Power Guru leaders discuss D.C. rally and the road ahead for solar energy
BENNINGTON — Officials from a solar energy systems company headquartered at the Benmont Mill, Power Guru, recently participated in a Save Main Street Solar rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Held on Tuesday, June 17, the rally was organized by the national trade organization for solar, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). At issue are the solar provisions in President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would eliminate many clean energy tax credits. The House passed the bill on Thursday afternoon, with the President expected to sign it soon.
The adopted bill does not include an extension for the 30-percent residential solar tax credit (Section 25D of the U.S. Tax Code), which is still set to expire at the end of this year.
“The bill being sent to the President’s desk today is a significant step backwards for our nation’s energy economy at a time when we can least afford it. In the face of rising energy costs, global instability, and growing demand for power, Congress has turned its back on the very industries that are adding the majority of the new electricity generating capacity to the grid,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEAI president and CEO in a statement Thursday, upon the final passage of the bill. “America is in the midst of an energy manufacturing boom, with new solar and storage factories opening across the country thanks to the forward-looking policy this law will upend. Now many of these brand new factories will be forced to shut down and lay off thousands of workers, gutting communities that were finally seeing the kind of industrial revival rural America needs and handing an untimely and strategic victory to China.”
Ross Hopper added, “While this bill avoided some very damaging provisions, it is deeply disappointing to see partisan politics outweigh practical pro-growth solutions that serve all Americans.”
Alexander Mintz, Power Guru owner and CEO, and Zoe Contros Kearl, operations specialist, spoke about their participation at the rally and the wide-ranging implications of the bill in an interview on Monday.
“We thought it was interesting, because we found ourselves in a position where we were representing this state. There were no other Vermont contractors there. We were representing the state of Vermont in fighting for clean energy, the future of clean energy,” Mintz said. “And we found ourselves in the midst of a group of very intelligent, very influential people in the industry trying to get a message across to Congress that this industry is worth safeguarding and worth investing in.”
While there they spoke to U.S. Sen. Peter Welch and staff of Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint. They also had the chance to speak to a wide range of people connected to the solar industry.
“We ran into a lot of people. Everybody’s main concern was they were very worried about what this will do to the future of energy in America,” said Contros Kearl. “And it was really a moment in which they were talking about real life jobs and the actual effect it would have on your average person.”
As of Thursday, the Save Main Street Solar website estimated that the bill’s provisions would put 1,500 small businesses at risk and 250,000 jobs under threat.
Founded in 2007 by the late Bhima Nitta, Power Guru offers a variety of services and products to help clients generate clean electricity. The company serves clients in southern Vermont and nearby eastern New York.
“The reason why we thought this was a valuable story right now is because anybody who has ever been considering going solar or considering utilizing the Green Mountain Power battery program, which is also contingent on these tax credits, their window is about five months to make a decision and to place a spend on the project that will lock them in for this tax credit,” Mintz said.
The company intends to stay in business and will be diversifying into other avenues.
“We offer electric vehicle charging stations, and we will continue to work with batteries it if there’s still a market there. But we may also offer generators, just to stay in line with what we’ve been doing, which is being an energy company,” Mintz said. “We hope to see it through the other side of whatever this administration is doing. They seem pretty keen on reversing everything related to renewable energy that was put in place during Biden’s era and before, and de-subsidizing.”
Mintz said that shock waves going through the industry due to the uncertainty around the policy change and interest rates have already put some fairly large companies out of business.
“We see that trend continuing. We are lucky enough as a small company to be rather nimble, but we see potentially a future where there are a lot of orphan solar and energy storage systems out there that we would like to be around to service as well,” he said. “In this kind of a climate, I think a small business with the ability to make pivots fares actually much better than a larger organization that might be over their skis from large capital investments.”
Mintz said that if the federal incentives go away, it will be up to state governments to find, at least in part, “new ways to deploy our resources as a state to further our energy goals, to provide affordable power for people, to provide backup power.”