SHARING THE SUN!

For Bill Jordan, Catholic social teaching is at the core of everything he and his family does.

He and his wife, Nancy Brennan-Jordan, who both went to the University of Notre Dame, started dating while they were part of a Holy Cross Congregation group in Chile and went back as Maryknoll Missioners to the country where their first daughter was born.

“The principles of giving back, the gift of that experience early in your life is that your eyes are opened up to need in the world that goes far beyond what you have experienced previously,” Jordan said. “The world becomes a lot smaller place by living those kinds of experiences. ... We have always sought to give back and prioritize the least among us and build community. So solar becomes a vehicle for the human connection and doing solar in a way that powers local communities has really been important in terms of how we try to do what we do.”

When Jordan — who was a special assistant to the Commissioner of Agriculture & Markets in New York State from 2002-07 — saw the viability of solar energy as a low-cost energy source, he started Jordan Energy & Food Enterprises in Troy in 2007, and the same Catholic principles followed. With a little nudge from his wife, of course.

“We wanted to give back from the outset,” Jordan said, “so it was really Nancy who insisted (and said), ‘I love your passion for solar energy, but wouldn’t it be great to tie 10 percent (of the) profits to a foundation that would be dedicated to doing solar in the poorest parts of the world?’ So that’s where the genesis of ‘Let’s Share the Sun’ started.”

Let’s Share the Sun Foundation, was formed by Jordan and his wife and is based in Troy with the goal of bringing solar energy to the communities that need it the most, while enhancing “the quality of life” of some of the nearly one billion people worldwide who live without electricity.

So far the foundation has done about a dozen installations in places such as Haiti — where their first installation was in 2010 at the Notre Dame Haiti Program Building in Leogane — Honduras, and Puerto Rico. The three projects in Puerto Rico include two residential installations for people with health issues that require reliable electricity and a cafeteria that provides the meals for 150 students on a campus devastated by Hurricane Maria. And they were all set for a project in Liberia this fall before the coronavirus made traveling there impossible.

Jordan added, “most systems are off grid because in these poor countries there is not really a reliable grid that is operating. You have battery banks so you can have lights and air conditioning or fans going in the evening.”

While Let’s Share the Sun was started from profits from Jordan’s energy company, it has grown in size and scope. A board was formed early on, helped along the way by one of Jordan’s college roommates from Notre Dame, and they have been doing fundraising events for 10 years. There are annual events at Fordham Prep in the Bronx as well as in the Capital District.

And let’s not forget the groups of volunteers, usually solar professionals, students and their parents, including a contingent from Siena College, that traveled to Puerto Rico to assist with an installation in February of 2019.

“We try to encourage solar professionals and solar companies to donate time, talent and treasure,” Jordan said. “High school and college students usually make up about a third of the groups that we take and a lot of times their parents combine with those solar professionals so then those folks become part of the community and have led fundraising efforts and donated as well.”

Jordan said Haiti, which was devastated after the 2010 earthquake, was an easy place for the foundation’s first installation.

“That really changed the ball game,” Jordan said of the earthquake. “We got in touch with the Notre Dame Haiti Program and they had a real need for energy and solar installation made sense.”

Let’s Share the Sun receives written proposals from around the United States and the world. The board meets several times a year to discuss potential installations, decides on a project and begins its fundraising component. This is also not just the foundation going into Haiti or Puerto Rico and doing everything themselves; they fully engage with the local community and source many, if not all, of the components for the job onsite.

“We like to source locally, so one of the biggest success stories of our 10-year history — our last installation in Haiti was completed with a delegation of 15 people that went, most from the Capital District — but all the materials were sourced from a solar company in Haiti that didn’t exist five or six years ago, but now employs 40 Haitians,” Jordan said.

“That company could have built the project with none of the participants of our delegation but we worked together with them.  … And in five days we installed 18 panels in the Haiti case at a school that has a bakery on its school campus. In those five days, we do a couple of things; we install the solar during the day, but we have nightly reflections so that people that are seeing such extreme poverty for the first time have a mechanism for processing that and sharing their feelings.

“But it’s actually always been a fun experience for all the delegation participants and once we return from the delegation, we have monitoring of the systems to make sure they continue to function optimally and you can do that over the internet now.”

From those who care about the climate to those that don’t, Jordan said the use of solar energy speaks to both groups.

“I think we take the approach that there is overwhelming bipartisan support for solar energy whether you look at it from one point of view around the climate issues, which we feel are all legitimate, or you look at it just on basic economic issues,” said Jordan, who lives in East Greenbush and attends St. Pius X Church. “The solar panels that we use, a huge majority of them, are silicon based. So silicon is sand and we have plenty of sand on the planet to become the lowest cost form of energy while being the best green alternative of all energy options out there.”

“Most people that would be opposed to the climate debate for one reason or another understand the economic reality that solar has come down dramatically in price and is going to be the lowest cost alternative in most markets, it’s just a matter of when.

“So if you are on an island, whether that is Hawaii or Haiti, and you have to ship fossil fuels to that island to have electricity and you already have the sun hitting that island, it’s pretty easy math to show how solar is the lowest cost alternative, while at the same time achieving the environmental gains that I think most people will concur are so important to pursue at this stage.”

Even though the coronavirus is still raging across parts of the world, and in particular the United States, Jordan remains bullish on the ­future.

“I think the solar industry in general will come out of the pandemic like a sling-shot and more solar will be built quicker than any time previous to the pandemic. And that will be true for the developing world as well. For our small but growing foundation, we have done one domestic installation at a homeless center in South Bend, Ind., Our Lady of the Road.

“So we are open to needs closer to home. It doesn’t have to be international all the time when travel has been reduced. (And) that solar will continue to happen in the poorest parts of the world concurrently with it happening in the wealthiest parts of the world is a really neat phenomenon. So we try to place our resources where they will have the biggest impact and be a catalyst for more solar.

“If you look at Haiti today, there is solar all over the island that wasn’t there 10, 11 years ago and that gives us great encouragement that we were able to be one of the participants in helping to catalyze that process.”

For more information, head to letssharethesun.org.