For Profit and Energy Efficiency

Post contributed by Aaron Fairchild:

I was recently invited by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to present in Louisville, Kentucky at a symposium on “Green” Finance Investing in Sustainable, Energy Efficient Developments. I was very honored to participate and to share what we are working on at G2B Ventures. You can download a PDF of the agenda here. There were a lot of other very cool programs presented, like The Babylon Project out of Babylon New York, and Enterprise’s Green Communities program.

I headed to Louisville with a healthy dose of humility, expecting to be an outlier from the speaker’s podium, and left there with the impression that I was indeed an outlier, but only because I was one of the only speakers talking about for-profit approaches to improving our existing residential building stock. In fact, G2B was the only group represented on stage with a for-profit solution to improving the energy efficiency of existing single family housing. As a result, I had a great time sharing what we were working on and enjoyed several questions and discussions about how to implement a program similar to ours in Louisville and beyond.

I also left Louisville with a new outlook on the city. They are making big strides toward energy efficiency, and Kentucky is working on retrofitting 10,000 homes with their Clean Energy Corps! I had the opportunity to visit a very progressive and fun hotel / museum, 21C, and would recommend the city to anyone interested in visiting. Thanks for the hospitality Louisville and thanks to the team at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.