Ex-gov. Bredesen introduces renewable energy firm
NASHVILLE – A new business venture by former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen takes on global warming by helping companies fund solar panels in communities with dirty-power electric grids.
The Democrat plans to introduce Clearloop on Tuesday at a conference headlined by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It’s Bredesen’s first big public foray since losing a U.S. Senate bid last year. Former campaign staffers Bob Corney and Laura Zapata are teaming up with him in the company.
Clearloop will offer short-term agreements that enable companies to compensate for their carbon emissions impact by paying to fund new solar panels in communities with the dirtiest electric grids.
The agreements would offset companies’ carbon footprints, either product by product or service by service. The companies’ labels can then feature a symbol customers can use to track their purchases to the corresponding solar panels built.
Bredesen believes this idea will make it easier to reduce the health and environmental impact of carbon emissions by sidestepping the years-long renewable energy contracts that some larger companies agree to as they seek recognition for trying to curb climate change.
“I see it as a way of really reaching into a different world of companies that are not the big dogs, who have got some C-suite executive worrying about sustainability, like Walmart does or Procter & Gamble does,” Bredesen told The Associated Press. He said many companies “would like to do something, but need to lean on somebody else’s expertise to simplify it.”
If a company wants to reclaim the carbon emissions released to produce a coffee cup, for example, there will be an offsetting solar panel built somewhere tied directly to that cup, Bredesen said.