Energy 2001 Inc. is a relatively small business with an outsize impact in Placer County. It is led by Laura Rasmussen, a successful entrepreneur and business attorney who has taken a lead in moving her community to a sustainable tomorrow. Its base business is to take the landfill gas from the adjacent waste site and turn it into electricity, paying the landfill a royalty for the gas. They feed the gas to six large Caterpillar 3516 engines, each capable of producing 5 MW of power. They have produced more than 183,175 megawatt-hours of electricity since 2004, which is sold to Marin Clean Energy.
Beyond this base business, Laura and her company are very much involved in the Lincoln community and have teamed up with the local students and professors at Sierra College to install solar panels at Energy 2001’s power generation site. By doing so, the students were able to gain the necessary experience to earn certification in commercial solar installation. The collaboration project also helped to progress Energy 2001 one step closer to its goal of a completing a 1 megawatt solar system array. In addition, they have been doing outreach to students in the local schools to educate them on clean energy. The small company of three employees and a motivated leader is doing big things to help impact the local regions energy sustainability with education, community service, and local development of clean technology solutions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CleanStart has a new face supporting the region’s Entrepreneurs. Renonedo Williams is a CSU Sacramento Mechanical Engineering Student who is the newest intern at CleanStart. He is entering his final semester at Sac State and is looking forward to connecting with as many clean tech startups as possible and understanding each of their value propositions, to connect his enthusiasm of building things to his goal of being his own boss. Renonedo has a background in design and material selection