Lunch with Marc Cléjan of GreenLogic Energy

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here’s a fairly new alternative energy company in town but what exactly does the business do? Residence discovered the answer over lunch at The Drivers Seat restaurant in Southampton recently.

It was only fitting that the sun streamed in full-force that afternoon as GreenLogic Energy company co-founder, managing director and chief executive officer Marc Cléjan explained why every household and business on the East End needs to know about alternative energy in order to reduce both usage and the environmental footprint.

Since the Southampton-based company opened its doors in 2005, it has sold approximately 2,600 kilowatts of solar energy, which will translate into a savings of $50 million to its customers over a lifetime. And that number is growing in leaps and bounds as 430 clients have used GreenLogic’s services.

A big employer of local talent, the “green collar” company currently has 40 full-time employees and is expected to grow by another 20 people by the end of this month, according to Mr. Cléjan.

Last year, GreenLogic beat out more than 200 national solar installation companies to become the “Residential Dealer of the Year” for Sunpower Corp, the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. GreenLogic is also the only renewable energy company to receive the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) “Trade Ally Award” for helping to build the renewable market on Long Island.

Q: Tell me about the provenance of GreenLogic.

A: I asked myself, “what would I really like to do, what was my calling” and I realized that the environment is really what I care about the most. I went back to school at night and got a master’s degree in environmental management from New York University. It was Al Gore’s first book, “Earth in the Balance,” that started me on the process. After that, I just started reading book after book on the environment.

Q: And why here on the East End?

A: My mom has a house on Peconic Bay and we’ve been coming out here since I was a little kid. I noticed the bay starting to deteriorate in terms of the sea life, the eel grass, the brown tide and so forth. So the combination of seeing something that I loved environmentally start to decay and the fact that there were so many global issues ... I thought, this is where I should start applying my professional skills. My goal was to help solve an environmental problem.

When my partner, Nick Albukrek, and I started the business, oil was $20 a barrel and nobody would think this would make any sense. There were some really amazing solutions out there and people didn’t know about them. We identified a whole bunch of fantastic products to bring to market that nobody else was really bringing to market yet in the renewable energy field.

Q: Wide brush strokes, can you tell me the products you are now offering?

A: The three main products we are focused on now are solar—and solar comes in two flavors, solar electric and solar thermal—and wind. We also do some work with geothermal.

Q: Are these products that you offer, products that you manufacture, or products that you have found and brought to the East End?

A: We definitely aren’t manufacturing or designing products. Our goal is to comb the hills for the latest, best technologies that are coming out. Our job is to bring them to the market. So we’re what they call in the industry an integrator. We integrate new technologies. We’re not limiting ourselves to just one product. In fact, there’s a whole series of products that I think will become viable in the next couple of years.

Q: You are using photovoltaic (PV) tiles for solar power. Can you give me a little history of how business has changed since these products came to the widespread market four or five years ago?

A: The solar electric products of today are not that far removed from the solar products of yesterday except they’ve become more efficient and they’ve become more attractive. A lot more attractive. There are now building-integrated versions where you would look at the property and have no idea that it was solar.

Q: I know that your business is based here but you also service clients as far away as Queens. How many clients have you worked with now from Westhampton Beach to Montauk?

A: Probably about 200.

Q: Residential and business, correct?

A: We’ve done a number of businesses. They are the new expanding segment of the market. But pretty much all walks of life are starting to realize that if you pay for your energy, there’s some really great solutions out there to really cut down those bills or even eliminate them.

Q: I know people who have solar panels and they only pay about $5 a month on their electric bill. How does that work exactly?

A: For every dollar you invest in renewable energy, you will receive a multiple of that dollar back. Typically, when we do a system today, our customers pay about 21 cents a kilowatt hour of electricity to LIPA, and that rate’s been going up about 7 percent a year. But after you install the system, you end up spending about 6 to 8 cents a kilowatt hour. The best way to think about it is you’re buying energy in bulk at a discounted rate. Let’s say Mobil had a special right now and said, “you can go in and buy as much gas as you want for a dollar a gallon,” that’s exactly what’s happening here. Our average customer right now is saving $1,500 in energy a year.

Q: Can you get an older house to 100 percent energy-efficiency? Or is it easier to start with a brand-new house.

A: It’s very hard to zero out a house. For an existing, older house, it’s a design factor. The chimney’s in the wrong place, as an example. We have new projects now that are being designed entirely green from the get-go. When the designer, architect and builder work together, then we can get much closer to 100 percent. We do have several large builders who are now incorporating our systems into many of their properties, including Larry Kane, Farrell, Mike Forst and Michael Davis. This is starting to become a key feature of new construction for many types of new homes. We are also now working with many of the local architects as well.

Q: I’m seeing more and more homeowners who are building their houses green from the start, do you agree?

A: Absolutely. You couldn’t be more right on that. There’s a very strong new direction. A lot of builders are realizing that this is what the market wants.

Q: Has there been an education process with working with the builders since this is still relatively new technology?

A: Yes, and it’s still very much a process. Now there’s a big change in what the market wants and we’re hearing it. But there are definitely builders who are pushing ahead, there’s a lot of progress being made. The customers really want a green home. If they’re going to build something new today and it’s going to be there for 100 years, they don’t want to tiptoe with this. There’s a real collaboration process going on to make that transition. It’s very exciting.

Q: So what is GreenLogic’s role in that process?

A: We worry about all the energy pieces. We are much more than just an installer. Most of our business is the design, permitting, the financial analysis to figure out and to maximize the savings you get from all the different programs.

Q: Do you have somebody on staff who will sit down and be a consultant for the whole process on retrofitting, grants, LIPA incentives, etc.?

A: Very much so. We are green energy people. It’s a massive job to be an expert on just one part but we also know who to collaborate with on the other things.

Q: Lets talk about the evolution of the aesthetics of alternative energy. Can you please give me a snapshot of how the look of photovoltaic products specifically has changed?

A: There’s a much greater variety of choices and product that we can use. We can customize our designs, triangle shapes, building integrated versions ... What we find is that most people find the most attractive is to cover an entire rectangular shape so it becomes almost a glass surface. Most roofs aren’t all that attractive to begin with, with some exceptions. But a normal roof is more attractive, in my opinion, when it’s been properly designed and installed with solar electric.

In Europe, in Germany for example, you would be hard-pressed to find buildings now that don’t have these components. From an aesthetic standpoint, people are starting to adjust their view of what a roof should look like. I think over time, this is going to be the norm, this is going to be what a roof looks like.

Q: Do you get people who want to wait to install PV panels because they are afraid the new technology will be more attractive and make their older panels obsolete?

A: All the time. Every customer raises that issue. There is progress being made but the progress being made is not that the panels are being made more efficient, they are just being produced more efficiently. Little by little the cost of the panel is slowly trickling down, that’s where the progress is being made.

Q: So, there really isn’t that big of a reason to wait?

A: No, most people decide not to wait, especially when it comes to the incentives being offered by LIPA. LIPA is one of the leading utilities in the country and Kevin Law [the president and CEO of the utility] has turned the direction of LIPA toward being a really progressive utility focused on bringing renewable technologies into the marketplace.

Q: I’m surprised that LIPA is so behind this. Isn’t renewable energy going to erode the company’s customer base?

A: Funny you should bring that up, we just had a meeting with them and one of the most interesting things said came from the guy who runs the operations, the guy who keeps the grid going. He is saying that they are already beginning to see benefits during the peak demand times. The solar is producing its power at exactly the same time when they need that peak power, so what happens is their peak demand is going to level off, to flatten, which will make peak power much cheaper for LIPA. That’s what really pays off for them. The amount they’re going to save as we begin to provide distributed generation renewables that can soften the peak is significant. It makes the grid more reliable, it’s going to drive down the total cost of energy for them.

Q: So it’s not like LIPA is your competitor then?

A: No, not at all. Our solar energy is still fully integrated to the grid. So we depend on them just as much as they depend on us. It’s a symbiotic relationship. There’s a very strong public benefit for everyone for these two technologies to work together.

Q: When you first started this business, what was the landscape like here for renewable or alternative energy?

A: We did a comprehensive market analysis when we started, listing all the people who were offering this type of service. What we saw was that there was really no serious professional company dedicated to renewable technology.

I think the first thought people have is that we’re contractors. But less than 10 percent of our activities are contracting related, 90 percent are design, engineering, permitting, financial management. We knew that there was a need for a company that could do the entire spectrum of all the renewables and all the services wrapped around the renewables. So we really conceived of a company that was different than anything in the marketplace. We conceived of a company that was first and foremost a solutions company, not a solar company.

Customers typically come to us and say “my energy costs are too high and I’m not happy with my environmental footprint.” We think of the ways to solve that problem. We offer more products than anyone else, we offer more services than anyone else and it’s really worked out well.

Q: You are getting ready to add another 20 people to your workforce of 40, what do you attribute the company’s tremendous growth to?

A: Because we have a radically different business model than our competitors we are able to attract unbelievable talent. We have real career paths in the new renewable energy industry and this has attracted a ton of smart, well educated and experienced professionals to the company. Our success is clearly a direct function of the quality of the people who work here, and how well they work together. We hire a lot of local people, we represent a doorway to a career out here.

For more information on GreenLogic Energy, call 771-5152 or visit greenlogic.com.