Blake Jones: Keeping The American Dream Alive



Blake Jones, President of Namaste Solar, a small Boulder-based solar electric company, is a true visionary in the sustainable energy field. His speech today, at President Obama’s stimulus bill signing, was full of optimism for green sector opportunities inherent in the bill. Perhaps the most fascinating story behind Blake is his foresight to understand the crossroads America stands in and the opportunity it has to take a leading position in global energy efficiency.

Namaste Solar, co-founded by Blake, was itself at a crossroads this year. The four year old company had grown from 3 to 55 employees over the last 3 years, but faced the prospects of hiring freezes, cutting working hours and laying off employees in the wake of the economic downturn. This was not a position Blake envisioned being in when he decided to pursue greener pastures by leaving the oil industry, where he worked as a Civil Engineer for Halliburton/Brown & Root.  

Blake’s speech today highlighted that the stimulus bill “offers new hope and optimism of the future.” According to Blake, the fast growth seen by Namaste over the last four years is representative of what thousands of other small companies have achieved in the solar and green energy field. In fact the overwhelming consensus within the solar industry is that the bill will stimulate growth in the industry. According to the US Solar Energy Industries Association, the bill will directly help US solar companies create 69,000 jobs this year and up to 138,000 more jobs over the next two years.

In his speech, Blake further pointed out that “every green Job created brings the US closer towards achieving energy independence, strengthening national security, bolstering the economy, protecting the environment and improving public health, all at the same time.” This is at the heart of why Blake left the oil industry, to keep the American dream alive. In a 2006 interview with lime.com, Blake talked about why he left Halliburton;

“While I still think oil and gas are fine, and they do make the world go round, the imbalance of power they create—too much political power, too much economic disparity between countries—can’t be sustained. We need a better-balanced portfolio. So I looked around and saw there were a bunch of new renewable energy technologies out there, and that’s where I wanted to go.”

Moving beyond petro to a greener sustainable energy future will take vision and foresight and Blake Jones is a trailblazer with both.