I started the last post sharing the Station A value of “Show, Don’t Tell.” A lot of that is born out of my own obsession with action, execution, demonstrating value, being intentional, and not just talking about it.
🎯 How we figured out our problem to love
Our mission as a company is to transition the world to 100% clean energy. This is our mission because we see the deployment of clean energy projects as the single biggest challenge to solving the climate crisis. We need more projects and faster.
CEO and co-founder, Uri Levine, a two-time unicorn builder of Waze and Moovit, advises entrepreneurs to fall in love with the problem and not the solution. When I first started my career in clean energy, the problem used to be new clean energy technologies that were cost competitive with fossil fuels (which they now are). Thanks to the pioneering efforts of those that came before us, today, the problem to fall in love with is the deployment and commercialization of those superior clean energy technologies.
Facing a climate that is rapidly warming and armed with the work of those before us, we don’t actually need new clean energy technologies. We don’t need a miracle. We have what we need right in front of us: solar and wind are cost effective, storage is rapidly scaling and coming down the cost curve, EV charging infrastructure is coming, and efficiency has already been here for years. Deploying these technologies is a no brainer in many geographies. We commonly say that solar is not sold, it’s bought. We don’t convince any of our customers of the value of solar - they know it exists. They just need to know where it’s works best and who to work with to execute their projects.
🚄 The problem we're solving is deploying clean energy technologies at speed and scale
We can report our emissions all we want (an important step), we can talk about ESG goals and how bold they are (also an important step!), we can invest billions in new and novel technologies, we can optimize the grid, and we can read more NREL studies about how soft costs comprise an ever growing proportion of total project costs (now over 60% of total project costs).
⛓️💥 The status quo won't do it
At the end of the day, we have to act, deploy infrastructure, and actually show impact, not just tell people about the impact we want to have or will have. This will not happen with the status quo way of doing things: where we each build an excel financial model to determine the value of solar, do individual research on policies and incentives, model a system building-by-building, collect bids by phone and email, use non-standard contracts, email data back and forth, and stack margin on top of margin. It will take too long, it will cost too much, and we will remain at sub 10% market saturation.
This is why at Station A, we’re tirelessly focused, alongside our customers and partners, on creating a faster and more scalable way to deploy clean energy. Our goal is to to leverage software, industry expertise, and excellent customer service to drive transaction costs down and truly open up the market for clean energy - doing more projects, faster.
And we’re excited about the growing momentum from investors and new companies who also recognize we need to change the way existing technologies are deployed.