Khariell Pinkney, Solar and Storage, Illinois
Khariell Pinkney is commercial manager at Recurrent Energy and lives in Chicago, Illinois. He’s been in the industry for 4 years.
Why is clean energy important to you? Clean energy is important because we can't rely solely on fossil fuels for our power generation as society continues to expand. Clean energy also provides an opportunity unlike conventional energy, such that, it can be deployed on a smaller scale and utilized by the individual — making it a real potential option for global carbon reduction, and energy resilience as a distributed energy resource.
What’s your proudest accomplishment in clean energy? My best accomplishment to date would be the signing and closing the individual contacts for a standalone storage facility — where the company I represented was the acting EPC.
What did you do before entering clean energy? Previous to my time in energy, I worked in project management for telecommunications in the public sector. Prior to that I was a soldier in the U.S. Army.
How did you first get introduced to clean energy? I was introduced to clean energy through my long-time mentor. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the space ever since.
How does clean energy impact your community? Clean energy is creating a pathway for jobs in my community — not dissimilar to the car manufacturing boom. There are tons of opportunities to be trained at many levels within renewables.
What is something you wish more people knew about your job? My job is my security and my future. The future of renewable energy is bright, and I hope to continue working professionally for years to come.
Why should Congress invest in clean energy jobs, not fossil fuel jobs? Clean energy is more secure. In my opinion, clean energy's biggest positive is that it can act as a distributed energy resource. It can be placed mostly anywhere depending on the technology. From the perspective of energy security, we as a nation would benefit greatly from a larger amount of smaller generation facilities, rather than a few larger facilities.