Clean Power Planet: Fighting Climate Change

Frank Morris is a former coal miner who was retrained as a residential energy specialist through the New Energy Intern program. This is the third episode in a three-part series about the program, which helps out of work coal miners train for jobs in energy efficiency. Frank now works for the Appalachia Heat Squad and the Housing Development Alliance.

The New Energy Intern program is run by MACED  (the Mountain Association for Commu...

This is the second episode in a three part series about out-of-work coal miners in Eastern Kentucky that are being retrained to do energy efficiency work through the New Energy Intern program.  It was created by the Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development or MACED. In the first episode of the series Rachel Norton from MACED told us about the program.

Today we’re talking to John Craft. He’s spent a lot of his wor...

This is a very exciting episode. It's the first in a three part series about a cool internship program that retrains out-of-work coal miners for energy efficiency jobs. All three episodes were recorded at the historic Appalshop media center in Whitesburg, Kentucky, right in the middle of the Appalachian coalfields.

Our guest for this first episode in the series is Rachel Norton. She's not an out-of-work coal miner. She'...

This is our second conversation with Dave Renné. He has such a wide range of experience in renewable energy that we invited him back for another interview. He has focused much of his career on measuring and analyzing the amount of solar energy that renewable energy developers around the world can expect. That’s important when they are designing solar installations and they need to know how many panels they will need and how much el...

Our guests today are Chris Carter and Jack Martin, also known as Solar Jim and Sustainable Jack. Chris is a performing artist and sculptor with 20 years of experience designing and installing standalone power systems. Jack is a professor in sustainable technologies at Appalachian State University, and together they’re pioneers of DIY wind turbines and co-hosts of their own radio show, The Home Power Hour, where they discuss homemad...

Ben Bunker is the CEO of the Global BrightLight Foundation, which provides access to affordable solar-powered lights to people living without access to electricity. Many of the people that they help live in very rural areas. They rely on kerosene, candles or even wood chips for light. BrightLight’s vision is a world with universal access to clean, sustainable, and affordable energy.

Ben: You know, those of us who have had the power...

Paul Bony has worked in several areas of the energy industry. At the moment he’s a Senior Program Manager for energy efficiency firm CLEAResult, Board president for Solar Energy International and a board member of the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association. He has also worked in the electric and gas utility industries. Maybe that’s why he’s excited about clean electrification. It combines everything that he’s done in his...

Sandra Begay grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, near the Navajo reservation. Her grandmother lived on the reservation and her father and grandfather served on the tribal council. Sandra remembers going to her grandmother’s house when it was first hooked up to the grid. The family got to watch as her grandmother turned on the porch light. That was only twenty years ago. Roughly 18,000 households in the Navajo nation are still without po...

Microgrids have a dirty past. They were once dependent on diesel generation, one of the dirtiest forms of power generation. Even with the addition of solar or wind it was difficult to cut down on diesel consumption since the generators had to be online for backup. Now with the addition of storage it’s becoming possible to cut down on diesel dependence and bring clean and resilient power to isolated communities and critical operatio...

Mary Marshall studied journalism in college and then jumped right into a career in television news, working on NBC’s Dateline and Nightly News with Lester Holt. But she became disillusioned and wanted to do something more meaningful. So she took a walk to clear her head. Actually she hiked 500 miles of the Appalachian trail by herself. When she got off the trail she signed up for AmeriCorps and discovered Solar Energy International...

We’re very excited to announce that we’re partnering with the American Solar Energy Society for a series of interviews from their Solar 2018 conference in Boulder, Colorado. In this episode I’m talking with ASES Chair Lucas Dixon about the organization’s history and vision.

ASES was created in 1954 by researchers at Bell Labs that had discovered the photovoltaic effect of silicon. They quickly understood the potential impact of pho...

Tim Darst is the Executive Director at Kentucky Interfaith Power and Light, an organization that’s mobilizing a religious response to climate change. They offer Creation Care Consulting to help churches choose the best options for getting started with conservation, efficiency and renewable energy.

Tim had a comfortable career in accounting when he had a “lightbulb” moment that took him down a different path.

I had a big epiphany wh...

Blake Jones was an Ernst and Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2010. You could even describe him as a serial-entrepreneur. But it would be more accurate to say that he is a serial cooperative co-founder. He co-founded Namasté Solar, an employee-owned cooperative and certified B-Corp that has installed over 5,000 solar electric systems. He co-founded Amicus Solar Cooperative, a purchasing cooperative and certified B-Corp that’s de...

Lane Boldman is not your stereotypical lobbyist. She is Executive Director of the Kentucky Conservation Committee (KCC), an organization that tracks legislation that impacts Kentucky’s environment and natural resources. In the current political climate it’s a tough job. Every year there are a large number of bills designed to roll back or weaken environmental protections. KCC analyzes every piece of legislation that could have a po...

Harvard professor and former Washington policymaker Meghan O’Sullivan was named the 2017 “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society for her book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power and for her New York Times commentary “How Trump Can Harness the U.S. Energy Boom.”

That’s just the most recent line on her incredibly impressive resume. A couple of the highpoint...

Steve Ricketts is a partner in Solar Energy Solutions, the largest and oldest company in Kentucky’s fledgling solar installation industry. Steve and his partner Matt Partymiller and many other solar installers have been forced to drop everything and fight utility-sponsored anti-net metering bills during the 2017 and 2018 legislative sessions. Kentucky is ranked 48th for solar friendly policies by SolarPowerRocks.com. In fact the on...