Steph Speirs on Building an Inclusive Clean Energy Future
Written by: Bella Garcia
Steph Speirs is a clean energy entrepreneur, climate educator, and Fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment. She teaches at the Yale School of Management and advises companies, philanthropists, and investors on climate and clean energy. Speirs also serves on the boards of Vote Solar, the Sierra Club Foundation, and the Community Bank’s Guarantee Fund. Previously, she spent a decade leading Solstice, a community solar company expanding clean energy access across six states, which she grew to 350 megawatts before its acquisition by Mitsui. The Clean Energy Forum spoke with Speirs about her work advancing equitable access to clean energy and the future of climate technology.
Your career began in government services, where you were exposed to the energy poverty facing communities abroad. How did seeing those inequities shape the way you think about building a more inclusive and just clean energy system in the U.S.?
People often think about innovation as originating in the West, and it's such a fallacy. When I worked in India and Pakistan on clean energy innovation in unelectrified areas, I saw incredible innovation happening in small villages. People were bringing solar to their communities because they didn't want to use diesel, which harmed their air quality. Microgrids are another example where communities could leapfrog the inability of the grid to bring clean energy to their local village. Being able to watch innovation happen at a very micro level in resource-limited communities was incredibly inspiring. Walking around “poop-to-power" facilities in Pakistan made me realize I didn't need to be halfway across the world to work on energy access issues. In the U.S., too few people had access to clean energy, especially under-resourced communities. That's why we started Solstice in 2014.
Following Solstice’s acquisition, how have you continued your work in clean energy and innovation?
The class I teach at the School of Management is Climate Tech Innovation and Commercialization, a survey course of all the groundbreaking technologies that you hear about in the news and the challenges that prevent them from scaling. We ask questions like: Why aren’t these technologies mainstream yet? How do we make them scale? How do we foster technologies in balance with the natural resources of our ecosystems? Each class focuses on different technologies such as fusion, geothermal, enhanced rock weathering, critical minerals recycling, batteries, and more. We discuss policy, market, science, and product trends, speak with guest experts and entrepreneurs, and conduct real-life case studies and debates that mirror the challenges faced by businesses commercializing their technology. Outside of teaching, I started a media studio to democratize access to Yale’s course material through a YouTube channel and documentary series, which just launched. As part of that, I’ve started executive producing and filming documentaries about how clean energy projects affect local communities and workers. The first project is about a geothermal plant in Milford, Utah, a town of a thousand people, and explores how clean energy projects impact local communities and workers.
Community solar challenges the traditional energy model by decentralizing both ownership and trust. In your experience, what have you learned about social and institutional power and who controls it in the energy transition?
Community solar is designed to democratize access to solar energy. Rooftop solar typically serves higher-income homeowners, which excludes four out of five Americans. At Solstice, we found equity issues in access tied to FICO credit scores and other markers of privilege. Much of the Solstice journey was about creating innovations, like a new kind of credit score for energy, to make solar more inclusive. Ultimately, access to power is controlled by those with financial capital. Our economy overemphasizes financial capital at the expense of human, social, and natural capital. Yet, nature teaches us a lot about other forms of capital that have value. For example, in an ecosystem, there’s an interdependence that allows for different forms of capital, and relationships are based on reciprocity. We need to design economic systems that reflect those values. Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without a demand and never did and never will.” To change the system, we must organize people power against the riches of capital. Everyone has a role to play, even in industries seemingly unrelated to climate. Change happens when we work together to build a better world.
If you could redesign how Americans interact with their energy providers from the ground up, what would a trustworthy energy system actually feel like to the average American household?
A trustworthy energy system would be reliable, affordable, and clean. It would make people healthier. We don't have that system today, but it is possible to rewrite the rules to create it. Amory Lovins, who founded RMI, once said that people only care about their power if their beer is hot and their showers are cold. Most people don’t think about energy until they lose it. Utilities describe people who pay for energy as “ratepayers.” They're not called customers. We need to design an energy system in which we treat people like customers and not ratepayers. Right now, we're sleepwalking into an energy crisis. We are not building enough supply, energy demand is increasing for the first time in decades, and electricity prices are increasing rapidly. We will start to see people revolt because of that. I'm hopeful it will force good changes in our energy system because people will wake up just like they did in the 1970s energy crisis.
What kind of support does the energy industry need from investors or policymakers to thrive?
Every sector of the energy system has a role to play in building the future we want. At the state and federal level, we need to reform permitting and make it easier to build transmission. From an investor perspective, we need to take more risks to fund the technologies that will allow us to stop using fossil fuels. The biggest financing gap isn’t in early-stage venture capital; it’s project financing for the first few large-scale builds. That’s the “valley of death” for many climate startups. The issue about investment is that the perception of risk doesn’t reflect the real risk because these technologies are unprecedented, operating on an unprecedented timeline. We’re effectively building the ship as we sail it. On a community level, a lot of people are excluded from participating in project financing. Smaller businesses and households often can’t access capital for solar, electrification, or energy-efficient appliances due to poor or limited credit history. We need to be taking more risks because the costs of inaction on climate are much greater than the costs of action. There's a study that shows for every 10 years we delay climate action, the cost increases by 40%. We have a lot more to do, and everyone has a role to play.
What’s one misconception people have about clean energy investments?
A misconception is that there's a bifurcation. Some people say we don’t need any more technology, while others say we already have all the solutions we need. The answer is somewhere in between, in which technology is a tool. We still need innovation in chemistry, conservation, financing, implementation of technologies, and more. We need to get back to a motivating place where people see action happening around them and get inspired to take action too.
What's one piece of advice you would give to both undergraduates and graduates that are hoping to pursue a career in clean energy?
The best time to ask for help is before you need it. Too many people start networking only when they need a job. The job search is a long game in which success compounds over time through genuine relationships and acts of service. If you give first, it will always come back to serve you, even if it’s years later.