Last night, the Bay Area Chapter of CALSEIA welcomed San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Stanford scholar Jeffrey Ball to speak at the SunPower headquarters in San Jose about their visions for the future of solar. Randy Zechman, Clean Solar CEO and CALSEIA Bay Area Chapter President, moderated the event on June 19th.
Mayor Charles “Chuck” Reed announced his “Green Vision” for San Jose in October of 2007, a comprehensive environmental guide for San Jose over the next 15 years. One of his goals was to bring several solar power companies to the city, and since the plan’s adoption, Clean Solar and SunPower have become two of them. Mayor Reed spoke of his take on solar in San Jose and how the city has become a leader in clean energy.
Jeffrey Ball contributed to the Wall Street Journal for 14 years focusing on energy and the environment. He is now a scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center. Ball heads a project entitled “Avoiding Sunstroke“, which explores the global solar race and specifically U.S. and China solar relations. Ball discussed solar relations global solar relations and the direction it is heading.
There was a gathering of influential companies and organizations in the solar industry present to hear Mayor Reed and Ball speak including CALSEIA, WESCO, Clean Solar, and SunPower.
Since the 1970s, CALSEIA (California Solar Energy Industries Association) has advanced the common interests of the California solar industry, helping make California’s solar market the most robust in the United States.