This blog post features the fifth in a series of six episodes in season seven of Connect the Dots, the Center for Progressive Reform’s podcast on climate solutions.
Episode five, “Climate Win: Navajo Power Brings Clean Energy to Tribal Lands,” welcomes Brett Isaac, the co-founder of Navajo Power which is a Public Benefit Corporation that develops utility-scale clean energy projects on tribal lands and maximizes the economic benefits for those communities. In the episode, host Rob Verchick and Isaac talk about the lack of electricity on tribal lands and the struggling economies there, as well as Isaac’s plan to light a better future.
Isaac grew up in the Navajo Nation where he witnessed firsthand many of the problems he is working to solve today. The most pertinent problem was the lack of electricity on tribal land. While many residents worked at the local coal mine, which fueled the regional electricity grid, the utility companies didn’t provide electricity to the roughly 15,000 tribal residents, so they relied on generators or went without electricity–at least, before Isaac and Navajo Power began to change things.
Reenergizing the Neighborhood
Isaac saw the need to bring reliable and affordable electricity to the Navajo Nation. He founded a small company, Shanto Electric, and supplied power to a few hundred homes using off-grid development. The time was not without growing pains and financial lessons, so Isaac took those learnings and founded Navajo Power, which focuses on developing large scale utility projects on tribal lands. Isaac believes that tribal land is ideal for these projects because of the availability of land and because abandoned and decommissioned coal plants and natural gas facilities create competitive room for tribal solar power.
Since August 2022, Navajo Power Homes has brought electricity to over 100 homes, and in doing so has created jobs. Resident-powered solar is a job creator because solar panels require installation and maintenance. In what has become cyclical solar sustainability, Navajo Power Home reinvests 80 percent of profits back into the communities in which it works so as to develop more projects.
While Navajo Power has earned praise from tribes in Arizona, California, and Oregon, Isaac also notes that there is generational hesitancy toward companies promising economic viability and reliable, affordable energy, given the tribes’ experience with false promises from coal, gas, and nuclear industries. Isaac and his team are working to ease those concerns and show the real value and trustworthiness of solar energy and Navajo Power.
In addition to his work with tribal lands, Isaac was appointed to President Joe Biden’s Export Council in February 2023. This position recognizes the quality of Isaac's skills and expertise, and opens the door for Isaac to advocate for Native communities on a federal level.
Issac’s goal of bringing electricity to neighborhoods of racial minorities is comparable to Ajulo Othow’s work. Featured on episode 7.3, “Climate Win: Energy Justice and Community Solar Power,” Othow brings solar energy to the homes of predominantly Black residents in rural America. Both Othow and Isaac are bringing climate justice to communities that have been historically overburdened and underserved.
For all the details to this episode, listen to Connect the Dots on your favorite podcasting platform and be sure to subscribe to catch the final episode of the season on How Wins are Won.
For more content on Connect the Dots, visit us on Instagram (@progressivereform).
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Faith Duggan | July 27, 2023
On an episode of Connect the Dots, host Rob Verchick speaks with the co-founder of Navajo Power, Brett Isaac, about his commitment to increasing economic viability and energy reliability on tribal lands.
Robert Fischman | July 25, 2023
Too much of the Biden administration's regulatory effort remains focused on reversing Trump administration environmental rulemakings. This defensive unwinding of rollbacks preoccupies progressive reformers at the expense of implementing a broader vision. A recent proposed Endangered Species Act (ESA) rule to restore a “blanket rule” for conserving newly listed threatened species illustrates how the Interior Department can get trapped the anti-regulatory framing of the prior administration.
Conor Klerekoper | July 24, 2023
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Daniel Farber | July 17, 2023
The main reason to control carbon is to protect the climate. But cleaning up the energy system has plenty of other benefits. Those benefits will flow to people in rural areas as well as urban ones, to national security and international development, and to nature itself.
Faith Duggan | July 13, 2023
This is the fourth in a series of episodes in season seven of Connect the Dots, the Center for Progressive Reform’s podcast on climate solutions. Subsequent posts will be posted throughout the summer. Episode four—“Climate Win: Bipartisan Support in Climate Legislation”—features guests Stacy Brenner, a state senator representing Maine’s 30th district, and Jack Shapiro of […]
Michael C. Duff | July 11, 2023
Nero fiddled, and I really don’t know how white powder made its way into the White House. But I do know that the California Supreme Court just issued an opinion in Kuciemba v. Victory Woodworks that will be incredibly hurtful to the working class during the next pandemic. I wonder how the California legislature will react.
Daniel Farber | July 10, 2023
The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Sackett v. EPA dramatically curtails the permitting program covering wetlands. We urgently need to find strategies for saving the wetlands the Court left unprotected. We have a number of possible strategies and need to start work on implementing them immediately.
Faith Duggan | June 29, 2023
This is the third in a series about episodes in season seven of Connect the Dots, the Center for Progressive Reform’s podcast on climate solutions. Subsequent posts will be posted throughout the summer. Episode three, “Energy Justice and Community Solar Power,” takes listeners to North Carolina and reveals how community solar has the power to lower […]
Conor Klerekoper | June 29, 2023
Reeling from workers' gains during the New Deal and Civil Rights areas, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell penned a memorandum that became the playbook for American corporations' domination over workers for the next five decades. He wrote that Big Business was under attack, and to counter what was becoming a more even distribution of gains for labor, industry must “assiduously cultivate…political power” and use it “aggressively and with determination.” Corporations across the country heeded Powell's call.