Secure Futures Solar announces certification as a B Corp™

Secure Futures has been recognized as a Certified B Corporation®, having met the exacting standards for social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability established by the nonprofit B Lab®.

By achieving this certification, Secure Futures joins more than 2,200 other Certified B Corporations® in more than 50 countries that share in a vision of using for-profit businesses to promote a more equitable, prosperous world. Across the United States and across industries, these companies include Ben and Jerry’s, Patagonia and King Arthur Flour.

Secure Futures is one of 57 renewable energy companies nationwide with this distinction. In Virginia, only 25 companies in all industries are Certified B Corporations.

“We’re thrilled to join the growing ranks of Certified B Corps in benchmarking our commitment to sustainability to global standards” said Dr. Tony Smith, CEO of Secure Futures. “This also recognizes our unique contributions in helping to shape Virginia legislation over the past five years to help advance solar for all citizens and companies wanting to do solar in our Commonwealth.”

Founded in 2004, Secure Futures is a regional leader in the solar energy industry. The company has developed innovative solar financing models to allow large and mid-sized tax-exempt institutions in Virginia, including universities, hospitals and local governments, to get solar energy systems installed on site without the high cost of having to purchase their own solar panels.

Primarily, Secure Futures makes on-site solar power available at no capital cost to customers by retaining ownership of the panels installed on a customer’s site and then selling the power to that customer through a power purchase agreement (PPA) over a period of 20 years.

Some of the company’s notable projects include a 2010 solar photovoltaic installation at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg that was the first in Virginia under a PPA, Virginia’s first commercial-scale installation under a PPA at the University of Richmond in 2016, and a project
with Albemarle County Public Schools that represented the first use of a PPA by a Virginia public school district, also in 2016.

At the beginning of 2017, Secure Futures owned and managed more than two megawatts of solar capacity in Virginia, and is on pace to double that figure by the end of the year.

By becoming certified as a B Corp, Secure Futures, LLC meets world class standards for social and environmental benefit. The company’s recognition is to business what a Fair Trade label is to coffee or LEED certification is to a building – a third-party verification from B Lab® that the B Corp® is living up to its ambitious commitments.

“Our DNA has always been a about serving the common good, and it’s very meaningful to our team and to our many partners to be recognized as part of a global community of like-minded businesses,” said Smith.