Black Tech Entrepreneurs Working Towards Improving The Environment And Sustainability Through Their Startups
The historical and ongoing cost of not addressing our climate disasters is some-what insane.
The United States is said to have spent $29bn cleaning up climate disasters in the 1990s, but $112bn dollars in the last five years. That’s a huge jump.
This week we’re celebrating the Black-owned innovative companies from across the US that are working on sustainability and environmental solutions.
The three founders, based across the US — from Silicon Valley in California to tribal nations across the Midwest — are driving innovation in energy efficiency, AI, solar, green chemistry, recycling, and other environmental areas.
Gilbert Campbell
Gilbert Campbell is the Founder and CEO of Volt Energy Utility, a national minority-owned utility-scale solar development firm.
The company pioneered the first-ever Environmental Justice Power Purchase Agreement, striking a deal with Microsoft on 250 megawatts of utility-scale solar with a portion of the revenue going to support environmental health and economic justice programmes in urban and rural communities disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change.
The partnership also represents the first utility-scale solar deal with a Black-owned firm and a Fortune 500 company.
Volt Energy, which was founded in 2010, has dozens of clients including Accenture, Exelon/Pepco, The Cheesecake Factory, Subaru, District of Columbia Government, Howard University, and Wake Forest University.
Robert Kabera
Sync Energy AI is the leading power outage prediction firm in the United States. Their predictive grid failure analytics tool visualises all vulnerabilities on the electric grid ahead of time, allowing cities, municipalities, insurance companies, and natural disaster response companies to visualise weather-related disasters up to 6 months in advance with 97% accuracy.
It’s founder Kabera says his goal is to get us to move from a reactive to a proactive approach, protecting and saving energy, jobs, businesses, communities, and people who are most affected by climate disasters.
The impact of climate variability and change, climate policy responses, and associated socio-economic development will undoubtedly affect our abilities to achieve sustainable development goals.
Dexter Turner
Dexter Turner is Co-Founder and CEO of OpConnect, a payment processing, and energy management platform for Electric Vehicle charging.
His vision is to accelerate the adoption of EVs by deploying AI-driven charging solutions for fleets and multi-family properties that minimise charging costs, protect the power grid, and incorporate onsite solar and battery storage.
Dexter is democratising access to electric vehicles with charging operations in 19 U.S. states and Canada and growinG.
