Steve Raeder, founder and CEO of Summit Ridge Energy, the nation’s leading commercial solar company, recently appeared on the Climate Positive podcast to share learnings from the frontlines of a dynamic industry. Since its founding in 2017, Summit Ridge has invested more than $1.6 billion into clean energy assets, including a development pipeline of more than 2 GW.

“We’ve had a tremendous growth trajectory,” Steve told the podcast’s host, Gil Jenkins with HASI.

Community solar and Summit Ridge are thriving. Multiple factors are accelerating the growth, from regulatory and financial incentives to a broad spectrum of economic benefits provided by renewable solar energy. Environmental concerns continue to ground the sector’s value proposition, yet those concerns are no longer the singular theme driving the solar story.

In the interview, Steve shared that Summit Ridge’s goals are to expand into more states where the focus is largely around job creation and tax revenue, as well as offering farmers a diversified and predictable way to generate income.

“We are very focused on executing here [at Summit Ridge] and continuing to do what we do, optimizing our portfolio, taking advantage of some of the IRA tax incentive adders, the ITC adders that we can leverage to build in places where we historically have not been able to build because the economics haven’t justified the effort. That’s front and center in terms of our strategy, optimizing the IRA,” elaborated Steve.

Before founding Summit Ridge, Steve helped SunEdison transition its solar business – from rooftops to ground-mount systems – and sell net metering credits. “You could see where things were headed with community solar,” Steve said.

Summit Ridge has succeeded in a competitive field by cultivating expertise in areas that continue to drive growth: process and execution. “Community solar is this simple concept. It allows us to build solar farms either on farmland, green fields, brown fields, or on rooftops, largely industrial rooftops, and then turn around and sell a derivative of the power, usually in the form of a bill credit, to customers. The net result is that we can provide guaranteed savings to both residential and small commercial customers on a monthly basis,” Steve continued.

Listen to the full discussion between Steve Raeder and Gil Jenkins of HASI’s Climate Positive Podcast:

• HASI Podcast Page
• Apple
• Spotify

Related links:

• Summit Ridge Energy and Qcells Announce Largest Community Solar Partnership in the U.S.
• Summit Rodge Energy Powers New Clean Energy Job Training Center in Chicago & Welcomes First Graduating Class
• Summit Ridge Energy Holds Ribbon Cutting for Nation’s Largest Rooftop Community Solar Array (The Bomber)
• HASI and Summit Ridge Energy Expand Partnership with New 250 MW Community Solar Portfolio in Illinois and Maryland