NREL People Picking Up Trash, Installing Rooftop Solar, and Giving Back to the Community

In this episode, explore the volunteer efforts of NREL employees and how they’re making a tangible impact on their communities while advancing the lab’s mission of a renewable energy future. 

Hear from Education, Stewardship, and Community Action for Promoting Environmental Sustainability (ESCAPES) Cofounder Hilary Sewell and NREL Volunteer Coordinator Ivilina Thornton about how NREL staff are partnering with organizations like GRID Alternatives to give directly to the community, whether it be through trail cleanups, fundraising campaigns, or even hands-on solar panel installations in low-income communities.

This episode was hosted by Kerrin Jeromin and Taylor Mankle, written and produced by Allison Montroy and Kaitlyn Stottler, and edited by James Wilcox, Joe DelNero, and Brittany Falch. Graphics are by Brittnee Gayet. Our title music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift BC. Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast is created by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. We express our gratitude and acknowledge that the land we are on is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Email us at podcast@nrel.gov. Follow NREL on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Facebook.

Transcript

Taylor: Welcome to Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We’re highlighting the latest in clean energy research and innovations happening at the lab. I’m Taylor Mankle.  

Kerrin: And I’m Kerrin Jeromin.  

Taylor: Kerrin, I know you’re big on volunteering—it’s such an admirable and impactful way to spend some of your time. 

Kerrin: Yeah, yeah, I do like to volunteer quite a bit! It keeps me busy. I’ve done animal shelters, I’ve also really enjoyed girls and women in STEM events, and I’ve also done a bit through some groups here at NREL, in fact. I got to help build a new house for Habitat for Humanity, which was fun.  

Taylor: Such incredible stuff and I love that NREL leads some of these efforts too, because the lab isn’t just about the research. It’s so much about the people. And not just the people, but the people giving back.  

Kerrin: Absolutely. NREL staff are always rising to the occasion to lend support to our communities. And in all kinds of ways too—from donating food to tidying up our local trails to planting gardens under solar panels!   

Taylor: We know about that last one: Make sure to check out our Lab Notes episode on agrivoltaics once you’re finished listening to this.  

Kerrin: Yes, binge—please binge the episodes! So, NREL does a lot of this through what we call a Giving Campaign that takes place for six-weeks every year. In 2023, the laboratory raised $633,000 in its annual giving campaign, which went to more than 500 different charities.  

Taylor: Wow! And the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, which is NREL’s management and operating contractor, covers the overhead costs for that. That means every dollar donated is actually a dollar going directly to the cause.  

Kerrin: Among one-time financial donations, NREL employees were also able to divert funds from paychecks to their charity or nonprofit of choice as well as volunteer at different events at NREL.  

Taylor: Folks can spend their lunch breaks helping to make fleece blankets or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that are donated to food banks and can participate in NREL’s annual silent auction, where NREL staff donate items and put together baskets that fellow employees can bid on and raise funds for nonprofit organizations.  

Kerrin: Yeah, yeah, you actually might recall we had a guest on the show a while back, Todd DeLuca, whose silent auction podcast bid helped us give back to local charities!  

Taylor:  The Alliance for Sustainable Energy also makes financial donations to organizations where NREL employees volunteer their time, so that employee contributions make even more of an impact to charitable organizations. 

Kerrin: In 2023, employees helped raise funds for more than 60 different agencies and nonprofits just by volunteering their time.  

Taylor: There’s actually a group at NREL whose mission is to get hands-on with giving back to our planet. It’s called ESCAPES—which is, you guessed it—  

Both: —an acronym. 

Taylor: Yep! This one is for Education, Stewardship, and Community Action for Promoting Environmental Sustainability.  

Kerrin: We should always do “acronym” like that on the show. Just for the record, I think we’re going to do it like this from now on. We never miss an acronym really on this show. This volunteer group made of NREL employees gets together regularly to help out at local farms, do trail maintenance in Jefferson County and on the trails surrounding NREL, and host trash cleanups at parks around Denver, along with hosting educational events about recycling and sustainable living.  

Taylor: Hilary Sewell, a financial analyst at NREL, started the group in 2020 with researcher Stuart Cohen. Hilary said it was an opportunity to create community and connection to NREL during the pandemic.   

Kerrin: Today, the group plans about two events per month that bring together NREL volunteers and organizations in the community.  

Hilary Sewell: So almost all the events we do, we're connecting with some type of organization. We work with a lot of nonprofits helping volunteer at their different community farms around the area. So it does help us to get involved in the community and give people the opportunity to be involved in the community and volunteer, but also, the education piece is huge. So how can we give more sustainability education? So, at all the events we try to have an educational component of, for example, some of the events we view our community farms, and one of the big community farms that we participate in, volunteer work at is Jack’s Solar Garden, which is an agrivoltaics farm, if you will. So we get a chance to go out and actually help them maintain these beds prep these beds for spring planting or prep them for winter and people get to learn about the research that's going on around agrivoltaics at the same time. So we do try to pair almost all of our volunteer events with some type of education.  

Taylor: OK, so, listeners may be wondering: What does picking up trash at a park or winterizing a farm bed have to do with NREL’s research and vision of creating a clean energy future? And the answer is: A lot.  

Kerrin: Yeah, a lot! NREL’s core values guide our efforts in our jobs but also to benefit our communities as well. It’s built into the DNA of our lab to raise up our communities in the energy transition.  

Taylor: Hilary also spoke to that as motivation for running ESCAPES—that NREL doesn’t just talk the talk but walks the walk.  

Hilary: I do feel that generally everyone is very mission driven and I think that having groups like this is part of it, especially for someone like me. I'm on the operations side. Yes, I work at NREL. I am supporting people who are pushing our mission, but I'm not really doing the research. I’m not really doing that science. I'm not out, you know, writing up these scope of works and getting involved in the actual new renewable energy and energy transition. I'm just supporting that work, which is really important, but sometimes you can feel really disconnected from it. And so I think it's important internally to make sure that if you are on the operation side, which we have a lot of operations folks, this is a way that you can kind of feel more connected to the mission and feel like you are actually impacting change, not just supporting change. So that's something that I would say is really important. 

Kerrin: We’re not just supporting research or working in the labs researching big clean energy solutions; we’re also out in the community getting our hands dirty, helping to make a clean energy future for all a reality—in small ways, too.  

Taylor: And that even means helping to get renewable energy technologies adopted in communities— sometimes helping to install it ourselves.  

Kerrin: Yeah! In June 2024, NREL volunteers worked together to install a 6.9 kilowatt solar system on a home near Denver.  

Taylor: So cool. The group worked with GRID Alternatives Colorado, which installs solar electric systems for affordable housing providers and income-qualified households while also training Colorado workers for jobs in the solar industry.  

Kerrin: NREL’s Ivilina Thornton coordinates these volunteer events and has attended solar installation days in the past. She said that it’s always great to see her coworkers join together and give back. 

Ivilina: The mission of GRID alternatives is very much aligned with NREL’s mission. It is really amazing, not only to be able to engage with the community, to be able to engage with our staff and with all the NRELians. The atmosphere is fantastic, the energy is palpable. And it means a lot to have a group of NRELians here to have hands on experience installing solar panels. 

Taylor: It was a day’s work for the eight volunteers, but the solar installation will save that family $30,200 during the installation’s lifetime and prevent 168 tons of carbon emissions.  

Kerrin: If that’s hard to wrap your head around, it’s the equivalent to planting about 3,915 trees that pull carbon from the air. How about that? 

Taylor: Incredible. What an impact! And I wanted to emphasize that anyone, even you, listening right now on your ride to work, can get out there and make a difference for the clean energy transition and for the planet and its inhabitants in general. Hilary said it best:  

Hilary: There's a lot of really different ways to get involved and people ask, “Well, how did you connect with this organization? How do you connect with this organization?” Just go for it. Just reach out. Most of these organizations, especially nonprofits—they always need help, so if you're working for a company or you're just an individual and want to get some friends together, reach out to them and say, “Hey, I have free time! I have a, you know, I'm running a group for a company and we were looking for things to get involved in!” I promise you they'll be like, “Oh, absolutely. We could use some more help!” It's not as hard as it seems. You just have to reach out and make those connections and just get involved. There's always, you know, more help that these groups could need, and just think about the impact that you could have internally with your organizations, but also the chance to network with other companies, organizations and people within your organization is huge. 

Kerrin: Couldn’t have said it any better myself. 

Taylor: I’ve had the pleasure of joining a couple ESCAPES events in my time with NREL and they always leave me coming back for more. It’s so nice to work with your peers to make a direct impact on our communities. 

Kerrin: That's awesome. Now, listeners—we want to hear what you’re doing to help out your community! Send us an email at podcast@nrel.gov to share your volunteer efforts to build a better future.  

Taylor: I can’t wait to learn more! Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll be back in two weeks with more news from NREL.  

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Kerrin: This episode was written by Allison Montroy. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino, of Drift B-C. This podcast is produced by NREL’s Communications Office and recorded at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. We express our gratitude and acknowledge that the land we are on is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. We recognize and pay respect to the Indigenous peoples from our past, present, and future, and are grateful to those who have and continue to be stewards of this land. 

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