In this episode of Climate Positive, hosts Gil Jenkins and Daniela Shapiro sit down with Tom Hunt, CEO, and Bret Labadie, CFO, of Pivot Energy—a Colorado-based renewable energy provider and IPP that develops, finances, builds, owns, and manages solar and energy storage projects. As an ECP portfolio company and Certified B Corporation, Pivot Energy seeks to leverage its renewable expertise to deliver innovative solutions that help businesses and communities achieve meaningful decarbonization. Tom and Bret discuss Pivot Energy’s growth, the rapidly evolving community solar market, innovative financing strategies, and the power of corporate partnerships. They also explore the expanding role of distributed solar in the clean energy transition and what lies ahead for the industry.
In this episode of Climate Positive, hosts Gil Jenkins and Daniela Shapiro sit down with Tom Hunt, CEO, and Bret Labadie, CFO, of Pivot Energy—a Colorado-based renewable energy provider and IPP that develops, finances, builds, owns, and manages solar and energy storage projects. As an ECP portfolio company and Certified B Corporation, Pivot Energy seeks to leverage its renewable expertise to deliver innovative solutions that help businesses and communities achieve meaningful decarbonization. Tom and Bret discuss Pivot Energy’s growth, the rapidly evolving community solar market, innovative financing strategies, and the power of corporate partnerships. They also explore the expanding role of distributed solar in the clean energy transition and what lies ahead for the industry.
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Chad Reed: I'm Chad Reed.
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Gil Jenkins: I'm Gil Jenkins.
Guy Van Syckle: I’m Guy Van Syckle.
Chad: This is Climate Positive.
Tom Hunt: big buyers of energy in particular big corporate customers are all of a sudden becoming much more hands on with their involvement in the energy sector. And that's hitting community solar in a wave just like it's hitting everything else.
Gil: After a few months off to build up the bank of episodes we’re back with our first show of the year. Today I’m joined by my colleague Daniela Shapiro for a conversation with Tom Hunt, CEO of Pivot Energy, and Bret Labadie, CFO of Pivot Energy. Pivot is a leading community solar developer and a new HASI client doing impactful and exciting work. We’ve got a great lineup of episodes for 2025, and just a quick note: we’ll now be releasing hem every 3 weeks. So if you enjoy this show, please do us a favor and leave a rating and a comment on Apple and Spotify, which really helps us spread the word. So without any further ado, here’s our conversation with Tom and Brett from Pivot Energy.
Gil: [00:00:00] Tom and Bret, welcome to Climate Positive.
Tom: Yeah, thanks for having us. Excited to be here.
Gil: Tom, why don't we start with you. So Pivot Energy was founded in 2009 to build onsite solar. Can you talk about the company's journey and maybe sprinkle in some of your own background leading up to the company as well?
Yeah, the company's had a few different eras, a few different chunks of history, so it's worth talking through 'em. It was founded in 2009, founded in St. Louis, Missouri. And did quite a few small commercial projects then. So you are talking 25 kw installations on the rooftops and premises of big corporate customers and you know, 25 kw projects were big back then.
So that was pretty compelling. There's a few different kind of ups and downs in that era as anybody who's been around the solar coaster for a while knows that was pretty typical for solar companies back then. 2016 though is kind of the next big. Iteration in the company's history. And that's when the company started getting into community solar and also started migrating a lot of the team and eventually the headquarters to Colorado.[00:01:00]
And those two were really linked in that they recognized Colorado was the epicenter of community solar back then being the first state to start community solar. And so that's where the talent was and a lot of the opportunity was. And so the company shifted to become a community solar developer based here in Denver, which is where we are now.
That actually matches some of my history as well. I originally was a chemist, but then got into energy policy through the Colorado Governor's Energy Office back when some of that original legislation with Community Solar was being created. And then from there I worked for a different company, really the nation's first community solar company, and then came over to Pivot in 2018 and took over the CEO role in 2018.
That 2018 time was also another key shift for the company. A lot of the core of the company's leadership came over in 20 18, 20 19. That's when we started getting into more and more markets beyond Colorado and also launched our Sun Central customer management software and services [00:02:00] platform. So that's a lot of the background of the company.
From there we brought in ECP as our investors and equity owners in 2021 and shifted to become asset owners. In that era. And since then I've just been kind of fighting the good fight on that front for a few years now. And Brett and team have been raising a lot of capital with you all and others in that direction.
Yeah. Great. We're gonna follow up on a few of those pieces, but Brett, give us your story, how you came to pivot.
Bret: Yeah, so I actually spent the first. Decade in my career in traditional energy in oil and gas in Texas. And in 2015 I made the intentional switch to get into solar and landed here in Colorado, similar to what Tom described there, really surrounded by a lot of the folks that, that are leading pivot today.
So, you know, that was, we've seen a lot over the last 10 years, or at least from my perspective in community solar and DG more broadly. I think the perspective for me has always been, spending that first long [00:03:00] period of time in traditional energy and really seeing the financing available to more mature companies within the energy space.
And then jumping into, I. To community solar and DEG in 2015. It was very nascent structures and the ability to finance projects and really sponsors being able to raise money was just very early stage. So we've seen a tremendous amount of growth, both from a project finance standpoint, but also raising corporate finance.
But there's still such a long way to go. That's what really excites me. I mean, that's the future of this space is continuing to move up that maturity curb and get access to more and more efficient sources of capital to just continue to drive, you know what we all refer to here as the energy transition?
Daniela: That's great to hear. Obviously you have a wealth of experience in this space and have done a lot. Distributed energy has always something else to come to help with the scale, so, and I think the financing has also be a piece of like folks trying to figure that out to get to the next level of scale.
So can you give us some [00:04:00] examples of things you guys have done that has worked well and helped with scaling your business?
Bret: I think honestly some of the financing we just announced, with HASI and several other partners is something that's really exciting for us. It really marks a big step in the
In the direction that we all are excited to continue to take. And so just to take a step back and what that is, in November we announced a transaction Hasi on the preferred equity JV side and a large warehouse lending facility led by First Citizens Bank and Atlas. Sp you know, there, there's probably four or five structural elements of this transaction that are unique and the combination of all of them creates something
We believe is really innovative in the market. Some of those specific innovations relate to, operational flexibility when we're managing so many DG projects at once. Operational flexibility is so critical. It's inevitable that individual projects will get delayed or have issues in some capacity.
So having that operational [00:05:00] flexibility is really critical. So the way the warehouse debt structure, is designed, that is something that we're leaned into. And in addition to that. Relying on some of the portfolio versus individual project concepts from the borrowing based concept and other items.
That's really helped us a lot. . Just those structural innovations. So the other thing within the Warehouse, we have off-take flexibility. We've brought in, you know, we have a collection of banks, but we also brought in, private credit and that gives us a lot of options when it comes to, to takeout.
And again, this is something that we're just continuing to move up that maturity curve and get more optionality, both operationally and then how we finance that long-term debt. Then the structure of the HASI JV allows us to, sell tax credits directly to corporates. That's different than how this industry has really scaled in the past through use of tax equity.
So the combination of all those things really give us a lot of flexibility, and all of these pieces are designed very [00:06:00] specifically to work with each other. These aren't . Bespoke transactions that we have to go redo every year. These are designed to support a portfolio and each year we'll bring a new portfolio.
We'll basically replicate what we've already created and continue to, basically, this foundation now is a foundation we can scale the business on, and that is something that we're really excited about. From Pivot's perspective,
Tom: I'd just add, the operational flexibility that Brett mentions. It's certainly not the most glamorous thing to talk about, but it really is the most important issue for distributed.
Resource, we think. Yeah,
Daniela: Absolutely. Yeah.
Tom: That is the name of the aim is figure out how you are flexible enough to deliver. This large volume of projects that add up to a whole lot of capacity, but each have their own idiosyncrasies. So it's absolutely critical.
Daniela: Yeah. I was going to comment that it seems that there are a lot of pieces in putting this together, so you might think, wow, there's complexity there, but what that complexity is solving for, it's something that is replicable and creates this operational [00:07:00] efficiency that you can carry over a number of years.
So that's a good way to think about it.
Gil: Well, let's, let's dive into some of those eccentricities in the markets that you operate. So, as I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, pivot Energy is currently active in 13 community solar markets, if that's right. Sounds right. Alright, so my research is correct.
So talk about both some of the unique challenges and opportunities in expanding community solar into these. Markets historically and going forward, how are you thinking about that? And Tom, I'll ask you to answer it from Pivot's perspective, but also you have a unique role and responsibility as chair of the Coalition for Community Solar Access, which as he just proudly joined and very impressed with that national coalition of.
130 businesses and nonprofits who are pushing for the advocacy required to continue to expand community solar. So however you want to answer it, but give us a flavor of industry-wide, uh, as well as pivot unique experience in the markets. [00:08:00]
Tom: So maybe the pivot unique piece. I'll just start with, we're at the point now where we're constantly evaluating which markets to enter and exit and I think that's natural because energy procurement comes and goes in waves and the needs are different.
As the different state markets evolve. It's the nature of being in the United States where energy is so fragmented and really driven at a state level. And so that's a healthy thing. How always be entering and exiting markets from a nationwide perspective and a community solar perspective.
You know, at least my opinion that is, may not be, can't represent that this is the official view of CCSA or anything but my perspective from working with C-C-S-A-I. Is that community solar is facing the same challenges and evolution in terms of how it grows as the entire energy market is. And so if you think about that, really the two primary drivers happening right now are the constraints on the grid and how we solve the need for delivering huge amounts of new energy and huge amounts of replacement infrastructure when it's so hard [00:09:00] to build transmission.
So that's challenge number one. And then the second issue that's really an opportunity is the fact that big buyers of energy in particular big corporate customers are all of a sudden becoming much more hands on with their involvement in the energy sector. And that's hitting community solar in a wave just like it's hitting everything else.
Community solar for a lot of the past decade has been about how do we create an opportunity for a broader customer set to participate. The shift in the energy transition that's happening because of the need to fight climate change. And so that's a wonderful thing. Community solar still serves that purpose, but all of a sudden we're seeing there's these new factors in terms of serving the grid as a whole in a really constrained environment, and also being able to respond to big corporate buyers and the demands that they have.
And so community solar. Can meet that to some degree, but also needs to evolve to meet that, right. And so we need to become resources that are more [00:10:00] dispatchable and more oriented to serve the needs of the grid as opposed to just delivering electrons. And we may need to deliver on higher volume that comes with bigger portfolios of projects.
The projects themselves may not be bigger because the distributed community scale projects we're building now are the ones that are able to circumvent the transmission constraints. But we need to deliver a lot more of 'em because the demands are so much bigger. And so the confluence of all those factors is driving different market opportunities than maybe we would've been pursuing a decade ago.
And I mean that both for pivot and for community Solar as a whole. It's also driving different policy mechanisms, and I'm happy to dig into that in terms of kind of where I see some of those opportunities popping up and what they look like. But I think it looks different than it has for the past few years.
Gil: Sure, yeah. Why don't you give us a few examples. I know it state by state, SRecs markets, carve outs and RPS, but if there's any other specifics you wanna call out?
Tom: Sure. So
for the past poll, five years or so, I think the community solar market in particular has gotten used to running [00:11:00] legislation in partnership with local organizations to create a community solar market in a new state that hasn't had it before.
Really, it's trying to replicate the same playbook. So take the model legislation that worked in New York or that worked in Minnesota or worked in Illinois and apply it to California or Missouri or Georgia or Iowa or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or whatever. And I think there will, I. Still be some of those opportunities, but I think more opportunity in the future will take different forms.
And so it may be in states that already have done quite a bit of community scale procurement and maybe in new states, but it's looking to say, okay, what resources are needed? Is it standalone storage? Is it solar plus storage? Is it projects that are serving low income customers? Is it the ability to deploy a whole bunch of projects at once and sell most of the offtake to corporate partners that are locating new?
Data centers and factories in the States. Those are enormous opportunities, right? That's tremendously exciting, but it's a [00:12:00]different type of opportunity. I think we as the market, you know, as the drivers of the market, the developers, the asset owners, the financiers, we gotta wrap our minds around that.
We gotta figure out how to do that. We also need to work with different policy makers and speak a different language. That's more about how we meet. The overall updated needs and less simply about access for customers.
Daniela: So Tom, it seems that the opportunity and the challenge with Community Solar is that the entire renewable energy industry, it's very dependent on like federal policy in some ways.
But Community Solar also is very dependent on local support. And what that does is like it diversifies a little bit in terms of the federal, like a reliance on the federal . Piece of it, but it also creates this multitude of markets that once needs to understand and follow and et cetera. So Brad, I would assume that for financing, it has an implication in terms of like people having to get up to speed with a new market that comes up or be more interested in financing certain [00:13:00] markets that they're already familiar with.
How do you navigate that dynamic?
Bret: Yeah, I think this goes back to the prior point that this is . Ultimately the biggest, most endearing trait of distributed generation is we finance these in portfolios, and the portfolio with diversification across different markets has a de-risking element to it. And so traditionally.
Every individual project would be underwritten very specifically and for good reason. That's, project finance started with financing individual large scale projects. As we have matured, you know, as an industry, but also with, some of these financing structures, we are trying to lean more and more into the broader portfolio, acknowledging that yes, there are different
Elements to each underlying market. But at the end of the day, they're all relatively similar. You can break these things down into cash flows, you know, op, I mean, there's very basic components of each of these. And yes, some of these are a bit different in how the rec works or how [00:14:00] the program term works.
But at the end of the day, when you combine multiple markets, create that diversification, we believe it's a more de-risked portfolio for both the developer asset owner and the financiers.
Daniela: And we are seeing the program design starting to converge, or you're seeing like a lot of states reinventing the wheel as they go, as they create new programs.
Bret: No, I think similar to what Tom said, a lot of times it's the same playbook that is being used for new markets. I would say they're much more similar than they are different.
Tom: I do think in the next few years we're gonna see . Another round though of types of programs as it becomes more about being dispatchable, meeting the grids, need energy storage and or corporate partners being
The solar or the biggest share of the offtake. And so those may also then start to look the same, but they may look different than the community solar programs that we've been developing for the past few years.
Gil: It's a good segue. You alluded to some of the corporate off-takers and the differences there from a few years ago.
Can you talk about the big announcement that you [00:15:00] had with Microsoft? I think it was in August of last year. This is a 20 year agreement with Microsoft to develop . 500 megawatts of new community scale solar across the US At the time. You wrote on LinkedIn that this marks, quote, one of the proudest moments of your tenure, and you described this as an impact driven collaboration that supports both Pivots and Microsoft's commitments to maximize environmental and social benefits, et cetera.
Please just expand on what clearly was a transformational deal with one of the largest buyers of renewable energy and how you're thinking about that.
Tom: Yeah, Nick, thanks for asking. We are tremendously excited about it. So just to give the basics, it's a partnership for up to 500 megawatts ac so, you know, call it six fifty seven hundred megawatts DC of solar capacity at Community Scale, and Microsoft is agreed to be the wreck offtaker for all of these projects.
That all meet a defined bucket of characteristics. These projects can be any that reach [00:16:00] commercial operations over the next four and a half years or so. You know, it gives it forward development and procurement lens that allows us to plan ahead and also allows Microsoft to know they have with all projects coming in.
Really importantly, these are projects that are all designed to have a really high degree of impact on the communities that they work in. Positive impact. And there's a few different buckets of impact that we've agreed on that we can provide in developing and operating these projects. Whether that's benefiting low income customers or job training, or a few other things.
And that was very intentional by Microsoft and very intentional by pivot as well. That was what brought us together. It was. Our aligned values in wanting to see projects that deliver that really high degree of impact because we believe that is the key ultimately to scaling distributed energy, clean energy to the degree we need to fight climate change and to power the grid of the future is we have to do it in a way that provides benefits and positive impact to communities that we work in.
We think distributed projects have a better ability to do [00:17:00] that because of the degrees which we integrate with our. So that's the gist of the partnership in terms of why we are excited about it for Pivot It, it's the culmination of four or five different trends that we've been working on for a few years.
One of 'em is something we spoke about earlier, is our desire to diversify the markets we're developing and the projects we're ringing forward. And so finding a partner that wants to procure nationwide with us, you really validated that strategy that we've been working on. The second one has been orienting to building partnerships with really big corporate partners that historically have maybe just bought 300 megawatt PPAs in, in a big chunk, but persuading them and working with them to recognize that.
They can instead contract with portfolios of distributed projects and reach the same volume, but likely get it faster. And so it, it validated that. And then also the high impact strategy. It had been a few years that we'd been committing to really make that a proactive part of the development of our projects, actively reaching out to work with the communities we're working [00:18:00] in, rather than just having it being responsive.
When they asked for something at a permitting hearing, and so seeing a partner, a buyer of the offtake that believed in that as well and wanted to sign up for that as well was really exciting too. So yeah, all of those reasons kind of led us to. As I said, feel incredibly proud about what we were doing there.
Chad: Climate Positive is produced by HASI, a leading climate investment firm that actively partners with clients to deploy real assets that facilitate the energy transition. To learn more, please visit HASI.com
Daniela: And Brad, I'm sure when you're negotiating with someone like Microsoft and you have to deal with a cap stack and all of the dynamics that go into it, and there is like the short-term benefit of it, there's the long-term benefit of that. And there are things that you are willing to not try to optimize for the short term because you have the view like a.
How far this is going to take you as a competitive advantage going forward. Can you talk a little bit about those dynamics and how you navigate through that and how at the end of the day you will guys end up with something that is very exciting for the prospect of your business? Few years to come.
Bret: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things Tom mentioned, and this to us is one of the most impactful trends [00:19:00] of everything that we do in distributed generation. And we're going from kind of design community, solar legislated markets, and we're starting to think in community scale with corporate enabled projects.
And that trend is the biggest trend that, that we've seen in this space in the last decade plus. So just the fact that corporates and corporate demand. Really continuing to grow is helping drive that trend. We feel this is an incredible opportunity for Pivot, but also just an incredible opportunity for the industry at large to just expand the pie and to drive just
Better projects and more diversified projects over time. So when you think about it like that, this is so important to continue to cultivate, to continue to bring in. It also taps into the diversification ideas that I laid out early. This just provides further diversification and really the off take counterparty have some of the highest credit of any corporates in the world.
And so they really bring a very nice diversification [00:20:00] element to it. So there are absolutely challenges to it. Like anytime you're trying to innovate and you're trying to. Change things. There are challenges, and some of those is exactly to what you were saying is negotiating with those corporates, they have a certain way of doing things and really trying to figure out a path that both is something that they can accept and also something that we believe is necessary to ultimately fit within the broader capital strategy of how we're gonna develop and then finance these portfolios.
But you know, ultimately. We're extremely excited about what we've done. In addition to that deal, we've done other deals with large corporates for specific tax equity, and as I mentioned earlier, we're exploring that world for tax credits in real time right now and working directly with corporates to do so.
So we believe corporate demand for procurement, but also just supporting this broader space is a massive tailwind that will drive this industry, forward for. The foreseeable future that we can see. So we're really excited about being able to kind of pull those [00:21:00] pieces together and build something that's sustainable.
Gil: Just one follow up, Tom, in the Microsoft deal, and I assume perhaps others with Walmart, some of the other corporates tapestry is another announcement I saw You have the integration of impact renewable energy credits. Could you break down impact recs, how they differ from traditional recs, and if through your work with Microsoft or others there's, an increasing
Agreement on what qualifies for impact wrecks and just break that down for us. 'cause that's unique.
Tom: Yeah, and I think the core of it is that many more sophisticated energy buyers are wanting to ensure that the projects they're buying energy from have a positive benefit, a positive impact. On the communities with which they're cited and where they're operating.
And that can mean a lot of different things. And from our perspective, we don't see there being a convergence in some specific definition of what a high impact rec is. And frankly, I don't think there needs to be, that kind of defeats the purpose of [00:22:00] it because each community has different desires and demands, right?
Like, that's kind of the point is it needs to be customized and you need to work hand in hand with those communities. But the point is that. We can do that work with the communities, and then we can turn around and be really transparent on what work we are doing. When we're talking to the buyers of the energy the ultimate off-takers and thus tapestry and Microsoft, and Walmart and Rivian and more, we've done different things for the project, serving each of them.
They've all had that same orientation, and thus we're just working on a bilateral basis with that buyer to say, Hey, what do you care about? Here's what we're doing. Does this meet what you believe is a high degree of integrity and positive impact on the communities we're working in? Do you have other ideas that you wanna serve?
And in some cases they do because they may also be operating in those areas, and so they may . Have a program they're already working with a nonprofit they're already partnering with, but job training effort, they're already initiating and we can contribute to that and we're always happy to [00:23:00] do but we wanna leave that door open for them to be able to contribute as well.
Gil: Alright. I hesitate to ask this question 'cause you're sort of alluding to the portfolio mindset versus projects, but I sometimes like to ask our guests, so I'll ask you both a lot of great projects in your portfolio that you have and you're developing across the country. It's hard to pick a favorite, but if I ask both of you, which one is your favorite, favorite project comes to mind and why?
Tom: Yeah. I've got a couple of mine, so I'll name two. One that I'm guessing Brett probably would've mentioned is project here in Colorado. We call it Casey Peters New Solar Garden. It's named after a long time colleague and a dear friend of ours who many people in the industry know Casey Peters, who passed away.
Who passed. Yeah. Uh, I wanna say maybe 18 months ago. It's been now after a long battle with colon cancer. And you know that, that one I think, is a passion project for all of us to pivot for that reason, because . We dedicated to Casey but it's not just that there's a lot of really cool aspects to the project.
It's [00:24:00] cited on land that's right next to an Air Force base here in Colorado. And because it's next to an old Air Force base, the land got polluted in a lot of different ways and the city basically decided it couldn't be used for anything else, but we could potentially cite real energy on it. So that's a really cool reuse of land.
It's also a project that. It has a really robust sheep flock that's grazing, controlling the vegetation on it. There's a whole bunch of beehives on site that are pollinating the grass. The off takers are a really cool set of off takers that benefit the community in some amazing ways. And so it's just kind of the perfect combination of all of these factors.
They get us really excited for the projects that we work to develop and then being able to dedicate it to somebody that. Has inspired us all in her passion for clean energy and fighting climate change. I think for all of us to pivot, that's probably the one we would point to. I could go into more, but maybe I'll just.
Gil: Brett, that's hard to top.
Bret: Yeah, no, it, that would [00:25:00] certainly be the top of my list as well. But I do think there's a couple different pretty cool examples that really highlight who Pivot is. You know, one of 'em was the first ever a hundred percent low income offtake portfolio down in the country. I believe it was 40 megawatts several years ago now.
But that, that just shows, I mean, this was. Four or five years ago was probably when we were developing those projects and ultimately designing the structure to enable that. But that just shows who pivot is at its core, and we've always been that way. And as Tom mentioned on the Casey Peter site with the sheep and the beehives, you know, voltaic is another element that.
Obviously very different, but it's another thing that we've been very proactive in. We believe on kind of the early wave of that, and that's just another way to more deeply connect with the communities that we're operating in to actually provide multi benefits to these sites. Because at the end of the day, we are, our entire license to operate is due to our relationships with our local communities, is a highly localized business that we're in and
Even though we are now a [00:26:00] national player and we have large volumes of capacity, every single one of those projects is a local community that has high local impact. And that's just something that is in Pivot's, DNA and we're really proud of that.
Gil: Tom, as you look ahead, what excites you most about the future market and for Pivot?
Tom: I think we are seeing our market change in terms of the drivers, right? For a long time it's been politically driven. Daniella, you referenced this earlier at the federal level, driven by the incentives and then for community solar really driven at the state level by legislation creating very kind of regulatory governed markets.
And those still exist and they're not gonna go away. But the drivers are pretty different now. Right? For the first time in decades, we have demand growth for the ultimate product we're delivering of electricity and potentially really big demand growth. Then supply is really constrained because it's so hard to build the infrastructure that historically [00:27:00] provided that supply transmission.
A lot of the grid is aging and breaking down. New demand sources are copying up in different directions. So if supply and demand, that's crunching in different ways. And then you've also had technology evolve, right? And it's not just in the us you look worldwide. There's just gigawatts and gigawatts of solar and storage being deployed each year and so when you have something being built at that volume, there's just constant incremental improvements.
And so, you know, we look forward and we're just really excited about the confluence of those drivers and the fact that you take those kinda shifts in the market combined with the change in demand from corporate partners. And the opportunity is very different from where it's been over the past 10. It's a little scary 'cause we don't quite know what that means and how to finance it and how to deliver it, how to contract it all.
It's taken on new forms, but it also means that we're serving the energy bank needs of the entire economy, which I think obviously is a bigger opportunity and also the thing that we need to do [00:28:00] to ultimately fight climate change successfully. So I, that's the thing that is motivating and driving us as a company, as we're.
Daniela: Tom, do you think it could be like a pivotal time for dg? DG has been this, you know, quite frankly, ugly duck that it's like, everybody's like, okay, it's never gonna be like the thing that moves the needle. But I think what I'm hearing you say is. There is a moment now that this could actually be with the technology that has advanced to a point and to create additional incremental value that folks didn't even see originally with what DG brings to the table.
There's always the question of dg could it ever scale efficiently enough? I think some breakthrough needed to happen. Do you think that's the moment that we might start seeing those things materialize?
Tom: Absolutely. I think you framed it really well and that is what we are feeling right now.
We've seen a few different breakthroughs and they're not some new technology that appeared out of nowhere. It's the breakthroughs that come just from constant income and null [00:29:00] improvement. So on the DG side, in partnership with you all and others, we're seeing we can finance and deliver portfolios of these projects at volume reliably year after year.
That's a big difference. That matters. And then simultaneously on the demand side of the equation, we're seeing that. States and regulators and others are recognizing that the old tools they used, okay, let's just go sign one really big PPA, or one really big procurement. Those are not as cost effective or successful as they had thought because they're realizing, holy crap, we have to build $2 billion of new transmission to make these new PPAs possible.
And you add up those total costs and they're enormous. Or they're realizing, holy crap, these projects just keep getting pushed out and now all sudden not getting energy from this new project until 2031. And I have needs now what's the a. And so that is the opportunity, that is the, to use the word the pivot in the market.
And it's inevitable. [00:30:00] Like every conversation internally here, the word pivot, it's used and we have to pause that .
Gil: Do you have to put money in a little tip jar or something? ?
Tom: We really should and we haven't started that yet. And we would've had a million dollars.
Gil: There you go. If we had, uh, give it to a good cause.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. So it is where we think we're
Gil: all right. Are you guys ready for the hot seat?
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Gil: Let's do Tom first, then Brett. So the first question is, the most important piece of advice I have followed is,
Tom: yeah, I think
the least professionally, the one that's always stays in my mind is that sometimes they need to leave the room with people unhappy.
And this was a boss, a woman named Tracy. I had early my career. I think particularly when you're young, you always wanna please everybody. And I, this is when I worked in a political environment. She's people disagree here. This is the point. Sometimes you just gotta tell 'em you disagree and let it sit.
And that's how things progress. And it was really awkward and uncomfortable, but it makes a big difference.
Gil: Brett,
same question.
Bret: Stay hungry, stay foolish. [00:31:00] Sometimes you have to do crazy things to drive new innovations.
Gil: That sounds like a Bruce Springsteen lyric. I like that.
Bret: No, it's from Steve Jobs a while back, but one of my close friends when I was on the verge of contemplating leaving this comfortable life in Texas to come chase this solar dream, told that to me and, uh, yeah, I did it.
And 10 years later I'm pretty excited and fulfilled with everything we're doing.
Gil: Okay, Tom. The word or phrase I most overuse is,
oh man, I really wish I could answer
this because inevitably as CEO I like give speeches a lot and give talks a lot, and I always wonder what is this little thing that I keep saying?
So honestly, Brett, if you could tell me, I would love to hear it, but I wish somebody would tell me that so I could change, my, my ticks.
Bret: I would say from anybody that works for Tom's standpoint, it's when you ask him something because it's complex and you don't know the answer, and he says, well, what do you think?
Tom: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. [00:32:00]
Gil: Brett, answer this. The key ingredient to my productivity is I.
Bret: Just being excited to solve complex problems.
Gil: Tom, the most challenging part of my job is,
Tom: I think
it's just
retaining . The optimism and the energy to keep moving ahead. I think anybody who leads a team or a company or a group knows that, right?
That people look to you for confidence. And yet, at times I have my own doubts and what keeps me going. And I think for anybody who works in this space of, dealing with this giant societal issue of climate change, it's easy to get overwhelmed at times. And so keeping inspired, keeping optimistic, keeping the energy.
Is the challenge. That's the hard part. And once we have that, everything else gets fun. Right?
Gil: Okay. Brett? The book that has influenced me the most is
Bret: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
Gil: Nice. Tom.
Tom: Uh, at least in the work world. Professional I think of two. One is Phil Knights autobiography Shoe Dog.
I love that book just because he's so honest and like, well, here's when we almost failed, and here's when the company almost [00:33:00] died. And I was like, oh, other people have this too, you know? And then Um, Robert's, biographies of Johnson, just 'cause they're such fascinating studies of power and people dynamics. And I love those books.
Gil: I thought you'd say a deep chemistry text given some of your background.
Tom: Well, so I no longer work as a chemist because turns out it's really boring to read chemistry research
Gil: okay. I'll ask you both to finish question we asked all our guests. Tom, you go first.
To me. Climate positive means
taking the long view. There's always gonna be ups and downs,
but. This fight, of climate change and being climate positive matters for everyone on the planet, and we have to take the long view to keep fighting him.
Brett, climate positive means.
Bret: Yeah, very similar, just creating a sustainable path forward that works for everyone, and that's always gonna be challenging no matter what, but that's why we're doing this. We all believe deeply in the path that we're trying to create and keep working and making progress along the way.
Gil: Thank you guys very much.
This [00:34:00] was fun. We love working with you all.
Appreciate you coming on and sharing your story.
Daniela: Yeah, much, much appreciated. Always fun to get the details behind the scenes and we know you guys have accomplished quite a bit and we are excited to be here with you
Tom: yeah, no, thank you. It, this is super fun and it's always like such a gift when people ask questions of us, right?
And wanna hear what we think. So I really appreciate it. Thank.
Bret: And obviously we deeply appreciate the partnership and very excited to continue to grow it going forward. So thank you for this.
Gil: If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please leave us a leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. This really helps us reach more listeners.
You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod or email us at climatepositive@hasi.com
I'm Gil Jenkins.
And this is Climate Positive.