CLCV is proud to present our Environmental Leadership Award to Arno Harris, a passionate advocate for solutions to climate change through the intersection of business and public policy.
Harris has spent the last 10 years working in the solar industry to help solar make the transition to mainstream energy markets, most recently as CEO of Recurrent Energy, one of North America’s largest solar project developers.
With a 2 gigawatt pipeline and more than 1 gigawatt of signed power purchase agreements, Recurrent Energy is well on its way to building a fleet of clean power plants sited right where they’re needed most. As he says in a recent blog post:
When I first started out in the solar industry, we talked in kilowatts. Megawatts of solar power felt like a lifetime away, and gigawatts was not even in our vocabulary. Now a decade later: 5.2 GW of solar capacity was installed in the US in 2013, bringing the cumulative total of solar installed to almost 15 GW.
The era of mainstream solar is truly here, and I’m proud to say that Recurrent Energy is contributing in a big way to that progress. In the course of our last fiscal year (which ended March 31), Recurrent Energy brought online 23 solar PV projects totaling more than 300 MW. In total, we have now completed more than half a gigawatt of solar power projects – 515 MW to be exact.
Harris also spends his time working on behalf of the solar and renewable energy industry most recently as chairman of the board of the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and as a board member of Advanced Energy Economy. SEIA is the largest solar trade association representing over 1000 member companies as the voice of strong solar industry powering America. AEE is an association of businesses and business leaders committed to making the nation’s energy supply more secure, clean, and affordable.
Harris was named Best Cleantech CEO of 2012 by San Francisco Business Times for his work at Recurrent Energy and also received the 2011 Rising Star Award at Platts Global Energy Awards.
Before solar, his background was in technology startups, raising over $200 million in equity financing for startups over the past decade.
As an entrepreneur, Harris is passionate about startups and clean technology, but he makes it clear he has “zero patience for dreamy ideas or unfocused execution.” In addition to his roles at Recurrent Energy and SEIA, he serves on the Leadership Council of Tipping Point, a grant-making organization dedicated to making poverty preventable.
We’re thrilled to present our Environmental Leadership Award to Harris and other inspiring leaders at our event this Thursday in San Francisco.
(For more details, visit our event page.)
