More About the CEED Program

Communities are the Key to a Clean Energy Economy

A green economy. Green jobs. We’ve all heard the claims that this is what our country needs. But how do you really create a clean energy economy and the jobs to go with it?

A top-down, big-business effort will most assuredly not be enough. And certainly not soon enough! The key to energy independence and the widespread adoption of renewable energy lies in the cumulative effect of individuals, small businesses and local communities “going green.” Our country will not achieve a pervasive and deep conversion to renewable energy unless we achieve it on a widespread basis at the community level.

Like many others, President Obama has acknowledged that small business is the primary engine of new job creation. He has also called for the creation of five million new green jobs. If we are to create those millions of new green jobs, then we need to facilitate the creation of thousands of new small green companies.

The question is, how to do that? Anyone who has been involved in the launching of just one small business can attest that doing so is one of the hardest things they have ever done. If it is hard to do that for just one business, imagine the difficulty in launching thousands in a short period of time. Yet we had to come up with a way to do that, as nobody else will do it for us – neither the government, big business nor anyone else.

As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention” and we developed a system that will allow us to do what needs to be done. It was designed by people who have struggled with the same problems facing most small entrepreneurs. We asked the key question, “What would it take to eliminate the biggest problems I’ve encountered when launching a business and allow me to focus on building a successful new company as rapidly as possible?”

It became clear that three universal needs had to be addressed. Every entrepreneur needs:

• Know-how, both general business know-how and knowledge related to a specific product or service
• Capital
• Easy access to various forms of credit.

Thus our program had to conveniently and effectively provide those three elements to thousands of entrepreneurs nationwide. We call that program the CEED Program (Community Energy & Economic Development).