roofs all over the place. People start researching online, hearing ads on the radio.”
And with a new marketing director at the corporate level, Amy Bowman, Schmid said that Alteris is making the most of what dollars the company spends to spread the word. She is responsible for the creation of a referral program, and he credits this as a good example of word-of-mouth advertising in the age of social networking.
“When a residential customer refers us to someone, and it turns into a site visit, just me coming and looking at the house, they get a $25 Visa gift card,” he said. “We call it our Spread Solar program. They go on our Web site and enter their friend’s name and e-mail address. If one of those visits becomes an agreement, the referring party gets a $200 gift card. So the way it generally works out, for every three people someone refers, one becomes a client. There’s $275.”
Google Earth is used in-house to determine the viability of potential site visits, Schmid said, and he then receives these notices via his Blackberry to dovetail with other visits he had planned in specific geographical locations.
“This style of marketing is so much better than spending money on print advertising that people might skim past,” he said, adding that this referral program is spreading the company “virally.”
But, of course, that word of mouth is only as successful as the customer is happy. And it is here, Schmid said, that Alteris has no worries.
“We’re dedicated to the customer. When customers get an installation, and they like what we’ve done, well, it’s pretty much everyone,” he said, adding that the combined expertise of all those solar firms that became Alteris offers decades of experience. “The company has figured out how to do it right after 30 years. One of the original founders is still working in the engineering department.”

Lighting the Way
French said Alteris hopes to sell and install upward of 20 megawatts of power this year to about 1,000 homes in New England, New York, and New Jersey, in addition to its business clients. “Those numbers may not mean a lot to people,” he said, “and while that may still be small, it does represent tremendous growth. In 2005, our plan for the year in 2006 was 50 homes, and about half a megawatt.”
He said that the paradigm by which homeowners and businesses see solar as too expensive is shifting, but that there is still a fair amount of what he called “evangelizing” that needs to take place. While Sun Run is an incredible opportunity for homeowners, one goal is to focus on larger institutions as well.
“However, unless the financials work, companies will have a hard time selling this technology to their shareholders,” he added. “Here in Massachusetts, we are on the right track.”
As an example of a business taking the initiative to employ solar and renewable energy into its operations, he cited County Curtains in Lee, which installed a 140kW array on the roof of its facility. “They’re taking that longer-term view rather than simply paying their electric bill every month,” he said.
“Again, it has a lot to do with public education,” he continued. It’s only within the last few years that people will admit to the ‘inconvenient truth’ of the environmental dangers of coal and other forms of electrical generation. “But without getting too political, here’s a technological solution that offers some hope. You can produce clean energy, and you can use electricity and power responsibly.
“As I say to my salespeople,” he told BusinessWest, “go to the homeowners and ask them how big a check they’d like you to write them. Because we’re not actually, truly selling something, in the classic sense. If I was selling you swimming pools, for instance, there’s a cost, and you may not ever get that money back. But in the case of solar, you’re going to see the money every month. You can do the right thing for the environment and save money.
“That’s a pretty compelling argument,” he went on, “and all those old questions about solar sort of go away at that point.”

A chart of the region’s renewable-energy companies

RenewableEnergyCompaniesBW0611b