Jason Edens, founder of RREAL, is determined that no one will be left behind in the transition to renewable energy. He deftly explains the problem: “We’re seeing the development of what we call the ‘renewable divide’ — basically the phenomenon where only upper echelons of society have access to solar energy and lower income communities and families don’t. … Rather than renewable energy lifting all of us equally, we’re running the risk of seeing it contribute to the gap between the rich and the poor.” The tenacity with which Edens tackles this issue has led RREAL (Rural Renewable Energy Alliance) to grow from a small operation headquartered in his basement to a full-scale nonprofit. RREAL makes solar energy economically accessible to families on public assistance. While funding has always been hard to come by, RREAL has creatively addressed this problem by manufacturing its own solar panels in a facility in Pine River, a portion of which it sells at market-rate. “We’re trying to be self-reliant because we’re promoting self-reliance in the energy assistance community,” Edens says. “We want to do our best to walk our talk as well and be nonprofit and self-reliant as opposed to just being dependent on grant funding.”
Grant funding is also nice, of course, and RREAL recently won a Social Venture Partners grant, which will bolster the organization’s rural energy assistance program. The concept behind this program is that installing solar panels on the houses of families who use Minnesota’s energy assistance program will dramatically lessen these families’ heating bills and the federal assistance program will then have more money to help a greater number of families. In 2008, Minnesota assisted 126,500 families with their energy bills, but according to Edens, another 125,000 were turned away.
