Clean-tech consultancy born at Tufts finds traction
Boston Business Journal - by Jesse Noyes Boston Business Journal
Originally the plan was to erect wind turbines and solar panels all around the Northeast region.
But when Gregory Hering, Jayson Uppal and Jared Rodriguez — all undergraduates at Tufts University at the time — decided to start a business around developing clean-energy technologies like wind farms and solar panels, they quickly realized building them would be too expensive an undertaking. It was “probably impossible unless some angel came along and dropped millions of dollars on us,” Rodriguez said.
So the trio did the next best thing and formed Boston-based Emergent Energy Group Inc., a consulting company that performs resource assessments, most often for small and middle-scale alternative energy development projects. The service is designed to give businesses or municipalities insight into what kind of power can be generated from turbines, what factors can get in the way and where turbines and panels could be installed.
“There’s this huge potential in renewable energy and we all knew that,” said Rodriguez, the company director of marketing. “We said, ‘Why don’t we do something about it? There’s a whole lot of money to be made.’ ”
Uppal is director of engineering at Emergent Energy, and Hering, still a junior at Tufts, is president.
Already, the company has provided resource assessments for several clients, including campuses run by the Massachusetts State Colleges Building Authority and the eCo Industrial Park in Tiverton, R.I.
What the company does is primarily provide research. That can include culling meteorological data from public sources to physically erecting poles on which wind patterns can be measured, Uppal said. “You essentially have to map out all these different features within a 20-mile radius of the turbine themselves,” he said.
Other things Emergent Energy looks at include the vegetation around wind turbines, what kind of buildings are nearby, what noise-levels might be generated and what kind of shadowing can be caused by turbines, Uppal said.
Emergent Energy’s price tags are also lower than many competitors, the company and clients said. “What they do for $5,000 might be more like $30,000” when done by a competitor, said Jim Sweeney, president of Plymouth-based CCI Energy LLC. Sweeney has worked with Emergent Energy on a proposed project to erect two 1.65 megawatt wind turbines in Cohasset.
A general resource assessment typically costs about $5,000, Rodriguez said. The total amount of revenue Emergent Energy brings in depends largely on the scale of a client’s project and the research required. Since its inception last year, the company has performed work for seven clients. The principals will not disclose revenue but noted two grants from Tufts for $15,000 and $25,000 that was awarded to Hering. It currently has seven employees.
“We have seven college graduates that need apartments and need to live on their own. We’re supporting ourselves,” Rodriguez said. “I’m totally blown away by that fact.”
Emergent Energy is “functionally active. I would say we are moving the whole process from site resource (assessment) to functional erection and operation on a daily basis,” said Gerald Felise, CEO of eCo Industrial Park, which is a more than $1 billion development project that plans to build industrial buildings, offices and a community center powered by wind turbines and solar panels. Felise said he was drawn to the company’s creative thinking. “These kids think outside the box,” he said.
Jesse Noyes can be reached at jnoyes@bizjournals.com.
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