Subscribe to News10 Tips In 2 Minutes - Business Opportunities In The Green Economy - July 18, 2010 - Segment Five
Betsy and Renee recap the opportunities for small business owners to get involved in the ever-developing green economy. From how to get certified to do business with the California Public Utilities Commission to the burgeoning market for contractors with renewable energy companies like the Sun Power Corporation, there are a multitude of prospects for small business owners looking to expand their business operations.
2Minutes&More with Betsy Berkhemer and Renee Fraser airs every Sunday at 1pm on KFWB NEWS TALK 980. Tune in for a full hour of tips for business success.
Business Opportunities In The Green Economy - July 18, 2010 - Segment Four
Betsy and Renee discuss the opportunities for small business owners to get involved in the ever-developing green economy. From how to get certified to do business with the California Public Utilities Commission to the burgeoning market for contractors with renewable energy companies like the Sun Power Corporation, there are a multitude of prospects for small business owners looking to expand their business operations.
2Minutes&More with Betsy Berkhemer and Renee Fraser airs every Sunday at 1pm on KFWB NEWS TALK 980. Tune in for a full hour of tips for business success.
Business Opportunities In The Green Economy - July 18, 2010 - Segment Three
Betsy and Renee chat with Dennis Areola, Chief Financial Officer of Sun Power Corporation, based in San Jose and one of the largest producers of solar power units. The founder of the company, former Stanford University professor Dr. Dick Swanson, had an idea of how he could create very high efficiency solar cells while he was at the university. The basic foundation of the solar cell is using polysilicon, or what a lot of people would think of as sand, but it’s the input that creates the solar cell. Through a very complex and highly patented process that their founder and other engineers developed, they produce the world’s best and highest solar cell technology. They recently set another world record to have 24.2% cell efficiency, and as Dennis notes, if you look at their competitors, their efficiency ranges from 10-19%. As Dennis explains, it’s one of those success stories where Dr. Swanson kept working and working, getting funding here and there, until low and behold, he was able to take the company public in 2005 when it had $79 million in revenue. This year, Dennis remarks, they told Wall Street they expect their revenue to be upwards of $2 billion.
Sun Power is also internationally spread out, as they do a lot of business in the world’s largest market, Germany, and a substantial amount of business in markets like Italy, France, Japan, and Korea. Dennis says they work very closely with residential and commercial customers. While they don’t serve residential customers directly, they instead go through the more than 1,000 dealers they have worldwide, and they’re looking to grow their dealer base to over 1,500 by the end of the year. Most of these dealers are not large corporations, but rather “mom and pop companies that start off with ideas and very little working capital, and we work to train them and educate them on how best to serve our customers and how to work with our products,” Dennis points out. For people looking to get involved with Sun Power as a dealer, Dennis says they have a series of articles on their website that talk about that—www.us.sunpowercorp.com—and they also have people out in the fields in all parts of California looking for good companies to work with.
2Minutes&More with Betsy Berkhemer and Renee Fraser airs every Sunday at 1pm on KFWB NEWS TALK 980. Tune in for a full hour of tips for business success.
Business Opportunities In The Green Economy - July 18, 2010 - Segment Two
Betsy and Renee converse with Ann Shin Smith, Chief Operating Officer of the Southern California Gas Company, about diversity within their business. First of all, Ann says, they view it as part of their ongoing, ordinary business. It’s not a special program, but rather, it’s integrated into every business process they have. Secondly, they have tremendous engagement both internally and externally—horizontally, across all their departments; vertically, all the way up to the CEO; and they also take very seriously their engagement with their business partners, seeking them out, working to collaborate with them to build capacity so they can be competitive and successful. Ann explains that they will be looking for many new contractors, hosting seminars to prequalify the contractors. There will be numerous seminars coming up over the next several months, and you can find more about them on their website, www.socalgas.com.
2Minutes&More with Betsy Berkhemer and Renee Fraser airs every Sunday at 1pm on KFWB NEWS TALK 980. Tune in for a full hour of tips for business success.
Business Opportunities In The Green Economy - July 18, 2010 - Segment One
Betsy and Renee speak with Commissioner Nancy Ryan, the newest commissioner on the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), an independent state department that regulates the utilities, about opportunities small businesses can take advantage of in the new green economy. Nancy says that “the green economy is a green field,” which means that it’s wide open to new businesses, new business models, and new players. Because the green economy really spans the globe, small businesses have a position to compete effectively in markets that are inherently international, and they can speak and reach out effectively to the many diverse populations in California. It’s really important to bring a lot of different players into partnering with communities, Nancy mentions, so that communities can see how new technologies will improve their everyday life—not just the new “smart grid” initiative, but also broadband and all the applications that go with the internet.
Betsy and Renee are also joined by former legislator Gwen Moore, who 20 years ago was the originator of the effort to require all utilities in the state to open up contracting opportunities to small businesses, especially diversity-owned small businesses. Gwen was chair of the Committee on Utility and Commerce almost 14 years ago, and at that time, they noted that the utilities were not doing business with minority or women firms. At the time the committee started to work on this, they conducted hearings up and down the state, and found a pattern of leaving those businesses out of the loop. On the basis of their findings, they introduced AB 3678, which became the basis for the legislation that allowed minorities, women, and disable veterans to bring competition to areas where the utilities had always used the same firms because it had always been that way.
2Minutes&More with Betsy Berkhemer and Renee Fraser airs every Sunday at 1pm on KFWB NEWS TALK 980. Tune in for a full hour of tips for business success.
