With the advent of global warming, Radford strongly believes that using clean energy is the solution which is able to produce fewer toxins in the environment and generate more jobs in the economy. He aims to shift major utilities away from fossil fuels and towards a cleaner power source.
Thus, he founded Power Shift, a grassroots-driven and non-profit organisation dedicated to creating clean energy market breakthroughs. It is targeted at the younger generation and provides them with a platform which they can run a clean energy movement. This is very important because the youths of today will be the leaders of tomorrow and should they have a proper education and love for the environment, it would make a great impact in future.
A case study of Citigroup shows that it is one of the world’s largest financial institution which was originally playing a huge role in financing oil drilling, coal mining, forest products and paper production. By dominating the financing of projects in sectors that promote global warming and destroy the ecosystems that could offset adverse impacts of climate change.
Through Power Shift 2011, Radford was able to push Citigroup through campaigns on streets to offer and promote Energy Efficient Mortgages (EEMs), making clean energy more affordable for the American households. Over 10000 participants took part in this movement to campaign for the clean energy economy and this act of collective consumer power led to Citigroup’s agreement.
Credits: www.ran.org
Not only that, he also led a campaign to persuade major tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google to power their data centres with renewable energy. This is done through a report published in 2012, titled “How Clean is Your Cloud?”, whereby an analysis of the data centre investments of 10 top global cloud companies was done. The report included the Clean Energy Index of each company and rated on their energy choices (old or new). By clearly indicating the carbon and energy footprint of the various IT sectors and even doing specific case studies on these companies, they began to change their energy usage patterns.
Apple committed to use 100% renewable energy to power its iCloud servers and has also installed solar arrays at its facility in North Carolina to avoid using coal-generated power provided by Duke Energy, a local power holding company. With that, Facebook and Google also felt compelled to follow suit and thus persuaded Duke Energy to start offering green power to their major corporate customers. This was a drastic change as Duke Energy used to be one o the most flagrant emitters of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
With the few prominent companies spearheading in the usage of renewable energy, they act as role models to change the industry and may bring about a new norm of using sustainable energy instead.