Projects

This one starts with a story. Enfield's Mayor purchased a 100-year-old bungalow and donated it to the project. That house becomes a hands-on training center where residents learn to weatherize homes: air sealing, insulation, HVAC, and solar basics. The first home they transform is the lab itself. Then they take those skills into the neighborhood, house by house, reducing energy bills and building careers at the same time. One building that trains a workforce, lowers energy burden, and creates something people can see and touch.

Enfield's history is written in its buildings. The Energy Center honors that. This concept features a new civic structure built with bricks salvaged from the historic Inborden Elementary School, designed as a hurricane-hardened resilience hub with battery backup that keeps the lights on when the rest of the region goes dark. But it's more than emergency shelter. The Energy Center houses workforce training, community gathering space, and the operational headquarters of Enfield's energy transition. Architecturally, it draws on a design vernacular rooted in Eastern North Carolina: timber, solar canopy, open gathering space. A building that represents a community should look like it belongs there.

Enfield's electrical grid dates to the 1960s. Replacement parts for some equipment no longer exist. The town experiences outages at rates far exceeding the national average, and every outage carries a cost: spoiled food, lost work hours, medical risk for vulnerable residents. A modern substation with smart switching and battery integration gives Enfield the ability to island during storms, keeping power on when the surrounding region goes dark. It also enables the solar garden, the Energy Center's backup systems, and every other project in the portfolio. You can't build the future on a 1960s backbone.

Enfield's municipal utility is one of its greatest assets. Unlike most towns, Enfield has the legal authority to generate and sell its own electricity. The Freedom Community Solar + Storage Farm puts that authority to work: a solar array paired with battery storage, owned by the town itself, generating power and revenue that stay local. This isn't a developer lease where profits flow to investors in another state. This is community-owned infrastructure producing community wealth. When residents pay their electric bill, that money comes home.

Enfield's grocery store parking lot on Highway 301 is one of the most visited places in town. The solar canopy transforms it. Shaded parking in the Carolina heat. Lower energy costs for the town's primary food source. Battery backup that protects refrigeration during outages, because in a community with one grocery store, losing power means losing the food supply. And underneath the canopy, a new farmers market where local growers sell directly to neighbors. This project takes a parking lot and turns it into a site of energy production, food security, and community gathering. It's also designed to be replicable at every rural grocery store across the South.

The boldest project in the portfolio. A district geothermal network connecting the Energy Center, Town Hall, and surrounding homes into a shared thermal loop that draws heating and cooling from the earth. If built, it would be the first rural district geothermal system in the American South. For residents, the impact is direct: dramatically lower heating and cooling costs in a region where summer and winter extremes drive some of the highest energy burdens in the state. For the movement, it's proof that cutting-edge clean energy technology isn't reserved for wealthy cities. It can work in a town of 2,000 people in Halifax County, North Carolina.