Let’s Get Joe the Investor Invested in the Green Economy

Written on 01/26 at 03:46 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here.

One of the great things about the green jobs movement is that it brings to the fore the importance of getting a diverse group of constituents benefiting from and arguing for a green economy.  As a result, more and more people are feeling invested in this new economy, because they see how it will be good for them, their family and their community.  After all, it’s a lot easier to push through legislation that will support renewable energy, for instance, if unions, solar installers, utilities, community organizations and non-profits are all in favor. 

Green Collar Jobs Are Great--Now How About Green Collar Investments?
Despite this promising trend, there remains a significant obstacle to getting a broader range of people invested in all things green: a lack of green investment opportunities that 1) have a reasonable, secure return on investment and 2) provide tangible environmental and/or social benefits.  Sure, venture capitalists are investing in clean tech like crazy, green mutual funds are springing up, and myriad publicly traded companies are working on environmentally friendly technologies.  But for Joe or Jane the investor--that is, a person with some money she would like to invest, but who can’t afford a high-profile money manager and doesn’t know a whole lot about investing--these opportunities are either difficult to understand or hard to find out about.

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Dream Forcefully, Speak Loudly, Act Boldly

Written on 01/14 at 02:09 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: philosophy

As I like to do from time to time, I just indulged my longing for inspiration by re-reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s brilliant Letter From a Birmingham Jail, and watching the I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech, which he gave the day before being assassinated.  My heart is aflame with the greatness that spilled forth from his fingers and his vocal chords, and my mind has been set free upon the vast web of justice that weaves its way through the crowd of injustice and indifference that fills the hallways and stairways of history.  And as my mind takes that circuitous and precipitous journey I am inclined to ponder the powerful and untapped potential of language, the way in which audacious metaphors, wild, jagged, irreverent intonations and history-laden gesticulations can cut through suffering, can alter the current that carries with it the status quo.

I disdain the trepidation with which most speak, the reluctance to invoke gods, myths, great men and women, poems, stories, hymns and legends.  I cannot tolerate the assertion that poverty and pollution are inevitable or unsolvable.  I laugh at the thought that idealism is only for the young.  I want to shout with the loudspeakers of my lungs that anything is possible, that a dogged, unwavering passion for Truth and Justice can overcome a tsunami of hatred or ignorance.  I weep at the words “I can’t,” and feel bliss when I hear the phrase “I have an idea. . .”

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How Access to Information Can Tackle Poverty and Pollution

Written on 01/11 at 06:18 PM by Andy Posner 2 comments

Filed under: philosophy Huffington Post environment

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here

In the Spring of 2007 I had the opportunity to spend a month working with my good friend and colleague T.H. Culhane, the founder of Solar CITIES, an NGO that builds solar water heaters and biogas generators in the slums of Cairo, Egypt.  What is most innovative about what Solar CITIES does is that they build the systems almost entirely out of recycled materials and garbage--things like discarded butter tins, plastic barrels and metal.  At the same time, they are building a cottage industry, training local residents to design and build affordable renewable energy systems.  It is one of the first green job training programs in Egypt, and the only one focusing on slum communities. 

T.H. is one of those rare social entrepreneurs whose boundless energy, commitment and intelligence inspires everyone around him and attracts attention to his cause.  Yet to me the most striking aspect of the trip was noticing the way in which T.H. leveraged his access to information (he is also a PhD candidate in urban planning at UCLA) to enable Cairenes to see the benefits of his systems, and then to come up with better, more efficient designs themselves.  Carrying his iPod around like an instrument for social change, instead of merely a toy for the privileged, he would show videos and drawings of solar thermal systems to carpenters, plumbers and community leaders.  Eager to benefit their communities, these individuals quickly saw the upsides of solar hot water.  After all, most Cairenes currently heat their home in a way that is dangerous (due to fumes and the possibility of explosion) and expensive, whereas solar hot water is reliable, silent and clean (and if fossil fuels weren’t massively subsidized in Egypt, it would also be the cheapest form of energy in “The City of the Sun").  They immediately began coming up with innovations--finding more durable and affordable materials, refining and even refuting the designs of so-called experts, and inventing brand new manufacturing techniques.

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Coal is Dead: Coal Ash Spill Yet Another Reason to Switch to Renewable Energy

Written on 12/26 at 12:51 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: environment Renewable Energy News

image
Image Credit: J. Miles Carey/Knoxville News Sentinel, via Associated Press

Coal Is An Awful Energy Source
For all the efforts of the coal industry to make it seem like it’s possible for there to be such a thing as “clean coal” (Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection has been running some great ads dispelling that myth), yesterday’s disaster in Tennessee has demonstrated yet another way in which coal is a nasty, dirty, awful source of energy. What happened was the following, as described by the New York Times: a “breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape.” The ash is actually fly ash, “a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity” that “contain[s] significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations.” This isn’t the first time such a breach has occurred, though it is probably the worst, having destroyed 15 homes and released 2.6 million cubic yards of toxic heavy metals.  So add toxic sludge to air pollution, climate change, danger to miners, and mountaintop removal to the dangers posed by coal mining and the burning of coal to generate electricity.  Isn’t that enough to convince America to switch to renewable energy?

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Winning a Grant, and Other Exciting News

Written on 12/24 at 08:52 PM by Andy Posner 1 comments

Filed under: Business News

Winning a $500 Grant
Two days ago, as I was sitting in my apartment and looking out the window at the snow piled on the branches and walkways of Providence, I received a call informing me that I had won a $500 grant from dosomething.org for The Capital Good Fund.  Every week, Do Something selects a social entrepreneur that is under the age of 24 to win a $500 grant.  I applied, along with the rest of the Capital Good Fund team, several months ago, and I had long ago forgotten about the grant.  Although the money itself isn’t much--it will provide about half of a citizenship loan--it also provides our project with great exposure, gives us access to more networking, and provides us with additional, and much needed, technical assistance.  Receiving the grant also gave me a boost of confidence as I enter a very busy of time during which I start a company, launch a non-profit and write my masters thesis.

Incorporating The Capital Good Group, Inc
In other exciting news, Mike and I finally incorporated our environmental consulting company last Friday.  The Capital Good Group, Inc., will officially be a corporation in the state of Rhode Island as of January 1, 2009.  The reason why we finally decided to incorporate is that it’s becoming increasingly clear that a lot of people are getting into the game, and we don’t want to be left behind.  Specifically, we found out that the people in Berkeley, California, who came up with the bond model--wherein the up-front cost of doing efficiency or renewable energy upgrades is covered by a low-interest loan from the City, and the loan is paid back in the form of a property tax add-on equal to or less than the savings from the installation--started their own company.  The company, Renewable Funding, LLC, helps municipalities implement the bond model.  Well, I saw an article saying that the model, if implemented nationwide, has the potential to be worth $240 billion, and at the moment there is only one company doing it.  Hence the urgency to get it on the game.

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Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

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A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

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Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

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