It has come to GNB's attention that Robert Kennedy Jr. is largely invested in Citizenre, a company currently under fire for being nothing more than a photovoltaic pyramid scheme.What Citizenre has done through lavish marketing and network of representatives, is enlist over 5000 people to become solar sales affiliates on their website, without ever selling a single solar panel to anyone.
This would be a beautiful thing if it were not for the fact, after a year of being online, solliciting investment capital, and building their affiliates network, they have yet to acquire and sell a single solar panel to anyone, anywhere in the country, and investors are getting antsy.
It's a wonderful dream, selling PVs to your neighbors, installing solar one house at a time. Problem is many independent solar dealers around the country are doing that already, establishing ground rules and territory, and Citizenre stands to upset the growth of these small companies, who are starting to make real headway into the first adopter market of affluent suburbs.
Citizenre has expressed plans to open a photovoltaic factory in New York state. But many fear this is just talk, as there has been no physical evidence of this taking place, considering the cheapest and best panels are coming from China. How do they propose to reverse the trend of outsourcing electronics manufacture to Asia?
For Kennedy Jr. to stand making a return on his investment with Citizenre, the company also needs to have a very good relationship with the utilities, who in New York are refusing to lift the netmetering cap, meaning nobody right now in the state can get money back for the electricity they send back into the grid. Sierra Club is fighting this limit in Albany. The Utility refuses to compensate for your meter running backwards, that's because they saw the writing on the wall... as PVs get cheaper, and easier to install, what the heck do we need the Utilities for? All we need is the grid. Something Barry Commoner predicted would happen in his book The Politics of Energy back in 1980.
So maybe the reason Robert is so silent about his opposition to the relicensing of Indian Point is because he doesn't want to tick off Entergy anymore than he has to, in light of the money he stands to make if Citizenre does succeed in penetrating the residential PV market in a substantial way. Green energy afterall now means solar, wind and nuclear in the minds of the brainwashed public!
Yesterday Robert was revealed as a co-signer on the NUKE FREE website as a co-signer opposing nuclear industry loan guarantees. Maybe it's time he also made his solar energy interest known, so folks can undertstand what he understands, that if Indian Point closes, it's going to mean a boom in solar electricity installation, whether Citizenre turns out to be for real or not. Except Robert wants somebody else to get his hands dirty, so he can come up smelling roses, in case Indian Point gets its new license. Politicians! All the same!
Right now to many journalists Citizenre is beginning to look more and more like a stock scam... so if Robert got himself wrapped up in this, he may not want it to become public knowledge. But we here at GNB are all about full disclosure and putting our cards on the table. So how about it Robert, what's YOUR grand master plan to shut down Indian Point? Or don't you care anymore, as long as you can make a profit from monopolizing residential solar installations in the state?
