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10Power is one of four winners of the 2023 Verizon Climate Resilience Prize, an initiative launched in 2021 by Verizon, as part of Citizen Verizon, its responsible business plan integrated across the enterprise. Its focus is supporting companies that are using advanced technology, including 5G, to create solutions that are ready to scale and that address climate-related impacts to vulnerable communities. Based in San Francisco, California, 10Power works with local partners to develop and finance commercial-scale solar projects. They view renewable energy as the key to providing access to clean water, gender empowerment, livelihood improvement, education, and technology.
Image courtesy 10Power
10Power’s renewable energy projects create climate resilience through on-site energy generation during severe weather events and everyday life. They are currently developing a resilience hub at a school and elderly care center that will serve the Red Lake Indian Reservation and White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. Individuals who rely on electricity to charge medical devices (such as respirators and oxygen tanks) will no longer be at risk during times of prolonged electrical outages. Additionally, vulnerable community members, living in low-income areas (some potentially unable to pay electricity bills) can come to the school or elderly care center for warming and resources.
Beyond Minnesota, 10Power’s energy projects have a large national and international reach.
Since its founding, the company has worked with tribal nations across the U.S. to provide access to clean energy, storage, and sustainable technologies through a solar resilience hub. Most recently, 10Power embarked on a project in Alaska to eradicate an invasive species, the spruce beetle, that has been decimating entire forests across Alaska’s Native Heritage lands, turning the region into a tinderbox with increased wildfire risk. To circumvent this growing issue, 10Power’s project employs tribal members to harvest and sell the usable timber and turn the infected timber into wood chips. The chips can then be used in a bio gasification system (involving carbon negative pyrolysis) that will be injected into local greenhouses to help the communities grow food and establish food sovereignty year-round.
Image courtesy 10Power
Beyond the U.S., and since 2015, 10Power has been working in Haiti. Eight years ago, when 10Power began their Haitian projects, there were no women solar installers in the field. As a woman-led business, the founder and CEO, Sandra Kwak, saw potential to provide field experience, jobs, and training for Haitian women and launched a women’s solar installer training program in partnership with Haiti Tech University and the Solar Electric Light Fund. As a result, all the women that participated in the field program received jobs with local solar installers.
Image courtesy 10Power
About The Climate Resilience Prize:
The Climate Resilience Prize, which launched in 2021, is part of Citizen Verizon, the company’s responsible business plan for economic, environmental, and social advancement. To learn more about Verizon’s ongoing efforts to support communities in need, please visit CitizenVerizon.com.
This article is sponsored by Verizon.
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