The Sustainability Professional: On the record with Jam Attari, General Manager, AMSolar

摘要

AMSolar is a solar developer based in Solana Beach, California. The company manages the engineering, installation, operation, and maintenance of solar energy facilities—solar plants most often housed on the roofs of schools and colleges. Jam Attari,general manager at AMSolar, speaks with Sustainability: The Journal of Record editor Jamie Devereaux about the solar market today and how the sustainability movement is strong in the nation's schools.When we formed the business about four years ago, we looked at different markets and different structures and when we got to the education sector, there were a couple things that were obvious. Number one, they are a large consumer of electricity—nationally, one of the biggest sectors in the marketplace. Schools have been here for a long time and will be here for a long time, so there was staying power in that market base.Then as we started to talk to schools, it was apparent that they are leading proponents of sustainability. When you talk to a corporate audience versus an educational audience and try to gauge their understanding and desire to be green, you would be overwhelmed by the education institutions' desire to be green and their experience in all forms of sustainability—whether it is putting solar energy on campus or changing HVAC to more efficient air conditioning systems or recycling. It is a fully configuredeffort to becoming sustainable. Then there is a gap between where schools are today and where commercial markets are. It is still a very dollars-and-cents equation for the commercial side and it is the want to do the right thing on the part of schools.