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The Company We Keep

Dear Reader,
This blog is now an archive. John Abrams (Founder of South Mountain, author of this blog, and a book of the same name) retired on December 31, 2022. All posts published up until this date are preserved below.

For updates on John's next chapter, visit abramsangell.com.

For updates on South Mountain's second act, subscribe to our newsletter using the form below.

Energy

Coming Back Around

June 4, 2021 by John Abrams 9 Comments

The only time I ever built a physical model of a house was for the Chilmark house my late wife, Chris, our son Pinto, and I designed in 1982. He was 12, and our daughter Sophie, who would be born on the night we moved in (in late 1984), had not yet been imagined. I wonder what became of that foam-core model.

We built that house, lived there until Sophie was 15, and sold it in 1999. In those days, South Mountain’s shop, offices, and my family home were all located on our property adjacent to the Allen Farm. The company was growing, and we needed more space. We couldn’t expand on that site. It was time to move on. We migrated to West Tisbury to develop our current campus and Island Cohousing.

In 2011 I took the South Mountain architects to see the Chilmark house. Some of the younger ones had never seen it. “It’s very dynamic – the levels, the light, the textures,” said Matt Coffey.

The reason for the field trip was that the house was going to be torn down by its owners to make room for a new one. Only 28 years old, it was bulldozed, taken to the landfill and replaced with a high-end contemporary and pool.

It was one of my best buildings. It was hard to see it go, but we had experienced our emotional parting when we sold it 12 years before. Still, it was sad.

After the house was completed in 1984, for a time South Mountain’s work veered off-course. My colleagues and I had been on a design path that combined several threads: a “vernacular modern” style characterized by passive solar, natural daylighting, and dedication to craft and fine materials. But the vernacular and the craft began to take over; modern and solar took a backseat. It was to be a lengthy detour, at least 10 years, before high performance (in terms of energy, daylight, comfort, health, and durability) re-gained prominence in our work.

(Our country was charting a parallel course. Reagan was in office. The solar panels Jimmy Carter had installed on the White House were ridiculed and scrapped. Frivolous and tasteless post-modern design was all the rage – goofy pediments and all).

In 2005, I was working with Ryan Bushey (then a young architect, now our Director of Architecture & Engineering and one of my co-owners), on a zero-energy home. The site and solar opportunities were similar to that of the Chilmark house. I took Ryan to see it. Several aspects of his 2005 design were modeled after my 1983 design, but Ryan took it to another level.

The Chilmark house (where my family lived for 16 years) and another one completed in 1981, several miles away (that has been extensively remodeled in a way that took the soul out of the building) are, I think, the best examples of early SMCo work – both designed and built about 40 years ago.

One’s gone. One is a shadow of its former self. Fortunately, there are other decent examples of our early work, but those two have a special place in my heart (absence really does make the heart grow fonder).

I suppose I could have kept and cared for the Chilmark house. But I didn’t. It was important to make a break. The results of the development of Island Cohousing signified that SMCo was all the way back-on-track. And the Cohousing neighborhood was good place to live. It had its downs and ups. Chris succumbed to cancer in our house there in 2017; shortly after Sophie got married on the pond.

One of the prominent features of our Chilmark house was that it was built into a hillside and stepped down the hill in three levels. The lowest step was only 17”, the height of a chair. This was the dining area. A special round table with a large lazy Susan and a laminated semi-circular wood bench on the upper level provided some of the seating (the rest was chairs on the lower level). Everyone loved that table and space. Kids loved the lazy Susan. Dogs loved it that if someone left food on the table it was right at their height, ripe for poaching.

Before the house was torn down, the owner gave that table – lazy Susan and all – to a young neighbor, who grew up playing with Sophie. A few years ago, he passed it on to her. Our Shop Lead, Jim, restored and re-finished it, and replaced the lazy Susan bearings. Now Sophie, her husband John and their three young kids gather round it. Their twins, Bodie and Turner, born just two months ago, will know that table from birth, just as she did. Her three-year-old, Rockland, will probably ride the lazy Susan and tax those bearings just as she did. Maybe we’ll replace them for the third generation.

We find our calling and our path. The journey is complex. Along the way we stray. We find the way again. Things are dismantled and things are saved. Some circle back around.

There’s poetry in that.

P.S. The sweet little horse barn we built for Sophie and her friends on the Chilmark property remains. All is not lost, ever.

Filed Under: Energy, History, Long Term Thinking, Martha's Vineyard, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: high performance, Island Cohousing, Lazy Susan, Sophie, The Allen Farm

The PV Diaries

September 14, 2020 by John Abrams 2 Comments

As our primary sales contact these past 45 years, I have known every one of South Mountain’s clients. And I have usually known them well.

Until 2007, that is, when we began to install solar systems for people other than our design/build clients. At that time, Energy Technology Director Rob Meyers became the primary solar contact, shepherding hundreds toward clean, renewable, power. In those 13 years, we have installed roughly 500 systems for homes, businesses, and landfills across the island. Many of their owners I have never met.

Five years ago, I asked John Guadagno, our Energy Technology Project Manager, to alert me – from time to time – when he turns on new systems, so I could gain a sense of who we are working for and how their projects went. And so he began to email brief vignettes about client and job. Occasionally – very occasionally, unfortunately – I find the time to follow up on them personally. More often I run into people at Cronig’s or elsewhere who approach me and say, “You installed a solar system on my house!”

“Oh, amazing,” I respond, “thanks for saying. How’d it go?”

Invariably they gush.

Recently I read a post from JG and thought, “This is a remarkable record of the human side of doing business. I think I’ll look back, pull some up, and re-read.”

They seemed worth sharing; here are just a few of many:


8/17/15
Today I turned on the 14.7 kW roof mounted solar array at MV Shipyard. For me personally, this was the most enjoyable system to turn on. I have been talking about solar with Phil Hale (the former owner) since the 90’s. Phil has been wanting to do this for nearly 40 years. It is almost fitting that his son, James Hale (now President of MV Shipyard), led the charge. They are very happy. As you know, I really like happy clients. As you also know, these guys are both great friends.
[NOTE: Before coming to South Mountain, JG worked at the MV Shipyard for nearly a decade.]


Photo by Gabrielle Mannino.

5/1/17
Polly Hill PV2 – they are addicted! Another 24.85 kW added to the existing 10.46 kW we installed in 2013. They built a new Education center. We installed 12.4 kW on this new building and 12.4 kW on the existing “Cow Barn” building next door. Great clients. When I arrived to provide the walk through there was a crowd of maybe 15 Polly Hill employees. Lots of interest and great questions.


5/1/17
Lin Gallant – 9.66 kW roof mounted at their house in Vineyard Haven. Lin is a structural Engineer, has worked on many solar projects, and has built a new house in VH. He came to us for a HERS rating and consultation with Marc. Lin has turned out to be a great client. Very happy with his installation. We hired him to look at Cottle’s for PV. He will relocate to the Island with his wife and two young children soon. I hope we can work with him in the future.
[NOTE: This was the beginning of an important relationship. After Lin and family moved to the Vineyard, he quit his off-island job and came to work full time at SMCo, where he has brought the structural engineering discipline in-house, helping to integrate our design/build process more than ever.]


6/6/18
Today I turned on a 3.9 kW roof mounted array for Geneva and Calvin Corwin in Vineyard Haven. Geneva found a path for Cape Light Compact to pay for her entire solar array! She is so lovely, with two little ones running around their newly expanded home.
[NOTE: Cape Light Compact partnered with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in 2018 to offer grants covering the cost of solar on affordable housing. That grant program is no longer available.]


6/13/18
Yesterday I turned on a 5.76 kW roof mounted array for Primo at his house in Vineyard Haven. Fellow co-workers are some of my favorite systems to do. We are so psyched for Primo and his sweet new home.
[NOTE: Primo Lombardi is an SMCo employee and co-owner. We have installed 24 systems on the homes of employees and former employees.]


7/26/18
Today, I met Jim Feiner and Deb Dunn at their home in Chilmark. I turned on their array last week and met them today for a tutorial walk through of their new 7.92 kW ground mounted solar array. They were very excited. Deb said she has been thinking about this for over 15 years.



10/31/18
Yesterday, I met Sean Conley and Teri Mello at their Aikido Dojo (next to their house) in West Tisbury. They ‘flipped the switch’ while I provided a tutorial walk through of their new 7.85 kW roof mounted solar array. Sean has been a life-long Aikido student and now teaches youngsters. He rallied the community to help design and build this DoJo in the early 80’s. You may recognize one of the Harcourt brothers hanging (to right) in the trusses. Sean and Teri are thrilled.


11/30/19
On Wednesday I met Bill Connolly at his home in Edgartown. I ‘flipped the switch’ and provided a tutorial walk through of his new 17.28 kW roof mounted solar array. I met him late in the afternoon before the holiday and we struggled to get his monitor going. It took me about 30 minutes to discover his iPad was so old it did not support the Solar Edge App. His son was visiting for the Turkey holiday and quietly asked if Dad needs a new iPad. Bill emailed me on 11/29 to say he got a new one and the monitoring is fantastic!


6/23/20
Yesterday, I met Ann Lees at her home in Chilmark. I ‘flipped the switch’ and we sat outside while I provided a tutorial walk through of her new 5.76 kW roof mounted solar array. Ann was so lovely to work with (yes I know, broken record). We spoke several times over the phone through the process and yesterday we finally met in person. She is a long time seasonal resident and her husband remembers Hoppy (I think that was what we called your dad?). Ann and her late husband were both physicians. Long ago her husband worked with your dad in CA. She was thrilled to work with South Mountain and noted the whole team from Rob on down did not disappoint!
[NOTE: My Dad, who died in 2016 at the age of 95, was always called Hoppy by friends and family.]


7/17/20
On 6/24/20 I met Alex Morrison at his and Maggie’s new home in Edgartown. Alex ‘flipped the switch’ while I provided a tutorial walk through of their new 14.4 kW roof mounted solar array. Alex and Maggie are three-peat solar clients. We were all thrilled to work with them again and the install – which happened during the early stages of COVID – went smoothly.



7/17/20
Yesterday, I met Scott Stephens and Penny Uhlendorf at their home in Vineyard Haven and provided a tutorial walk through of their new 5.04 kW roof mounted solar array. They are great folks and thrilled with their experience and new solar array.
[NOTE: Scott and Penny own a house – one of my favorites – that we designed and built for Sally Coker (now deceased) maybe 30 years ago.]

That’s a sampling of JG’s reports. Some people consider solar panels and systems to be a commodity. These brief stories say something different – they show the personal side of these transactions, for our clients and for us. They speak of connections between people in our company and those we serve, connections that often last for decades.

We are grateful to our incredible energy technology team – Rob, Faren, JG, Phil, and John M – and to the others who support them – from our engineering team to our admin team, to our trade partners. It takes a village. From the outside, it would be hard to imagine how complex each of these projects are – from sales cycle to site assessments, from policy work to financing, from permitting to installation, from commissioning to long-term monitoring and maintenance.

As Rob and the team constantly improve this process, it becomes more efficient, effective, and client-centric. Systematization does not make it any less human, only more, and all work together to stay one step ahead of the ever-shifting solar policy landscape.

We are grateful, as well, to our clientele, the ones I’ve met and the ones I haven’t. They make this impact-driven work rewarding and meaningful.

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Small Business

The Amicus Cooperative – Stronger Together

June 29, 2018 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

South Mountain is proud – and lucky – to be one of the co-owners of the Amicus Cooperative, a collection of 50 of the most progressive solar companies in the U.S.. Amicus exists to support smaller regional solar companies by leveraging national scale purchasing power, sharing best business practices, and combining collective brainpower. My colleague Rob Meyers, who manages our Energy Services division, never misses their semi-annual gatherings. I have gone twice, once in 2015 in Phoenix and once this year in Denver.

It is not an overstatement to say that both times the Amicus group took my breath away. The intelligence, the heart and soul, the culture of civility, humility, humor, inquiry, fellowship, and friendship at these gatherings are extraordinary.

We’re happy to be able to share this piece about Amicus written by Sarah Stranahan, a senior editorial associate at The Democracy Collaborative and a leading member of its Fifty by Fifty employee ownership team.

The Democracy Collaborative is another remarkable organization which does cutting edge research and “works to carry out a vision of a new economic system where shared ownership and control creates more equitable and inclusive outcomes, fosters ecological sustainability, and promotes flourishing democratic and community life.”

Good stuff all around. These are important below-the-radar antidotes to the sorry, sleazy, sadistic mess of national politics today. – JA


Amicus Solar Purchasing Coop Spreads Employee Ownership
Achieving Scale while Maintaining Local Impact

By Sarah Stranahan

Amicus Solar is one of more than 250 purchasing cooperatives in the US, including such well-known brands as Ace Hardware and Best Western Motels. By forming a large national cooperative, small producers or retailers increase their purchasing power and access to project financing, while remaining independently owned and operated. An additional benefit, it turns out, is that a purchasing co-op can be a particularly effective means of spreading employee ownership.

Amicus Solar was founded in 2011 by six independent solar companies, including employee-owned cooperative and certified B Corp Namaste Solar and South Mountain Company. Amicus Solar is led by cooperative veteran and former Namaste Solar employee-owner, Stephen Irvin, who serves as its president. Today Amicus includes 48 local and regional solar photovoltaic (PV) installers and developers who openly share and collaborate on a wide range of business issues, from operational efficiencies to sales and marketing strategies.

Similar to Best Western and Ace, Amicus is democratically owned by its members, 40 percent of which are B Corps and a growing number of which are employee owned. With five Amicus members having joined the cooperative as employee-owned companies, Amicus has made a conscious effort to educate its members about worker ownership. As a result, five member businesses (ReVision Energy, Technicians for Sustainability, SunBug Solar, Positive Energy, and Sunlight Solar) have converted — and another five are considering converting — to either become worker coops or employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). The purchasing co-op has become a means of “industry contagion” — a way of rapidly spreading employee ownership.

Staying Local While Creating a Competitive Advantage

Since the Great Recession, there has been an increased interest in localism (also called subsidiarity) — the principle that decisions should be made at the lowest practical level or closest to where they will have their effect — because small, local impact-driven businesses have three key advantages for nurturing a more democratic and sustainable economy:
They invest locally, capturing and multiplying value, particularly when they sell locally produced goods;
They are more successful at participatory management because it is easier to cultivate personal trust and accountability in small-scale, local organizations; and
They are more likely to care about and be accountable to their communities in terms of environmental health, social equity, cultural vitality, and good governance.
Localism, however, faces challenges when it comes to economies of scale, which can increase efficiency and reduce the costs of production. Scale is also required to meet the needs of densely populated urban centers, where a larger and larger portion of the world’s population lives.

Small solar installers have faced intense competition from large national companies such as SolarCity (recently acquired by Tesla), SunRun, and SunPower. By coming together in a purchasing co-op, the relatively small businesses that own Amicus Solar have leveled the playing field with their larger competitors, particularly in terms of purchasing power, while maintaining the advantages of staying local.

New Ventures

In addition to taking advantage of cost and marketing efficiencies, Amicus members share best practices and develop joint strategies to advance their common goals. For example, in 2016 Amicus won a $358,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to found a new cooperative to provide high-quality operations and maintenance (O&M) support to large-scale solar installations. Today Amicus O&M Cooperative includes 20 member organizations that have set collective operations and management standards to ensure that commercial and utility-scale solar PV systems fulfill their performance expectations over the long term. Amicus O&M Cooperative is being led by another cooperative veteran and former Namaste Solar employee-owner, Amanda Bybee.

In 2017, Amicus members helped found the Clean Energy Credit Union (CECU), which received the first federal charter for a new credit union in Colorado in 31 years. CECU’s mission is to promote clean energy, environmental stewardship and cooperative enterprises through the financial services it offers its members. Using the federally insured deposits of its members, the credit union provides consumer loans to reduce the cost of clean-energy products and services. “We envision a world where everyone can participate in the clean-energy movement,” said board chairman Blake Jones, co-founder of Boulder-based Namaste Solar. This new federally chartered credit union will make it easier for people to both invest in and use clean energy in order to help protect our environment and improve our economy.”

Jones is leading another venture in this growing ecosystem called Kachuwa Impact Fund, which has provided capital in support of multiple Amicus members. Kachuwa’s mission is two-fold:
(1) To provide privately held “impact companies” with mission-aligned, long-term, and non-controlling capital; and
(2) To provide “impact investors” with diversified, impact investment opportunities outside of Wall Street.
Kachuwa’s multiple “impact themes” include cooperatives, certified B Corps, and companies that are owned by employees, women, or people of color. Kachuwa itself is aiming to convert to an investment cooperative structure in 2019 and, among other things, to increase its support for companies converting to employee ownership both within the Amicus ecosystem and beyond. Improving access to values-aligned capital is a critically important part to growing the cooperative and employee ownership movements.

Democratic Governance

According to Irvin, president of Amicus, Namaste Solar has had powerful influence on the culture of the purchasing coop and its members. It was at Namaste Solar that Irvin learned about cooperatives, democratic processes and governance, and the importance of facilitating a process to reach consensus. Like Namaste Solar, he says, Amicus uses an open-book management policy to keep everyone fully informed and a committee structure to facilitate decision making.

Irvin told Solar Pro magazine in 2014, “[Open-book management] is important since the members are equal owners. Consensus building can take time — but once we’ve come to a decision, you see more engagement and commitment from everyone.”
Democratic governance has not only contributed to the purchasing co-op’s success, but has shown members that ownership, mission, governance, and culture matter. Today Amicus Solar is an important driver of employee ownership across an entire industry.

Filed Under: Cooperatives, Employee Ownership, Energy, Small Business, Workplace Democracy Tagged With: Amicus Cooperative, Democracy Collaborative, Fifty by Fifty, Namaste Solar, Rob Meyers, Sarah Stranahan

Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

July 17, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

My colleagues and fellow owners Deirdre, Rob, Siobhán and I just returned from a conference in Boston called Local Sustainable Economies. It was a national gathering, hosted by the Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts, of people and organizations working to localize economic activity and encourage the long haul shift from the extractive economy of the present to a generative economy of the future.

Read More about Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

Filed Under: Climate Change, Design, Economic Crisis, Energy, Environment, Long Term Thinking, Martha's Vineyard, News, Politics, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: alliance bernstein, clean energy, fossil fuel, local sustainable economies, solar, solar power

Earth Day SunPower & SMCo Series Conclusion

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

SunPower’s final blog post about its collaboration with SMCo is focused on our commercial and affordable housing solar projects.

That’s it for this series, just in time for Earth Day 2017, which comes just in time for the planet. In “How The Active Many Can Overcome the Ruthless Few,” Bill McKibben says “We’ll either save or doom the planet during the Trump administration.” Today scientists will march on the National Mall. A week later, on Trump’s 100th day, there will be another major Climate Change march in Washington. Scientists are angry. People are angry. McKibben says, “Trump has pissed people off, and pissed-off people don’t ask for small and easy progress. They demand the shifts that reality requires.”

Now is the time. As the SunPower series demonstrates, we can effectively do what we have been unable to do in the past. The shift to renewables is underway, un-stoppable and irreversible, but time is the big variable. How fast, how soon, how much?

Link to the SunPower blog post here. Onward.

mv3-commercial-install

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Politics, South Mountain Company Tagged With: cronigs, earth day, earth month, Martha's Vineyard, solar power, SunPower

SunPower: There’s More

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

For the Earth Day campaign mentioned in the last post, SunPower created two videos and three blog posts. This link will take you to their second video and second blog post. Please take the journey to explore the SunPower/South Mountain relationship further. This one is about the connection between our devotion to craft and our passion for solar. The two go hand in hand.

We’ll send out another reminder when the 3rd SunPower blog post is up. Thanks for listening!

17_RESI-201_EarthBlog2-Social-Images-Twitter-2

Filed Under: Design, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard Tagged With: clean energy, Deep Energy Retrofits, earth day, earth month, Martha's Vineyard, solar, SunPower

SunPower Features South Mountain & Vineyard for Earth Day

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

To honor Earth day this year, SunPower, the manufacturer of the solar panels we install, decided to do a campaign about South Mountain here on the Vineyard. They put a ton of effort into this. They spent time here with us last Fall, did several videos and photo shoots, and wrote extensively about our company and our work. We’re honored by their decision to feature us, and we appreciate their beautiful work. We also appreciate our relationship with SunPower, an American company that makes the best solar panels in the world. If you’d like to see what they’re up to with this, click here.

17_RESI-201_EarthBlog-Social-Images-Facebook-1 CROPPED FOR BLOG

Filed Under: Climate Change, Collaboration, Cooperatives, Energy, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company Tagged With: clean energy, earth day, earth month, Martha's Vineyard, SunPower, Vineyard Power

M-Line Homes

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

In 1980 a woman named Madeline Blakeley asked me to look at a piece of land with her. She was a librarian in her early sixties whose husband had recently died. They had no children and had always lived in rented apartments. Her dream was to own a piece of property.

She had $7,000 in cash. A realtor showed her a lot priced at exactly that, but her friends advised her against buying it. The lot fell steeply south to a sweet little valley, a perfectly matched solar exposure and view, but it was right beside the main road from Vineyard Haven to Edgartown, which was very loud. Except for that proximity and the fact that the whole lot was a hillside, it was lovely. There was nothing else on Martha’s Vineyard even close to her price range.

I suggested that we could cut and fill and build an earth-bermed, partially underground house. “The southern orientation aims away from the road just enough, and the berming would dull the noise as long as the house doesn’t open to that side. We can design the traffic right out of this scene!” She was excited. Even though she didn’t imagine she could afford to build anything at all, the idea that the land could eventually be sensibly used was appealing. I didn’t tell her that we didn’t – at the time – actually know how to properly build an earth-integrated house.

She bought the property.

Read More about M-Line Homes

Filed Under: Design, Energy, Housing, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company Tagged With: anne alexanders, bright built homes, farmer's home administration, Island Housing Trust, matt coffey, unity homes

All in a Company Meeting

December 23, 2015 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

We began our recent year-end company meeting by reviewing finances, work completed, work ahead, affordable housing projects in the pipeline, solar sales and installations, and a variety of compelling and not-so-compelling metrics and indicators.

It has been a very good year, as were the two that came before.  A robust trifecta.  One of our younger employees, Ian Gumpel, asked why we’re doing so well.  Great question.  I mumbled a few dis-jointed explanations that didn’t quite add up.  Later I thought more and the next day I wrote a brief addendum to everyone that said in part, about Ian’s question,  “As a friend of ours, Devon Hartman, once said, ‘The key to making a company work is getting all the wood behind one arrow.’  We are making great strides toward doing just that.  Sometimes it doesn’t seem so; the alignment can be obscured by the drama and upheaval of constant change.  But it becomes clear through the lens of our triple bottom line  performance.”

Read More about All in a Company Meeting

Filed Under: Collaboration, Design, Energy, South Mountain Company, Triple Bottom Line Tagged With: Bernie Sanders, Devon Hartman, Triple Bottom Line, Zingerman's, ZingTrain

Clearing a Path to Energy Independence

February 25, 2015 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The Vineyard remains uncommonly chilly.  Snow on the ground since late January, more last night.  The other morning it was 6 below zero, the coldest since we arrived 40 years ago.  Mal Jones told me the last time it was colder than that was in 1961.  Quite a winter.  But if we’re going to live in Vermont, I think we oughta get to have some mountains!! No such luck.

Recently Julie Wells, the editor of the Vineyard Gazette, asked me to write an article about the demise of Cape Wind.  Reasonable request, but I declined.   What I could do, I suggested, is include a few thoughts about Cape Wind in a larger context.  She agreed to that, and here’s the piece that emerged, published in the Gazette on February 5, 2015.

On the Gazette website there were many comments about the article, both positive and negative.  My favorite, from someone in Oak Bluffs, who called himself (or herself) BS:  “I’m tired of shoveling all this global warming from my driveway.”

That was the only one I responded to.  I said:  “Hah, BS, I’m tired of it too – you shovel mine and I’ll shovel yours. But you’re not shoveling Global Warming, it’s Climate Change you’re shoveling, which brings, over time, greater weather extremes – more precipitation, more drought, colder temps, warmer temps. Some even call it Global Wilding.”

Onward.

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Martha's Vineyard Tagged With: Cape Wind, Climate change, Julie Wells, Mal Jones, Vineyard Gazette

Tracking our Carbon Footprint

July 1, 2014 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The piece below was written for and posted on the Green Building Advisor.  I thought I’d share it here too.

We like to measure how we’re doing in as many ways as possible.  Like other businesses, we have a collection of metrics for financial tracking: profit and loss, budget projections and actuals, job costing of each project, value of our several funds (pension, equity, and reserves) and more.

We also measure social factors:  employee education costs, compensation ratio top to bottom, length of employee tenure, average employee age, charitable contributions, and community service.

We consistently track (measure) our work backlog to help us plan for our immediate future.

We try to predict our longer-term future, too – through strategic planning, creating five year plans, projecting organizational charts, and making succession plans.

In design and project planning, we do extensive measuring (space planning, engineering) to ensure good building performance, structure, and utility.  On our completed projects, we monitor energy use and other factors (like relative humidity) to help us learn what works and what doesn’t.

Read More about Tracking our Carbon Footprint

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: carbon footprint, Green Building Advisor, life cycle assessment

A Bright Investment (& Stop ‘n Shop Update)

June 13, 2014 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The postscript to my last blog entry about Stop and Shop is that they withdrew their application!  They heard the concerns, saw the writing on the wall, and pulled back.  Our hope is that they will come back with a new plan that more addresses the wishes of Vineyarders and works for them too.

*                                   *                                   *                                    *

The following is a re-print of a piece Nis Kildegaard wrote for his Sounding column after a long chat with Rob Meyers, our Energy Services Manager.  It appeared in the Martha’s Vineyard Times on June 5th.  I thought he did a fine job with it.

 

A BRIGHT INVESTMENT

Maybe you never heard the news about solar power, or it was drowned out by the noise of the 13-year controversy over the Cape Wind project on Horseshoe Shoal.

But if you still think that putting solar electric panels on your roof is a prohibitively costly way to declare your environmentalist bona fides, it’s time to think again.

I sat down for an eye-opening tutorial last week with Rob Meyers at South Mountain Company (SMC) in West Tisbury. Meyers is manager of the company’s fastest-growing department, energy services. Here’s some of what I learned.

Read More about A Bright Investment (& Stop ‘n Shop Update)

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Cape Wind, Eliakim's Way, Green Communities Act, Jenney Way, Martha's Vineyard Times, Nis Kildegaard, NSTAR, South Mountain Company, SunPower

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