Transcript
Jigar Shah: Sandy, welcome. Out of all the podcasts I've ever done, I'm not sure I've ever heard you on one before. Is this your first big podcast?
Sandy Reisky: Not my first, but I have not done many.
Jigar Shah: Well, I'm so glad to have figured out a way to get you on. You have been building wind projects since around 2000, before investors thought of it as an asset class. Is that right?
Sandy Reisky: Yes.
Jigar Shah: So when did you believe wind power would actually become a business?
Sandy Reisky: I want to start by stepping back to how I even landed on the idea. I was living in the Czech Republic for a couple of years and in Germany for a few years. In the Eastern European countries, the snow can be sort of black. You could feel the pollution back then especially. The thought was: if I could ever put my career toward pollution mitigation, that was the big idea. I really wanted to be in the business of clean air and clean water.
Spooling forward to the year 2000, there was a death in the family. I had a career, but I wanted to step back and evaluate what to do next. I'd been the CFO of a software company and didn't really have any background in wind. But I remembered what I really wanted to focus my life on — where I wanted to have impact. I came upon clean energy. Clean energy would be a place where I could really address the issue of pollution. At the time, solar was way too expensive, but wind really presented itself as a solution. It was competitive, and the cost curve was heading down.
Jigar Shah: Were you already in Charlottesville?
Sandy Reisky: Yeah, I was in Charlottesville at that time.
Building Apex: In-House Everything
Jamie Nolan: So you built Greenlight Energy, sold it, and then started Apex Clean Energy and scaled that up. What did you learn the first time around that made the second company scale faster?
Sandy Reisky: It's about the team. By the time we started Apex, we really knew who to hire and we really invested in the team. We recruited Mark Goodwin as the COO — he came from EDPR and formerly Horizon, and he really knew what scaling a company looked like. One of our key strategies was to bring all the key functions in-house: interconnection, GIS, legal, financing, engineering, construction, everything.
Our other big strategy was to invest in the energy resource. It was all about building value by understanding we were in the energy business, not the project development business. That meant creating a portfolio of assets big enough that you could be building consistently — because that's the only way to have a business: consistent revenue. This is an industry fraught with risk. Our real core competency was squeezing down that risk and figuring out how to survive in a very challenging environment.
Jigar Shah: I remember meeting Zilka and Mike Skelly way back in the day, because we were backed by Goldman Sachs. Early wind power projects required convincing landowners, electric utilities, banks, and regulators about the sector's potential all at once. Did you find any one of those parties harder than the others?
Sandy Reisky: You can sit down with a landowner, you can work with a utility, the regulators have their processes. But I'd say banks were the big hurdle — specifically, how do you monetize the tax credits that Congress wanted to give you? These transactions are huge, and you're getting all these credits that you're never going to be able to use if you're a developer. So you bring in a bank. The bank essentially lends their balance sheet so they can absorb the tax credits. They pay you for that upfront, and that's how you use project financing to get it built.
Jigar Shah: Who was your first bank?
Sandy Reisky: I couldn't tell you.
Jigar Shah: But it wasn't JP Morgan — those guys came in later.
Sandy Reisky: They did, yeah.
The 2015 Bet Nobody Else Would Take
Jamie Nolan: Here's a fun question. What is your favorite wind project you ever developed, and where is it? What makes it special?
Sandy Reisky: My first and favorite wind farm was Elk River Wind Farm. The landowner we got to know right from the outset was Pete Farrell, in Kansas. It was a 150-megawatt project with many challenges — took about five years. I guess you learn to love the things you work hardest for.
Jamie Nolan: Is it still operating?
Sandy Reisky: Yes.
Jigar Shah: And 150 megawatts was large at that time. When you and I talked during my time at Generate Capital, it was because in 2015 you bet the farm on wind power when the tax credits had run out and Congress was deliberating on whether to extend them. You bought up other people's development projects when they were less sure. What made you so confident to make those big bets in 2015?
Sandy Reisky: There are so many positive attributes to the asset class. I think the industry, even at that point, was too big to fail. GE was a player — a big U.S. company. It's not as if I had anybody's ear in Congress, but we certainly heard reassurances that people were working hard at it. And frankly, it was a calculated risk. We saw that a lot of our peers and smaller players had run out of money and really needed somebody to pick up the cost of carrying the projects forward. We were of the mindset that this was the right thing to do. There was incredible value, and we got a lot of them built.
Jigar Shah: Yeah, you did.
Wind at 12%: The OG Nobody Talks About
Jamie Nolan: For our listeners who may not be familiar with the stats around wind power, what's the state of the industry today? How much power does it produce nationally, and how has it grown since you first started?
Sandy Reisky: The growth has been near exponential — a perfect S-curve. Recently, wind hasn't been growing as fast, and I'll say that's in part because solar and batteries are stealing the show a bit. They're easier to develop and faster, and almost cheaper. But wind is really applicable in the best spots, and when you get those spots, it's unbeatable. It has advantages in the wintertime and produces power 24/7. I don't have the stat for last year on the tip of my tongue.
Jigar Shah: I think it's bigger than the solar industry. Solar is approaching 8% of total electricity production in the U.S., and I think wind is at around 12 or 13, right?
Sandy Reisky: Correct. And from a market share standpoint, the two of them together are bigger than coal.
Jigar Shah: Super exciting.
Sandy Reisky: It's kind of a stock-and-flow thing. The flow of solar projects coming online is bigger in any given year these days than wind.
Why Solar Stole the Spotlight
Jamie Nolan: Wind was once the leading edge of clean energy. When I started working in this sector around 2010, that's what everyone was excited about — solar was so tiny. Today, solar and batteries often get more excitement, more political momentum, and more capital attention. What do you think has changed?
Sandy Reisky: It's economics — the cost curves accelerating. Wind takes longer and costs quite a bit more. You need a lot more engineering, and one of the big things you need to do is study the wind for a couple of years to get a firm understanding of the wind resource and underwrite it. Consequently, solar is easier to develop and more broadly applicable across the country. As soon as it started becoming economic, it really got a big lift.
Power Maps and Political Battles
Jigar Shah: One of the things you and I talked about, and Mark Goodwin also mentioned, was that Apex took community engagement seriously early on. You put together big budgets for each project, got in early, met all the political folks, and ran ad campaigns. Who championed that within Apex? And why did so much of the rest of the industry treat it as optional?
Sandy Reisky: We had been burned — it's not as if we got it right immediately. Maybe we knew from earlier years how tough it could be. But the person who led that effort at Apex, and ended up heading a team of about 14 people, was Davi Wilson. She came from a community organizing background and brought a lot of skills: understanding power maps, knowing who across a community is going to be most influential, and how to engage early and tell your story. She had a really sophisticated way of assessing the risk that any given community might reject the idea of a wind farm. That helped us calibrate how we would invest — in most cases trying to match the fossil fuel interests who were spreading misinformation. It was a real political battle in many communities, and these days, that's still going on.
Trump Hates Wind
Jamie Nolan: Which brings us to a great next point. President Trump famously hates wind power. He's even taken the extraordinary measure of paying multiple companies to stop developing offshore wind in this country — more headlines yesterday on exactly that. So if you had two minutes to sell him on wind power and try to change his mind, what would you say?
Sandy Reisky: I don't think you can reason with his convictions. I believe he's dug in, and it's probably for more reasons than Scotland.
Jigar Shah: You know what I would say? I'd say: Mr. President, I just bought that wind farm and put a bunch of dynamite at the foundations of each one of those towers. If you push this button, we'll blow this thing up, and you can put your hatred for wind energy in the rearview mirror. That would be the easiest $200 million I've ever spent.
Jamie Nolan: I think you have to name it after him, because the only thing he responds to is plays to his vanity. So I would name it the President Donald J. Trump Offshore Wind Farm, and I would paint all the wind turbines gold. He would love it. That's all he needs.
Jigar Shah: On that front, Sandy — is the anti-wind fervor mostly an American problem, or have you seen it in Europe and other places?
Sandy Reisky: There's pushback all over the world, but I don't think it's nearly as strong as in this country. I'm interested in your perspective — I've never really tried to develop wind outside of North America.
Jigar Shah: I think you're right. In general, there's a level of minority power in the United States that you don't have in other places. Twenty very vocal people can shut down a project when 98% of the community actually wants the property tax revenue and all the other benefits. Those 20 people can make it feel like everybody's against the project. I find that whole thing to be weird.
Sandy Reisky: Weird — and they're really working against themselves. These are power plants with very little impact. You can farm all around them. The landowners really want to do it. Often there are 40 to 200 landowners ready to start collecting royalty checks, and then it gets ripped out from under them — usually after years of work. The schools, the fire trucks, the bridges that aren't going to be repaired because there's no big taxpayer parachuting in — the places that get wind and solar farms really do get significant benefits, sometimes tens of millions of dollars a year.
The Blind Spot in Every Home Sale
Jigar Shah: You've stepped back from the day-to-day at Apex, and you and I reconnected after I bought my house in D.C. — one of the first that got a Pearl certification. That's when I realized you were part of Pearl, another Charlottesville company. For listeners who haven't heard about it, what problem is Pearl solving?
Sandy Reisky: There is a massive blind spot in the real estate industry. When you buy a car, you look at the window sticker — you see the safety rating, the comfort features, the fuel efficiency, what energy it runs on. All of that is right there for you. When you buy a house, that information exists, but you often have to look for it. It's not in one place.
Pearl originally just certified homes, but we were only addressing a very small part of the market. Over nine years, Pearl has developed a very sophisticated way of using building science to score the performance of a home. There are hundreds of data points, and Pearl has collected all of them and ranked homes by their performance.
Pearl has a product called the Pearl Score — that's an acronym for SCORE: Safety, Comfort, Operations, Resiliency, and Energy. And energy doesn't mean efficiency — energy means: have you invested in energy assets? Do you have solar panels? A home battery? Is your house ready for an EV? Pearl takes each of those pillars, ranks your home on each one, and gives you an overall number that's comparable across houses.
Jamie Nolan: I love this concept. I sold a house in D.C. eight years ago with a solar array on the roof and definitely did not feel I earned the value of that solar system back. The solar incentives in D.C. are strong — the SREC market plus net metering meant the system had already paid for itself. But here in Virginia, where Dominion is my utility, that's not the case. I put solar on my roof because it follows my personal beliefs — but I did so with the assumption that I may not get that value back when I sell. This is the experience for so many homeowners. They spend money on insulation, solar, efficient HVAC, batteries, and often get little to no credit when selling. You're trying to change that story. Why has the market been so slow to value efficiency?
Sandy Reisky: The information is buried. Energy audits, contractor invoices, documentation — it's all disconnected from the transaction unless you hand somebody a binder. And even then, it's not part of the listing. There's also an important nuance: efficiency is hard for people to understand or relate to. It's abstract. What people want to hear about is the benefits — safety, comfort, operations, resiliency, and energy assets. Those are things people care about and understand. Pearl translates all the technical language into a scoring system. They've worked with the Department of Energy, the National Renewable Energy Lab, the Appraisal Institute, the IEEE, and the Building Performance Institute over nine years.
We've now essentially rated every home in America. The next step is to get Realtor.com, Zillow, and others to list it as part of every listing. They like data, and this is very legitimate data on homes. Homeowners can look at their score, go to the registry, and correct anything — if they got a heat pump six months ago, that updates their score. It's a way to build transparency for everybody.
The operations piece estimates how much it costs to operate your home over a year. The energy piece tells you the net present value of your solar system or other energy assets. There's a real financial impact on the value of the home. We've got people from Rocket Mortgage and Zillow working to bring this to market. We're in alpha stage right now. You can go to PearlScore.com, put in your address, and see your score.
Jamie Nolan: I know what I'm doing right after this recording. I actually just got an EcoCity Home Award from the city of Alexandria and I'm about to put my sign in the front yard — I want my credit. So I'm going to get my Pearl Score, Sandy. But I also want to know: does Pearl have data to show that this will change consumer behavior in a meaningful way?
Sandy Reisky: We believe so. The certification research showed it empirically — homes with certifications sold for about 5% more. And since we're not leading with the word "efficiency," we're really ranking homes based on safety, comfort, and the rest. To bring this home for a second: if you have a gas stove, your safety ranking goes down because of air quality concerns. This is very real — 40% of homes with gas stoves have children with asthma or related conditions. It spans all types of categories. The goal is to get the Pearl Score affixed to every home listing, just like square footage or school district comps.
Replacement, Not Transition
Jigar Shah: I wanted to transition to communications. You've really argued that we should stop saying "energy transition" and start saying "replacement." What's the difference?
Sandy Reisky: I'm not going to be militant about it — I say transition all the time too. But I think "replacement" is more direct. The entire energy industry is going to change. We're heading to a place where we're just not going to be using fuels anymore. Everything that burns something — cars, furnaces, the whole sector — needs to swap out. These are multi-trillion-dollar markets.
Companies like Tesla have seen the car market and said: we have a better type of car. Once a consumer chooses an electric car, they've replaced their car — they haven't transitioned per se. "Transition" suggests they're doing it slowly. The speed of the change is more along the lines of replacement.
Who gets to choose what our future will be? It's not the people selling stuff — it's consumers, both businesses and individuals. They're all leaning in. People are choosing electric cars and solar for their homes. With those two choices, you no longer need to ask permission. Twenty years ago, you could go to your utility and say you wished they'd do some clean energy, and you wouldn't get very far. This is a totally different game. It's like moving from BlackBerrys to iPhones — it can happen really fast.
The war in Iran has a lot of people looking very closely at electric cars, because they are now the more predictable, more stable source of transportation. It's scary to see gas prices going up. Electric cars are just so much better — at par or cheaper than an ICE car on upfront cost, with much lower operating costs, and no fuel costs if you have solar on your roof.
Jamie Nolan: I've never appreciated my solar array more. I just charge my car for free. I forget about gas stations — except when I need a snack.
Jigar Shah: Snack stations.
Jamie Nolan: Snack stations, exactly. That's what they are now in my family. I don't even think about charging. I plug in at home. I don't have time-of-use charging in Dominion Virginia yet — please add that, I would love it. But the peace of mind is incredible.
The Bottleneck Is Permission, Not Technology
Jamie Nolan: Sandy, you're suggesting that the bottleneck for scaling all these solutions is not the technology — it's permission. Can you talk about where you see that theme being most valid? Permitting, politics, culture, utility incentives — all of the above?
Sandy Reisky: It's all of the above. There's a real predatory delay — you can credit Alex Steffen for that term. The fossil fuel industry is making it hard to get permits. The politics are absolutely challenging. And culturally, climate is bearing down on the fossil fuel industry. Every day the question is being presented to us: when are we going to respond to this? When society decides to act on climate, it'll be a real paradigm shift. That's what's culturally needed.
The politics of today are noise — incumbents resisting change, divisive politics, denial, misinformation, chaos. That's stalling decisions and keeping society from seeing what really needs to be done.
The old script is: we're dependent, the problem's too big, the future's grim. We need a new narrative to confront the doom and gloom. Not many people outside the energy industry know this, but we're making huge progress. Over 90% of new utility-scale capacity coming online globally is solar or wind. There are solutions like EVs and huge public support. The trends are favorable. But the narrative is missing. People need to understand that their choices matter, that this is actually working. The industry has done decades of work and the products are here.
Jigar Shah: With what's happening in Iran, it's very clear to everybody around the world that we need to start scaling. China's exports went up 21% just in March versus February. They exported around 2.5 million electric vehicles last year — they're going to export almost 7 million this year. In the areas where it's obvious — solar, battery storage, EVs — you're going to see a massive scale-up this year. What advantages do fossil fuels still have that clean energy people underestimate? Obviously you're not going to power your Boeing 747 with solar panels right now.
Sandy Reisky: Definitely not. The advantages they have just go back to influence — it's the last thing they have. They've lost the battle of physics. They've lost the battle of economics. They're losing in the markets. Somebody should call the game. They are losing market share, and it's time to stop fighting progress.
Jigar Shah: China does feel like they're trying to call the game.
Jamie Nolan: You've got to admit — we've got the electrons sorted, but not the molecule. Jet planes, that's where my mind immediately goes. Sustainable aviation fuels haven't scaled yet. And the biggest accelerating use of fossil fuels is in the production of plastics, which goes up every year. We have so much more to do on the molecule. What needs to happen there? What's the trajectory?
Sandy Reisky: Those areas are tough. The products are coming, but they're not as far along as the electric sector. It's not an area I have a lot of expertise in. But the other type of energy we're all using a lot of is food — how we feed ourselves. The progress there is staggering. Fermentation, cultured meats, food products that in some cases you're already consuming without knowing it because they're going into the supply chain molecularly identical to other proteins — ending up in your condensed milk at Starbucks or in your vitamin powders. There's a lot of work to do and a lot of progress being made.
Charlottesville: Accidental Clean Energy Capital
Jigar Shah: Sandy, I wanted to finish on your experience building a clean energy ecosystem in Charlottesville — not Houston or San Francisco, but Charlottesville. You started Apex there and invested in a lot of companies locally. What's so special about Charlottesville, and what advantages did that give you?
Sandy Reisky: It's in the water — it's Jefferson, the ghost of Jefferson. It's a great place to live. I was born and raised here. I've accumulated a lot of capital over the years building and starting and selling companies. It's really the product of the work of our teams and the attractiveness of these products. These have been, for the most part, really profitable businesses. There's a lot to work with, and I've been plowing it back into climate solutions. Since I'm here, I'm looking around at the solutions. Maybe people in Charlottesville are knocking on my door and saying, hey, I've got an idea.
Jigar Shah: When I started SunEdison in the D.C. area, we were the only major clean energy company you could work for on the East Coast. We really attracted the best and brightest. Most of the folks we were attracting were getting paid on the GS schedule in the D.C. area, so our salaries were more reasonable — but also nobody could steal our folks because they didn't want to move to California. Their grandparents lived nearby. It was great for retention.
Sandy Reisky: There are plenty of people who have left Apex and started other companies in Charlottesville. The people are obviously key to the whole ecosystem. We brought a lot of people into town. A lot of people were really thrilled to get out of the big cities — they had young families, they were professionals starting out or pretty well advanced. It was an easy choice.
Batteries: Still Grossly Underestimated
Jigar Shah: Sandy, to finish this out — you've been building extraordinary companies for two decades. You spotted wind energy early, invested in adjacent clean technologies, and saw home certification through. What opportunities are smart people still underestimating today?
Sandy Reisky: Smart people are investing and they believe we're going to electrify everything — the opportunity is so big. Getting into utility-scale energy has potentially more hurdles these days. But solar is modular and scalable — it's energy democracy, flowing all around the world. Distributed energy has all kinds of innovation ahead of it and tons of deployment. We're just a few percentage points compared to Australia — I think they're at something like 40%.
Jigar Shah: For as large as batteries have become, they're still grossly underestimated. Batteries are just going to change the world. I have an electric vehicle whose battery is so large it could power my house for a week. Vehicle-to-grid technologies are going to come out next year for almost every electric vehicle. If you have a power outage, you plug your car into the panel, flip a switch, and run your house off your electric car. It's nuts how much more progress we have yet to make on deploying batteries.
Sandy Reisky: And the whole transportation sector is going to lift the electricity sector — it's going to add so much flexibility to the grid. There's an Amazon River of cars coming into the market, all with these huge batteries that can provide services to the grid that individuals would be paid for. That's a self-reinforcing loop. Really exciting.
Jigar Shah: Well, Sandy, I'm so pleased you were able to join us. It really has been an extraordinary journey — one that has resulted in the fact that every state from North Dakota to the panhandle of Texas is dominated by wind power production. From your first project in Kansas to Iowa now being over 50% wind-powered. Just extraordinary. Thank you for being with us.
Sandy Reisky: Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's been delightful.