Aljuwani says renewable energy can provide good-paying jobs that workers can feel satisfied about, rather than contributing to the degradation of environment. He adds that renewable energy co-ops are a way to keep money circulating through low-income communities. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the training and spoke with Aljuwani after his presentation.
SHAKOOR ALJUWANI: We’re building a multi-race, multi-class movement for sustainable energy. Part of that is being able to set up a network of cooperatives where we can make decisions about what our energy needs are in our local areas and then we will able to use our cooperative power to be able to finance those new solutions. So whether it’s building a bio-diesel plant made from recycled vegetable oil in Greenfield (Massachusetts), or a worker co-op energy efficiency installation in Holyoke with Energia or putting solar arrays on low-income housing cooperatives as we’re doing in New York City, it’s an approach where each city can decide what their focus is and then use our cooperative power as a local area and as a region to make our solutions work.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So who’s funding this?
SHAKOOR ALJUWANI: We fund it largely through our own efforts, and that’s the power of it. We’ll go out and get grants and some other things to try to supplement – like a grant to do worker training or some other thing like that – but generally, we started with our cooperative dollars and then we use new ideas like bringing strategic tax investors who are looking for a tax break and at the same time concerned about their communities and their planet and want to figure out a way to support innovative approaches. So we use those to help us finance initially on the solar array, like putting 7.9 kw on Nazareth Housing in the Lower East Side and through an approach where we will buy that investor out within 5 or 7 years and either keep it in the cooperative or sell it back at extremely good rate to the building or organization it’s part of.
BETWEEN THE LINES: It sounds like you mostly work in New York and Massachusetts now, is that right?
SHAKOOR ALJUWANI: Yes, and we’re also doing work in Burlington, Vermont. Put a solar array on top of the food co-op in Burlington.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Great, great. I’ve been to Burlington and I’ve been to the co-op. That seems like a good fit. I just wonder, in the states where you have been working, are there state policies that are helping or hindering this great-sounding project?
SHAKOOR ALJUWANI: Well, we started out a lot of activity in Massachusetts and for a good bit of time Massachusetts, along with California, has been a leader in the country for green energy. There’s been some backsliding on that, but we’ve developed a network and we have an approach where we try to connect up with folks inside those bureaucratic systems that are trying to make a difference, and they are – they’re there – and figure out how we can squeeze the most good out of whatever policies a state has.
BETWEEN THE LINES: And what about utilities? In Connecticut, we’ve been trying to get shared solar year after year at the General Assembly. There’s some hope we’ll get it this year, but every other year the utilities have opposed it so fiercely, and they’ve thrown a lot of money at it and we haven’t been able to get it through, even though it’s common in a lot of other states.
SHAKOOR ALJUWANI: Yeah, it’s a problem. The situation is slowly improving, but way too slowly. And we’ve done the same, where we try to develop a good working relationship with the folks inside – whether it’s Con Edison in New York City or Eversource or some of the others. But it’s a difficult battle, and we see now that we not only got to work to provide the positive solutions but we have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with folks that are out there fighting to open some doors so that renewable energy is really supported and given the chance it needs to make a difference. And we have to figure out a way to retrain people for jobs for the future that makes sense and to me – renewable energy – there’s no better jobs that we can create, that you’re creating jobs that can be decent jobs, good jobs, and jobs you can go home from feeling like you did something positive, you did something good – not rape and destroy the planet. Not only jobs, but we’re able to create wealth and bring monies from the sun creating energy on our roofs, that that money can stay in the community instead of going to investors in some other place.
So it’s important for us to look at the power of cooperatives and the power of solar energy and other renewables as a way of making a difference and hopefully being able to stop the aggressive growth of climate change.
