We believe every day should be treated as an earth day, pushing ourselves to make the big and small changes that are crucial to our goal of being more kind to the planet we call home. And the big day, Earth Day, gives us an opportunity to reflect on the progress we’ve made, determine what actions to take next, and reaffirm our vision for the future.
At Terrasmart, our focus is on leading the way toward a more accessible future for renewable energy, empowering our people and partners to deliver smart solar solutions. Technology is the great enabler, but it’s our people who make the benefits of that innovation fully realized. Our dedicated and passionate staff and partners commit themselves each day to help accelerate the transition to renewable energy. We are so grateful to have them on our team.
In North America, Terrasmart is developing a truly comprehensive PV project solution—from early-stage system optimization to design and engineering through to installation and real-time performance monitoring. Our multi-pronged approach will better serve the growing utility, commercial/industrial, and community markets, making solar energy more accessible and helping our partners build thriving businesses along the way.
With over 19 GWs of solar deployed across 4600 systems, Terrasmart is an important contributor to the solar generation that made up 3.3 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2020 (solar being the fastest-growing electricity source.) The products and services we supply our customers are one way we contribute to sustainability efforts. But that’s not where our work stops. In 2022, we expanded our efforts to improve the sustainability of our operations and bolster the contributions we make to our communities.
Committed to action
While we acknowledge we have work to do, we are not starting from zero. We already recycle a significant amount of steel, have established volunteer efforts around community stewardship programs at our various sites, more fully digitized our operations to reduce paper consumption, and made changes to our shipping process and materials to decrease packaging waste. To expand our impact, we are planning a number of initiatives which include:
- Launching Terrasmart Cares, an employee volunteer program to educate and support sustainability efforts in our sites and communities;
- Educating employees interested in electric vehicles or solar for their homes on best practices and incentives—led by our resident experts on the topics;
- Bringing EV charging stations to all of our main sites and creating priority parking spots for low emission vehicles;
- Becoming a corporate partner of Women in Cleantech and Sustainability to help advance their mission of supporting women, with focus on people of color, in growing careers in the renewable energy sector.
- Developing plans to upgrade our field vehicles to hybrid/EVs;
- Working to add damaged steel to our already robust steel recycling program
Terrasmart Cares cleans up
In addition to the road in Ft. Myers, Florida that Terrasmart adopted several years back, we’ve adopted a new road at our Grand Rapids, Michigan site and partnered with Keep Cincinnati Beautiful to “adopt” the road outside our facility in Ohio. Our teams in all locations will be doing trash pick-up and recycling on our roads on or around Earth Day. And since we strive to make every day an earth day, teams will be doing this multiple times per year.
We’re particularly excited about the expansion of our staff volunteer efforts through Terrasmart Cares. Our teams are incredibly passionate, and we’re excited to harness that energy to deliver programing and educational activities geared toward helping communities, both municipal and residential, learn how to adopt and then expand their solar usage. That deserves a blog of its own, so stay tuned!
Every day we as individuals can take small, yet important actions that together contribute to our collective, incremental progress. With our 125+ years of combined experience and success, each of us at Terrasmart is excited to be part of that progress and look forward to continuing to do smart things with the earth and for the earth.
HAPPY EARTH DAY!
