Energy Pioneers JPL and Sunlaw

Maybe my biggest break was getting the job at California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL at Cal-tech was a truly elite think tank that I’m

told had, and I believe still has, more triple PhD’s than anywhere else in the world, and at the time was the Lead Center for all alternative energy research in the United States. I had no undergraduate degree, a second level law degree, and had only gotten through high school by the grace of God and the tolerance of the school administration. I want to thank Mr. Tunney who is here today, and thank you for overlooking a few of those things, I appreciate it. [audience laughs] – That’s a knowing laugh from my sister. Because of my law review articles on solar energy I was invited to give a seminar at JPL – the first step in their hiring practices. I prepared my talk “The Legal Implications of a 1 Megawatt Solar Power Plant” very much like the one up the hill here at CSUMB. Unbeknownst to me JPL had just received a contract to write a report for Congress on “The Legal Implications of a 1 Megawatt Solar Power Plant.” The same exact title, it was a pure coincidence, but they decided to overlook my relative lack of credentials and hire me. When I got the job Dean Friesen of my law school told me, “When one of these guys is telling you the nature of the universe or predicting the future, if they are not floating 6 inches above the ground it’s just an opinion.” He told me my opinion was as good as anybody else’s. That was really great advice. After a couple of years at Jet Propulsion Laboratory I started planning for my alternative energy company Sunlaw Energy Corporation. At that time there was not a single successful alternative energy company in the US, maybe the world. The 16 PhD economists who I worked with at JPL urged me not to be the first. The cliché is that the pioneers get the arrows. The functional problem was the virtual non-existence of experienced banks, lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, libraries, training programs, college courses, engineers, builders, regulators, utilities, or ways to reliably measure ultra-low emissions. It all had to be created, it all had to be invented, and whoever was the first company had to lead these efforts. Who else can? I waited as three companies got into the business, then JPL converted me to a consultant and I started Sunlaw. Within 6 months all three of the companies ahead of me had gone bankrupt. I was out there all alone. It was very naked and very windy. But inventing all day, every day, felt completely natural to me, because of my background in music, and being taught to invent on a schedule at JPL. JPL gave me a front row seat to experience what might be judged the greatest invention and engineering achievement of the 20th century when they sent the Voyager spacecraft one billion miles to Saturn and were less than 1/10th of a second behind schedule and just a few feet off course. I challenge us to drive home that well. At a billion miles. I lucked into a rare moment and became sought after by institutions that would never deal with someone like me as the industry matured. Sunlaw was jazz, sculpture, and performance art. I was 27, the youngest CEO in the alternative energy business anywhere in the world, and I was born to do this. I do want to note for the record there were about 20 people on the front lines with me, I wasn’t truly alone, but I was the leader in the early days, and the key decisions were mine to make.