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In this episode of Clear Haze Exchange, host Marcus Hazelwood discusses the transformative power of solar energy with guest John McNamara, COO of Appalachian Renewable Power. They explore the benefits and challenges of solar technologies, including the innovative concept of floating solar arrays.
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John McNamara — COO, Appalachian Renewable Power
John McNamara, MBA, MSL, is Chief Operating Officer at Appalachian Renewable Power, where he helps advance renewable energy solutions across Ohio and beyond. John combines operational leadership with a deep passion for sustainability, community engagement, and practical clean energy adoption. Through his work in solar development, community advocacy, and his involvement with Green Columbus, John focuses on helping organizations and communities better understand how renewable technologies can create long-term economic, operational, and environmental value. He also helped lead the installation of Ohio’s first floating solar arrays and has become a strong advocate for leveraging solar to bring power to the people .
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Clear Haze Exchange is an interview-led podcast focused on simplifying sustainability while uncovering the hidden systems, decisions, and long-term impacts shaping our built environment and energy future.
Hosted by Marcus Hazelwood, an energy engineer with 15+ years of experience in sustainability and energy efficiency consulting, the podcast has evolved across two seasons:
Season 1 focused on breaking down the fundamentals—making energy efficiency, building systems, and sustainability concepts more accessible and practical for a wide range of listeners.
Season 2 builds on that foundation, diving deeper into the systems-level thinking behind sustainability—exploring how decisions in design, operations, policy, and business strategy create long-term outcomes.
Each episode features thoughtful conversations with industry leaders, engineers, architects, researchers, and decision-makers who are actively shaping the future of sustainability. From building performance and infrastructure to sustainable chemistry and organizational mindset, Clear Haze Exchange connects ideas across disciplines to provide real-world insight.
This podcast is for professionals and curious minds alike, those who want to better understand not just what sustainability is, but how it actually works in practice.
If you're interested in smarter investments, better systems, and meaningful progress, you're in the right place.
Subscribe to Clear Haze Exchange on your favorite platform and join the conversation.
For inquiries or guest opportunities: hello@clear-haze.exchange
Hey everybody, I'm Marcus Hazelwood and welcome to Clear Haze Exchange. I'm an energy engineer with over 15 years of experience in sustainability and energy efficiency consulting. Many find these topics a little complex, so I created Clear Haze Exchange to help provide clear, actionable insight, Clear Haze Exchange, so to speak. We'll cover plenty of topics under the umbrella of energy efficiency and sustainability. Let's get into today's conversation. Welcome listeners to season 2 of Clear Haze Exchange, focused on uncovering the hidden systems and decisions shaping sustainable investments. Today's guest I'm really excited about is John McNamara. He is Chief Operating Officer at Appalachian Renewable Power, where he helps advance renewable energy solutions across Ohio and beyond. John combines operational leadership with deep passion for sustainability, community engagement, and practical clean energy adoption. Through his work in solar development, community advocacy, and his involvement with Green Columbus, John focuses on helping organizations and communities better understand how renewable technologies can create long-term economic, operational, and environmental value. He also helped lead the installation of Ohio's first floating solar arrays and has become a strong advocate for leveraging solar to bring power to the people. John, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Marcus. Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here. Yeah. So, we met over coffee not too long ago before this to kind of just kind of discuss what you're doing. And what I sensed was really your passion about what you do. And it excited me because of how you understand this industry and the passion you have for helping people. And in addition to all the things that I covered in your bio, I'm looking forward to this conversation to dig more deeper and help our audience see if Absolutely. Super excited to have the conversation. Definitely passionate about it. It's opportunity. I think about the Maya Angelou quote, you know, when you know better, do better. And we certainly know how to do better. And so it is an opportunity for us to coalesce as a community, come together and improve outcomes for people. And if that's not something that is exciting for folks, I don't know what could be. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about how you got started in solar energy and why you're so passionate about it for our community particularly. Absolutely. So I've, I've always had a passion around the environment, around sustainability. You know, we live on an island. This beautiful planet of ours is essentially a giant island that we live on. And being good stewards of this planet, of this place, is an incredible opportunity to do good. And so that, that itch was always there for me. Me, and yet I really couldn't find the right avenue to put it into. So I was working for Nationwide for quite some time leading some of the sustainability efforts there. And then one day I had the opportunity, well, I shouldn't say one day, it was over several years. My wife and I worked together to evaluate solar for our own house. And finally in 2022, we decided to make the move to put solar on the house. And that was really the moment that it opened up my eyes to how simple, efficient, how you're installing a quarter century of clean energy and you're taking ownership of your power out there. And so to experience what that impact can be for my own house really woke up a passion in around solar. I started really focusing in on that space. I was able to get a certification through NABCEP in around solar, understand the technology even better. And at every turn, I really saw the overlap of benefits for human beings in this, benefits for the environment, benefits for us financially. And that drove a lot of that passion. And that's probably the, you know, the closest origin story to how I got into this space. That's good. That's good. I love the fact that how you generate this passion was just from the firsthand experience. And I think that's the value and impact of how something that triggers in your personal life because, you know, when you're paying your own utility bills, I mean, it's just life. You become an adult with responsibilities. They translate into your professional life in terms of developing your passion. And I have a similar experience to when I started to understand what I needed to do from a personal standpoint, just starting from your credit, really. Oh, I have to do this. I have to do that. Wow. That translates into what I need to do to be an effective project manager in my job because I know how to manage my bills or manage purchasing and maintaining payments. You're doing that same responsibility for an organization. And if you can add value and bring that same passion to help people, it becomes even more valuable. You become a better asset to an organization and you enjoy your work more. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I think, you know, when we had the opportunity to grab coffee, we talked a little bit about how I I experience this season of my life as almost retirement. Yeah. Is that really for me, the opportunity of retirement is to, to really paint that picture of what your day, your week, your month looks like. Yeah. And I'm fortunate enough to be in this space where I have an impact on the community. I have an impact on a small business and it is, it's really a gift and I find myself deeply grateful for it every day. That's good. So solar is a very popular topic, especially in the space of clean energy, uh, with this podcast Clear Haze Exchange, uh, around certain topics. After having some conversations with you, you, with me being in the field and having a depth of knowledge to an extent, you still help open my mind up to understanding certain things. And, um, so I'm excited to share some of that with the audience in terms of simplifying a topic, but also making information accessible, um, so that they can actually take it and apply it to their own life. So solar has become one of the most talked about sustainability technologies, really. But what do you think most people misunderstand about solar? Yeah, I think people misunderstand both how new it is and how long it's been around. Yeah, there's a young man by the name of Edmund Becquerel in 1839, 21 years old. This is the individual who actually discovered the photovoltaic effect. So this is something that we have been developing, getting stronger at for almost 100 years now. And it's a, it's a simple technology on some levels, and then it becomes a little bit complex on other levels. At the most basic level, that solar panel that you see up on the roof or the solar panel that we grew up with in our calculators, the same kind of thing. It's, it's generating electricity from light, which is incredibly unique. Almost every other form of electrical generation that we have involves spinning a motor, spinning a device, whether it's windmills, coal factories, or even a nuclear facility. A nuclear facility is just a giant mechanism that boils water so that we can use that steam to turn those turbines. Solar is unique in that sense, and it's also a daily harvest. You know, we look at this as an opportunity to take that sun that we count on, that we know is going to rise in the east tomorrow, and take a daily opportunity to capture some of that energy. And it brings power back to the people. You know, we, we are at a junction in this moment as we develop more renewable technologies. Solar's unique inasmuch as that it can be on my house, it can be on your house, and it can shift that power structure that we all see that really doesn't serve us as the working class and put more of that opportunity on individuals, on folks out there who are working each day to make their families better, their communities safer. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That, that simplification of what this is, but also the context. The way you explained it, simplified, but it's effective because it just simply connecting the dots for people means a lot. So from your perspective, why is solar becoming more relevant now for both residential and commercial owners? Yeah, absolutely. So it is, it is a two-part story. So it is looking at what is the trend that you expect that the general population expects on electrical need. We see data centers popping up all over the country, we see a society that's depending more on artificial intelligence and that is putting our grid in a state of need that we need to generate more electricity out there. The other side of that is restructuring our power agreement out there and how we're getting our power and saying, you know, one of the challenges of the utility bill is that there is no end date on that. That you will be getting that, you know, unfortunately for the rest of your life, as long as you're part of a grid-tied system. And so what is that opportunity to reduce that impact that you have on your own finances, your own resources, and have the opportunity to reallocate those in different ways? Yeah, that's good. That's good. And would you say that there's an added value from an incentive perspective to residential and commercial Yeah, it's definitely in a challenging moment. You know, you'll find historically as technologies transition out and in, there is a repeated behavior of trying to slow that down from the old guard, from the legacy way of doing things. Yeah, that's strongly the moment that we're in right now. And also we're looking at this year, 99.9% of new electrical generation will be either wind or solar this year. In solar, solar, we think a lot about the learning curve of a technology. And that is really the exponential growth as we learn how to develop and manufacture new technologies. That as we grow through the different generations of solar, the cost of that technology drops significantly. And we are really in kind of that hockey stick style curve, that exponential growth, or really a decrease in the cost of solar out there. The, I Inflation Reduction Act was an incredible piece of legislation that was super well thought through, that really set up the opportunity to bring domestic manufacturing to the United States, continue to reduce these costs and provide domestic security to us in having us, you know, we've got this situation going on in the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, and we are at the threat of these moments globally when our energy infrastructure is depending on international agreements, international trade. And so really solar provides us an opportunity to be more resilient as a country, as a state, as a community. And that, that really gets me excited about, about where we're going. And even though there may be those folks that are trying to slow us down with that, when you look at the cost of electricity and how much it's increasing, people can see the numbers. Yeah, people can see their electric bills coming in higher each and every month, and they're looking for an opportunity to make that different for themselves. Yeah, that's good. So how should organizations think about solar beyond just being green or saving the environment or virtue signaling? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that that's one of the things that I spend a lot of time thinking about in sustainability, that folks will get caught up on one aspect of it and say, oh, you know, I'm not concerned about the environment, that that's not the benefit that I need. Realistically, what we find in sustainability is that there is an enormous overlap of benefits in these technologies. You know, I'll zoom out to my wife's EV. My wife drives a '24 Kia Niro and absolutely loves it. It is reducing tailpipe emissions. You know, many of us can think back during COVID when we were all on lockdown and you would see pictures of these cities and communities that, that were under not a clear haze. Well, actually at that point had found a clearness to the air around them. And you say, hey, wait a second, this is a technology that benefits the environment and that's wonderful. But also the car gets the equivalent of 110 miles per gallon. The, the gas bill, the fuel bill, we were spending $100 a month purchasing fuel for her vehicle, and that now becomes an increase in our electric bill of about $12 a month. So there is this overlap in sustainable technologies where, yes, you are doing a benefit to the environment, and also as a business owner, you're looking at the resources, revaluing them, putting them in different places, reducing those costs within your organization, and for your organization for the next 25, 30, 35 years, out there. And so I think it gets lost a lot of times what the win-win-win-win-win of different sustainable technologies is. Yeah, certainly true. I have an electric car as well. When my wife and I and our family moved back to Ohio in 2022, um, there was a spike in gas prices, and thankfully we had an electric vehicle. We were like, I'm glad we have this, because we were able to navigate through because our— we're connected to the electric grid So there's a financial benefit direct to people. Without a doubt. So, so what would you say are the biggest misconceptions around ROI payback in those solar investments? Yeah, I, I hear a lot of owners talking about ROI. What is the ROI? What— when will this be paid off? Well, when will this be generating a benefit? Kind of my return question on that is to say that that's not necessarily the strongest measure when you're evaluating a solar installation, because while the solar system itself might have a calculatable ROI on it, your utility bill does not, because in order to have an ROI on something, it needs to have that end date where it starts to generate a benefit for you. What you have in your utility bill is really a rental agreement. You know, so many of us work to own our own homes. And why do we do that? Because we know that when we're making that payment towards our mortgage, we're really investing in ourselves. And so why do we rent our electricity on an eternal basis? And so when we talk to those commercial owners about potential projects, we really do try to get them to move a little bit away from that ROI, more to the question of, hey, given the opportunity to place a wager today, do you think your electric bill is going to go up, down, or stay the same over the next 25 years? And I'm pretty sure you can ask 100 people there and 100 people are going to tell you that electric bill is going to go up. And so, you know, we talk a lot about trees as well in the work that I do. And there's that old adage about when's the best time to plant a tree? You know, 25 years ago, when's the second best time to plant a tree? Now we know those costs are going to go up. It is a capital investment on the front end. And so certainly, you know, there are those financial questions to ask. And the reality is looking at your utility bill as a comparison to the ROI of a solar system is doing yourself a little bit of a disservice. That's a really good point. It's part of the point that I've been trying to express in these series and my conversations is thinking about the long-term benefits of sustainable efforts. The word sustainability is kind of a circular idea, or it defines how something can maintain itself. Um, and I think there's not a lot of long-term thinking in terms of maintaining, uh, a building in this particular case. Uh, and if you know that you're building, you're gonna have that building for 50 years, it makes sense to make make wise investments and think long term, because the immediate is always, we'll just pay this for now, or we don't want to— we don't want to get rid of all the cash. But how do incentives, particularly— you talked about the long term, um, but talk a little bit more about the incentive opportunities and the utility structures, um, that influence whether projects will make financial sense. Yeah, I, I think it's, it's not so much making financial sense, it's making financial sense over a duration. And so with any organization, if making a high capital investment on the front end is certainly a difficult thing to do, I subscribe to the philosophy of having a relationship with your future self and your past self. And I think that organizations have the same opportunity to talk to their future self as an organization and say, hey, do we plan on being in business 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road? And it then becomes, hey, well, what can we do to serve our future self of this organization? Financial incentives certainly help to reduce that front-end cost. Realistically as well, the utility is doing that work for us as well. I, you know, it may be sunsetting, we may be sunsetting the solar tax credit for commercial systems, which takes away a 30% opportunity of the tax credit for that. At the same time, AEP is raising rates so quickly. You know, last summer, at the beginning of the summer, we took a pretty hefty rate increase with AEP. Yeah. On the day that they announced it, they applied to the Public Utilities Commission for an additional rate increase. So the, the forecast and the horizon for how our electrical costs are going to continue is, is up and up and up. So there is a little bit of a tail continuing on the commercial solar tax credit. There's still some opportunity. Opportunity out there. There are some wonderful opportunities for residential owners as well. That is more local at this point than it is federal, but that reduces that overhead in the beginning and allows yourself to give that gift to your future self at a little bit of an easier burden to your present self. Yeah, I like that. Thinking about your future self and your organization's future and using that to think about the now decisions. So another piece to this season is, is having conversations around the hidden systems behind renewable energy decisions. So a lot of the things that people don't think about, and you've revealed plenty already, many organizations want renewable energy but don't fully understand the operational or infrastructure side. So where do projects most often get misunderstood? Yeah, there's, there's a number of different ways. So solar itself is fairly straightforward. The photons hit it, it moves a couple electrons around that pushes it down the wire and that becomes electricity for folks. The operational installation of a solar system can be pretty complex. It is, it is a lesson that I've learned in solar. Over the last few years that very few sites have the same electrical characteristics. There are next to no projects that you can say are cookie cutter. I'm a process human being, and so I'm always looking to create a standardized process for something. And I'll say I definitely spent a few wasteful nights in the beginning of my solar journey trying to create that repeatable process. Each site is very different in the electrical characteristics that are out there, the type of service that they have. That type of service that they have will actually feed some restrictions with the utility. There's certain types of electrical service out there that the utility say takes additional steps for us to install a system out there. We're also limited in Ohio and in a lot of the states to be behind the meter. So that means that we, in our current state, unless we're working on a utility-scale project, We have to match the electrical usage of the customer on site. So that creates customization in that moment that we can't exceed over 120% of what is used at that site. So that becomes unique for the project. The big one is the extension cord. Each solar system that you build needs to connect physically into the electrical infrastructure where you're at, and that is basically an extension cord that you're creating. Some projects look to be ground mounts where we're out in a field and the owner may look at that and say, hey, we have this really convenient area that we think is large enough to put this solar array. It just so happens to be 1,000 yards away from where you're going to interconnect. And what happens in that moment is then we have to design basically an extension cord that'll run underground to carry that current to the building. And if any of us have shopped for an extension cord recently, they're not cheap in the standard models. And when you're putting 1,500 volts through a system, that's a lot of material that you're putting into the ground. And so sometimes those design restrictions can be a little bit misunderstood going into a system. And really what folks need to understand is that each site is unique. And that's why it's important to partner with somebody who's got some experience in that space, who can really help value engineer that project for you and make sure that it hits all the marks that it needs to, to be effective for the location. Yeah. So there's things that, although it may look appealing in concept, there are some requirements that come along with it. But if they're done right, they can be done effectively. And you're saying that's how some projects can have challenges and be misunderstood. Yeah, that's good. So what role does building usage, load profile, and operational behavior play in determining whether solar is effective? Yeah, that's part of that, the uniqueness to each project site and to the, uh, the usage on the site as well. Uh, we will do a lot of work with manufacturing, uh, facilities, uh, who will actually get electrical bills that are based on their peak usage. So where they are at any given day, when they go to fire up all their equipment, that may draw a higher amount of electricity. And in the agreement that they have with the utility, their daily rate can actually be set by the moment that they use the highest amount of electricity. That's one of those situations that we really see battery storage becoming an opportunity because that battery can actually react fast enough to that electrical peak to actually bring that down, reduce it, and keep that site from going over those breakpoints and increasing. You know, we've had sites where they would have one day out of the month that for whatever reason in their production flow spiked their electrical and raised their kilowatt-hour price for the entire rest of the month. Yeah. And so those become those opportunities to say, hey, how do we mute that peak operation on there? And so each operation, each facility, each usage becomes very different. And that's where you get into the development, the planning aspect of these different projects. Yeah, that's good. From my experience and, and working with energy modeling, we're trying to understand how this building is going to use energy before it's built because we're working in the design side. So looking at, is it sized appropriately? Where is the peak load? And so that peak load is something that defines, like you said, what you're gonna pay, what you're building is demanding from that utility infrastructure grid. So if it's, we'll say 300 kW, which is a power demand, and if you're demanding that, your cost is gonna be based on that. If you use that in the peak summer month and they're gonna charge you for that. So if you're able to shave that down to 200, Absolutely. You're saving a significant amount of money. So it's very important. So what else should be fully considered when talking about solar? Yeah, I would say what are those efficiencies that you can capture before you do the solar? So the size of your solar system is going to be pretty directly tied to the usage on site. And you're looking at a capital investment. Definitely a mountain at the beginning and a long tail behind it. And so what is that opportunity that you can reduce your usage before you put the solar panels up there. We're solar passionate people. We will put as many panels anywhere, however you want us to put it, and we can reduce those costs by maybe, you know, making that change to the HVAC system. Is that something that you are planning to do at the location anyway? So let's reduce that usage, and that in turn reduces the size of the system, lowers that entry bar for the organization to get on board with that, or the residents as well. You know, we will, we will go out to houses where there's no insulation on a wall and you say, hey, step one, you know, you're running on electric heat here. And yet you've got these drafty windows, drafty doors. It may make more sense for you to take some time, make that investment first, see where your energy uses level out at, and then make the decision to move forward with solar at that point. Yeah, that's good. Find the low-hanging fruit. Absolutely. So that's where the energy audits and the analysis are so important before jumping into a project. Yes, it may sound appealing that, oh, I can generate energy from the sun, but we have to be responsible in how we're already using energy. We have to think about that baseline. What is the baseline? Can it be improved so that when we do add solar, it's the most effective? But that's really good. Energy efficiency. So, so what technologies in the solar space are genuinely creating value right now? I know we'll get to one that I'm really excited about. And which ones are still too early or overhyped, would you say? You know, I'll say the core one that, that I'm most excited about is the solar panel itself. It's been on a long journey, you know, really, solar panels really started to come into commercial use in the late '70s. And have been on that learning curve for quite some time at this point. We are able to generate upwards of 650 watts out of a single panel. And to kind of put that into perspective, I'll, I'll back it down a little bit and say 450-watt solar panel is, is becoming a pretty standard residential panel at this point. In order to generate the same amount of electricity using coal over an hour, it is about a 1:1 1 in pounds of coal. So it takes about 430 pounds of coal per hour to generate that same amount of electricity that you're getting from the solar panel for 1 hour. And so, you know, the tried and true nature of it, we really refer to the solar modules as bulletproof. There are certainly technologies that are advancing efficiency. And at the same time, what we have right now serves incredibly well. The lifespan of the solar panel is that 25, 30, 35 years that we've talked about. And that's, that's what a little bit of the overhyping with some of the other technologies out there are. There are a couple different formulations of solar panels out there that advertise that they're going to have an increased amount of efficiency to them, that they promise to deliver 30% 35% electrical generation out of them. And yet the durability of them and the lifespan of them is still part of that formula that they're trying to crack. So I really think that that core item is really exciting. The, the technology that I think that we're getting adapted to that isn't overhyped yet is virtual power plants. That's something that I get really excited to, to talk about, to learn about, that we have the opportunity for individuals through the use of batteries to really support our grid resiliency. So we, we imagine a world where the utility can say, hey, everybody is coming home today at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and they are going to throw in a load of laundry fire up the oven to cook some dinner for the family. Somebody's gonna throw on a TV. You know, I've got a 13-year-old, he's gonna hop on his computer. And that, that grid load becomes really heavy right at the end of the day. And so we look to a future where the utility can communicate with a battery in your house and say, hey, I need a little bit of help right now. Can you run the house off your battery? And then once we get through this moment, I'll fill up that battery with a discounted electrical rate. Rate and get you back to where you were before. And I think that's a way that we deliver that idea of power to the people. That's the way that we get our grid into a more resilient space. That's a technology that I get really excited about. That's good. Now it, that's really cool. And then this also goes to the discussion around building analytics, whether it's a Nest thermostat that learns your habits and can adjust your HVAC system, or a, on the commercial side, building analytics that can automatically adjust pumps, runtimes similar to demand response. But now with AI, we have further analytics that keep those things on track in a more efficient manner. So that's good. So if an owner is considering solar today, what are the first questions they should ask before moving forward? What is your baseline? What would you say? What's your goal? That, that is really— we— it's, it's a wonderful space to be in, in solar because this industry has been through the fire. We talk a lot about the solar coaster that we have been riding for the last 20 years. This variation in incentives, in approvals, in what it takes to get interconnected with the grid. And we have had to be very resilient in the solar space. And so getting a clear understanding from the business owner, from the homeowner What is the goal state here? Is it saving money? Is it getting yourself ready for an EV fleet? Is it getting your home ready for an EV and taking that moment? Solar is, is a lot like painting. Painting drives me crazy because painting is 90% prep and 10% getting the job done. Yeah, solar is very much the same thing of understanding what are those efficiency, low-hanging pieces of fruit that we can get out of the way for them? What are the future plans for the organization? To work together to look for incentives out there or opportunities to value engineer the, the project as well. And really understanding it is a little bit of a journey with solar, that the, the technology is straightforward and a project has a level of complexity to it. That's good. But what I did want to also touch on is you're heavily involved in the community here in Columbus, Ohio. This is my hometown. It's been exciting to connect with people like yourself. So with your deep involvement in community, and also advocacy through Green Columbus. Why is education such a critical part of renewable adoption? Yeah, I, because we need all of us. Yeah. Sustainability is that circle. It is all of us. It is everything. And in order to accomplish these goals of rebalancing our relationship with nature, it is going to take every one of us in fight. You know, we, we talk about the, the United Nations put together some sustainability development goals. And one of those is reducing inequalities, making sure that we all have a place in this movement and an opportunity to succeed. Education is at the core of that. We were doing a community listening session last summer, and a gentleman stood up and said that the first time that they had heard the concept of climate was in their sophomore year of college. And that was, to me, mind-blowing and a result of privilege that, that I've had the space. I've been part of the conversations prior to that, and climate change is an everyday conversation point for me, and it influences the decisions that I make. If somebody's out there unaware of the direction that we're traveling with extreme weather, with increased stress on the resources that we have, and they don't have that awareness, they're not able to make those decisions that serve their future. And so we work really hard to educate folks so that they're aware not only of what's going on, but also the opportunity to help. You know, we talk a lot about Greta Thunberg's quote is, "Without hope, there is no action." And so first we Hope, and then action will follow. And so we, we find that in education, giving people the opportunity, letting them know there is a better way to have this relationship with nature that is less impactful to us and really benefits us all strongly. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. And we were talking before we started this recording is, is trees that are made available, the things that organizations are doing to make things accessible and beneficial to environment, but also to individuals whether it's homes or on the commercial side. So tell me about a little bit about local connections and being an advocate for different organizations and be accessible. Yeah, so I have the deep privilege to work with Green Columbus, nonprofit within Columbus that started in 2008. And at this point, we have been responsible for planting 350,000 trees in central Ohio. And, you know, we, we talked earlier about the win-win-win-win-win of sustainability, and it is incredible to see the tree growth out there. Columbus is the fastest growing heat island in the United States, and a lot of that is because we lack a significant amount of tree coverage, and specifically we lack tree coverage in communities of opportunity. You know, we as Green Columbus partnered up up with a project called the Tree Equity Score Analyzer. And so you can actually go out to greenseabust.org and you can zoom in on any part of the city all the way down to the parcel level and see where trees are. And it probably won't surprise many of us that when you go to affluent communities like Dublin, Clintonville, New Albany, you see a significant amount of tree 70, 80%. And yet when you go down to the South Side of Columbus, famously redlined, famously where we had a lot of factory work going in with our city, and where we, we've really marginalized communities, that number drops to single digits and even areas we show 0% tree coverage. And so when we look at that win-win-win opportunity, when you plant trees, when you increase that canopy coverage, coverage, you see improved health outcomes for individual air quality increases, asthma drops, you see reduced runoff from stormwater. And so you see reduced trash being pulled through neighborhoods out there. And most importantly, and to this conversation that we're having here, reduced utility bills. You're shading that community, you're reducing that heat island effect, you're reducing the cost impact to marginalized individuals that can be such burden as we transition through this, this climate moment. That's good. Health is, health is wealth. Yeah. And, and, and being in a healthy environment is important to succeed. Yeah. So floating solar. Yeah. This is something that you're really excited about. It's a different way of thinking about renewable infrastructure. So what is floating solar, if you could explain, and what is the most interesting project that you're working on in terms of floating? Solar? Yeah, absolutely. So floating solar is a newer space for solar. We have the opportunity as ARP Solar to install now the first 3 solar floating solar arrays in Ohio. This is really exactly as it's described. It is solar panels floating out on a body of water. We have 3 in the state of Ohio right now, one serving the Delco Water Treatment plant, one serving the Monroeville utility system, and then a third one serving the Lima Water Treatment Plant just north of Dayton. You know, I tell folks to think about Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid containers and that type of material. What we're basically doing is building an island out of those, those materials and then installing the solar right on top of that reservoir. We often find that these projects serve water treatment plants really well, and we take that electricity directly into that water treatment plant or the utility that's serving that small community of Monroeville and provide the benefits to them. You know, we talked about how for Ohio Solar is behind the meter, so it sometimes becomes a little bit of a challenge to find a customer who has a large enough electrical usage to benefit from something like floating solar. And when you do, it really provides a lot of those, those win-win situations. That's good. That's exciting. So what problems does floating solar solve compared to traditional ground-mounted systems? Yeah, it is again one of those sustainable wins where for the water treatment plant, the resource that they are really stewarding in that instance, is that retention pond, is the water that we're putting that solar out on. And so when you put 9 acres of solar across the top of this retention pond, it reduces the evaporation off of the, the, the body of water. And so that is more water getting delivered into the treatment plant, less loss for them in that moment. It benefits the solar panels as well because that cooling from the water actually improves the efficiency of the solar panels themselves. We, we actually have to use different electrical calculations when we put together a solar array because those panels do tend to overproduce. And so we need to calculate in for that. So you're getting more energy out of this situation as well. And then finally, the wildlife as well benefits from it. So you see less heating in those pools, less opportunity for algae blooms. We go out to the Delco system pretty often to take a look at it, and you will see all these herons sitting out on the edge because they use it as a place to get feeder fish out of the reservoir as well. And so it really becomes this benefit for the water, for the solar, and for the wildlife around that area. That's good. That's good. So walk us through one of the Ohio floating solar projects and what made it successful. Yeah, I think I'll go with the first one that we did because that was the first time I had seen floating solar in person. Person. Definitely the most exciting to have our owner walk into the office on the day that we knew we were going to be doing this project and exclaim, "We're going to need to get a boat." And it's fun to be a part of a project where you have to pack the life preservers as well as you're going out to it. You know, what really made it successful was collaboration. We're talking about a sustainable world. We're talking about educating folks. We're talking about bringing people into the conversation and the The success of a project like Delco is rooted so deeply in collaboration. We worked with an excellent developer who worked with that site owner to take that question in around what are the goals here? What are we trying to accomplish? What is the art of the possible in this moment? And then worked with us as a solar installer in Ohio and said, okay, here's version 1 of what we're thinking out and got with our owner, who's an incredible human being with 30 years of solar experience, a lifetime of construction experience. And we worked together to make sure that we were developing something that was safe, effective, and going to deliver these benefits to the owner. The owner, Delco, as well was a phenomenal partner to work with, very accommodating to the the needs of the team on site, willing to ask questions, be curious. And in those moments where we didn't quite see the same pathway forward, we were able to step back and work together as a team. And so really, with any solar installation, that collaborative nature, that ability to be humble as you're working through things, to know what you do well and what opportunities there are to learn more, that's really what's going to drive, drive success in those moments. That's exciting. And you showed me some of the pictures where you were able to go out with a drone and take a look at this. It's an exciting thing to see how these great renewable energy technologies are taking off. So looking ahead 10 years and thinking about as these great technologies develop, as we're educating our communities and branching out, spreading the word through podcasts like this, enable access information. So looking 10 down the road, what do you hope communities like Columbus become known for in sustainability and energy leadership? Absolutely. I think it's, it's equity and opportunity. It is an opportunity to bring all folks into the conversation. I, I've had the opportunity to partner up with Morgan Harper at Stand Up Columbus on a number of different projects where we're introducing new groups to the climate crisis ahead of us, to the renewable technologies that can help us balance things. There are wonderful organizations. Goodwill has recently launched a solar training cohort, as well as ARCH, which is a group that helps folks who are incarcerated come back into the community with opportunities to better themselves and better their future. I'm looking forward to, over the next 10 years, seeing groups like this coalesce to learn how we can put more solar out there. 98% of the rooftops in Ohio do not have solar on them. So it's a huge opportunity for us to serve our community. It's a huge opportunity for us to create climate leaders. That's actually in Columbus's climate action plan. Yeah. That is the first bullet in there is to create leaders in climate change, in renewable technologies. And so what I'm most excited about is to educate folks about the opportunity opportunity, show them that they have a place, whatever superpower you have. And I truly believe that every one of us has a superpower because sustainability is everything. Whatever your superpower is, you belong and you can benefit this opportunity that we have, and you can benefit us and our communities for years to come. That's good. That's good. So what makes Columbus an exciting place for sustainability right now, in addition that. Yeah. Yeah, it is that collaborative spirit that's starting to coalesce. So Green Columbus has wonderful opportunities to work with the city of Columbus on a number of different opportunities and other nonprofits as well. What I really enjoy about the nonprofit community of Columbus is that it is a we mentality, not an I mentality. Green Columbus is starting a tree coalition currently, and we're bringing Bringing in wonderful partners like FACT, FLOW, Bread, wonderful nonprofits who are stewarding really great outcomes for individuals out there. You know, the city council has been a wonderful supporter on both sides of the opportunities that I have with Green Columbus. They have supported us in a number of different ways. Councilman Weisz specifically is a huge advocate for our activities. Activities, and they're also supporting some of the work that we're doing in solar. So the council approved and supported a grant on one of the solar sites that we're putting together to add batteries. Uh, batteries in the current utility model in Ohio don't have a financial benefit for the owner yet. It is more convenience than anything. So it really makes it difficult for an owner to say, especially a faith community, a church to say, I'm gonna make that additional investment. But the city of Columbus has come in and covered the cost of the batteries in order to create a climate resilience hub. So when we look at extreme weather incidents or power disruption, that community should have a place to go where they can charge a phone, refrigerate medication, get some heat, get some cooling, whatever they need in that moment. And so, you know, the momentum is building in Columbus with a clear understanding of, Oh wait, there are so many benefits to getting these things done. Yeah. Let's work together and strengthen our community. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thanks again for coming on the show and sharing your great knowledge in this space of solar. I really appreciate it as we develop this education piece around our local community as well as national, and also there's an international audience. So the value of renewable energy and understanding, it goes a very long way for people everywhere. But any final thoughts that you would like to share? You know, I think that to your point about international, one of the things that has been really heartening to me is that electricity is universal and this solution crosses language barriers. We have had the opportunity as ARP to go out with a wonderful group called Pickering Energy Solutions, the Global Health Ministry, and Brothers out to Liberia to install a number of solar systems out in West Africa. And watching our teams work together with our Liberian teams is a really inspirational moment because it's, it's electricity. And so the language is universal. Seeing people collaborate around this technology that is going to provide immediate benefits to individuals who need it the most is truly a gift. And so, yeah, it's just a lot of joy and that is really what brings the passion in what we do. Great. Great. Well, thanks, John. Hopefully our audience enjoyed this conversation. I will have links to connect with John, see what he's doing with Appalacian. And until next time. Thanks for listening to Clear Haze Exchange. New episodes drop every Tuesday. 2 weeks. You can catch Clear Haze Exchange on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and more. Let's clear the haze about sustainability and energy efficiency together. Subscribe now and join the conversation.