Environmental Engineering Reference
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big collective action, which is to pass legislation for Clean Energy Victory Bonds. So at
the house parties they also talk about this proud American tradition that could be applied
to the fight against Dirty Energy. This is a great example of how starting people on the
roadtotheSolarAscentcanalsoengagethemintheongoingworkthatneedstobedone.
Billy Parrish and Dan Rosen: Crowdfunding Solar
Another exciting Sungevity partner is a company called Solar Mosaic, which we helped
incubate in 2011. It was founded by a couple of characters, entrepreneurs Billy Parrish
and Dan Rosen, who may well revolutionize not just the rooftop but the very way we
make money and save for our retirement. The company is called Solar Mosaic because
it's a platform for crowd-funding of solar projects. You can go to
www.solarmosaic.com
andfor$25buyasolar“tile” inaproject youlike—one investor mightwanttobuyatile
for a local church, for example, while another might choose her tile on a sports center.
Over the life of that solar system, your money is repaid and then some; in other words,
you own a share in a productive asset on a roof somewhere and make a good return on
the investment. And when I say “good return” I mean it because the value of the return
generated by a solar system is around 6 percent—certainly better than the 1 or 2 percent
that you might earn with a CD or similar investment instrument.
What sparked this pair to build this brilliant business was a common cause: antipathy
to coal-fired power, which they got to know firsthand working as energy activists on the
Navajo reservation in Arizona. For those who don't know the history, the Navajo Na-
tion has been the site of some of the largest strip-mining operations ever seen, mostly at
the direction of Peabody Energy Corporation. And most of the coal was burned either in
the Mohave generating station in Laughlin, Nevada, or at the Navajo generating station
near Page, Arizona, which in turn shipped the electricity via transmission cables to Los
Angeles, Phoenix, or Las Vegas, some thousands of miles away. Strip mining in Navajo
country left it a mess, with the land seriously degraded and water sources fouled.
As if this weren't crazy enough—to be burning coal to boil water to generate steam
to drive a turbine to create electricity to sell thousands of miles away—the way the coal
got from the mine to one of the power plants was an abomination: the power company
created what it called a “slurry,” which means it powdered the coal close to the mine,
mixed it with water, and then pumped it through a tube to Nevada, where it would be
dried out and burned. This depleted the water supply. Water in Arizona is somewhat of
a scarce commodity, and on the Navajo Nation it's sacred. Through a spirited campaign
over many years, the community was able to stop this madness and dismantle the Mo-
have Power Station in Laughlin. (You can even watch the implosion of the smokestack
