Sponsored Post – from the Austin Earth Day Festival
This series introduces the sponsors of Austin Earth Day Festival in the weeks leading up to our April 23rd event. It’s great to be able to feature these businesses and organizations that are helping to make Austin more sustainable.
Written by Janis Bookout, Outreach Manager for the Austin Earth Day Festival
45 million pounds. That’s how much CO2 would have been dumped into the atmosphere if Freedom Solar didn’t exist. That blows my mind. With these blogs I try to find some angle that is relevant to you, the individual reader. This time, it’s plain and simple — when you want to make a difference in the environment, the scale of your real impact is what matters. You can’t argue with 45 million pounds of CO2.
When Austin-based Adrian Buck and Chad Preece started the company with one truck and a garage in 2007, this kind of impact was unpredictable. Forget about the impressive odds against starting a business — solar itself has had a challenging history. But this tenacious industry has strong legs thanks to folks like them — proving it’s doable, affordable, scalable — over and over again. And (for geeks like me) it’s added up to 20 MW (mega-watts) of solar across Texas, generating roughly 30,500,000 kWh of electricity — enough to power 1,800 homes for an entire year. That’s not a marketing message. That’s a real, measurable impact.
But how did they deal with the barriers to entry from individuals and organizations? They made it effective, affordable and attractive. Freedom is now the leading photovoltaic panel installer, and a Master Dealer for SunPower. The sleek, low-profile panel is the industry leader in it’s efficiency ratings. Put simply – the panel looks beautiful — like a flat screen TV. And it works better. And it pays for both it’s price and its manufacturing footprint in a very short percentage of its 25-year lifespan. That’s why they have 65 percent of the local residential market and clients like Whole Foods, Office Depot and the University of Texas.
But back to my favorite number — that 45 million pounds — what does that actually translate to in terms of something I can wrap my head around? Here is a graphic to illustrate.
What do you think about that? Does it move you like it moves me? Look, for anyone who is not aware, we basically have about five years to move our annual global carbon emissions from 52 gigatons to 44 gigatons. That is, in a nutshell, the real impact needed in order to make it possible for us to stay within the 2 degree limit. As a society, we desperately need the kind of results that the solar industry is producing. And we need industry leaders like Freedom Solar to keep demonstrating that it is not only possible, but advantageous to do so.
At Austin Earth Day Festival, you will have a chance to meet some of the team up close and personal. And they have some amazing activities planned as well. And you will be able to find out right then and there whether your house is solar-ready. Come see them near the Demo Stage. See you at the Festival!
Installation in progress at Austin-based Strictly Pediatrics
