Got Solar? Renewable Energy Marketers Association to Launch this Week
Some have noted that the renewable energy industry needs branding to confront the misconceptions surrounding it. Certainly marketing helped consumption of beef, milk, and pork increase dramatically. Imagine “Got Milk?” or “Milk: it does a body good” or “Pork: the other white meat” translated to renewable energy. Help may be on the way from the Renewable Energy Marketers Association (REMA), which will officially launch on Wednesday, April 23, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The association, in its own words, “is a trade association of organizations involved in the creation, supply, purchase, sale, advocacy, and education about Renewable Energy and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) … REMA has formed to vigorously promote the economic and national security benefits of domestic renewable energy.” Its founding members include Sun Edison, Constellation New Energy, and Conservation Services Group. For more information, go to their website.
Clean Edge and Joel Makower have done some compelling research on this topic. The key is never lead with the environment. Kind of sad, but market imperatives have a persuasive force that moral imperatives can only dream of . . . at least for the vast majority of people.
This sound’s great, but we must make sure that such an associations don’t have different interests, that will eventually colide with the interest of the public. I think we should increase our private consumption of alternative energy, and let the market forces, do the rest, and not use a centeral system like this.
Nice! Clean energy does need some serious branding. SmartPower is on the list of REMA organizations, too. They’ve been fighting that good fight for a while.