The Transition to Rooftop Solar
Making the jump from focusing on BPA and the pollution of our waterways to rooftop solar was a pretty big jump. It was aided by talking about the trends in solar power in a class I'm taking called Foundations of Social Innovation and Enterprise. After seeing some of the trends pointing toward solar being a bigger part of the global energy portfolio, but still facing many obstacles, I knew I wanted to look more into it.
I looked more into BPA and why it isn't more regulated, why the research on it is so contrary, and why companies don't replace it with alternatives in their products. I realized two important things:
In many cases companies tend to adapt and change faster than governments can enact new policies.
Most companies will not go out of their way to make changes in their business, like replace BPA with another material, unless it is financially beneficial.
These realizations fascinated me and I knew that I wanted to do something that focused on compelling companies to voluntarily make these changes instead of forcing them to do so through policy change. While thinking about this I redefined my project to focus on compelling companies to be more environmentally sustainable.
This is where the big transition to rooftop solar came. After broadening my problem to "environmental sustainability" in general, I realized I needed to narrow down on a certain aspect of environmental sustainability. Recently learning more about the trends in solar power, I naturally gravitated towards it.
My new project focus: Make the business case to electricity utility companies to diversify their energy portfolio to include more rooftop solar units
