In a Fox Business interview, Kevin Surace, CEO of Sirius Energy and award‑winning entrepreneur, discusses why his clean‑energy business thrives without government loans or subsidies. He explains that Sirius Energy focuses on energy‑efficiency retrofits for commercial buildings that deliver payback in one to three years, citing the Empire State Building project that doubled rents for the owner. Surace contrasts market conditions in Europe—where older buildings, higher energy costs, and strong incentives make retrofits attractive—with the United States, where low electricity prices can hinder savings. He defends the role of government as a venture‑capitalist for early‑stage clean‑tech, referencing historical U.S. programs (DARPA, ARPA‑E) and China’s $5 billion LED investment, while acknowledging the political and fiscal challenges of loan programs like those that backed Solyndra. The conversation frames clean‑energy initiatives as profitable business opportunities rather than purely environmental pursuits.
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Amid the controversy surrounding green energy companies like Solyndra and Beacon Power and EnerOne, we've got somebody who's still very confident in the clean energy revolution, and not because it's good for the environment, but because it's good for his bottom line.
With us now is Kevin Surace. He is CEO of Sirius Energy and Inc. Magazine's 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year, also recipient of the World Economic Forum's Tech Pioneer Award. We could go on, but frankly, we don't have enough time for all your accolades here, Kevin. Bottom line, though, you You never— your company never took any government loans. You never took any government subsidies. Why not when they were giving so many out?
Well, first of all, it's a good thing we didn't. But second of all, you know what? You build great businesses in any of these fields when you don't need to do it on the backs of government. Now look, there are some businesses— solar was one, and there are others, biofuels, etc.— that may need some government assistance. It's not unusual for them to get that, whether it's from NASA, DOD, government loans, etc. But, but we develop products and services that save energy in buildings and pay back in 1 or 2 or 3 years without any government incentives. And that's, that's a good business no matter what's going on in the economy.
You know, we have here in the News Corporation building certain offices where if they don't sense that there's movement, the light goes off. There are other efforts where on the weekends the heating goes down if it's cold outside, so they're not wasting the heat for empty offices. You make buildings more valuable because you can do that, and it certainly costs less to operate them. Look at the future? Are you getting more clients now globally? And where's your strongest area on the globe?
Yeah, interestingly enough, the strongest area should be Europe, but we focused on North America today and in Europe only because the buildings are old. They can all be upgraded. And, and the government incentives to do that are, are strong there. And in fact, their laws, their building laws and their energy laws are strong and their energy costs are higher. You know, we have a lot of places in this country where energy costs are very low. People are buying electricity at $0.08. So it's a little harder, $0.08 a kilowatt are a little harder to save energy and save enough money. But basically, if you retrofit your buildings like we did the Empire State Building, we helped make the Empire State Building more valuable, more comfortable, and the people in there more productive. And in fact, as Tony Melkin, the building's owner, says, he doubled his rents. Now that's just good business.
Kevin, shouldn't we be focusing on what's good business instead of continuing to fund things that are, that are so sketchy, frankly, like Solyndra and the others that are not doing well?
It's a great question, but if you go back in history for over 100 years, the U.S. government, and before that European governments, and now China, is out funding the early, early, early stage kinds of technologies because they can't gain traction without that. I'll give you an example. China put $5 billion into some 47 LED lighting companies knowing, and they've openly said this, 40 of them will go bankrupt, but the 6 or 7 that remain could make lighting for the rest of the world for the next century. And that's probably a great investment for the Chinese government to make.
Well, I know, but the U.S. government playing venture capitalist with taxpayer money gets very touchy when we've got so much debt. But looking at your company, you know, we had T.J. Rogers of Cypress Semiconductor say, look, I knew that Solyndra's balance sheet was going to go under in a year. No, you know, anybody could have seen that if you're in that industry. How can the U.S. government be a more efficient venture capitalist?
Well, it's really difficult to play venture capital. In a way, the U.S. government has done a very good job for arguably 100 years by ARPA-E more recently, and before that, the DOD expenditures. I mean, you know, the internet came out of DARPA. That was an investment that was made back in the early '70s. But even though that came out of DARPA funding, there were easily thousands of other things that did not make it out of DARPA funding. So those tend to be buried back in the DOE budgets, and they're not as upfront as this loan program was. that today when we've got these, these kinds of deficits, it's very difficult for the American people to look at the loans that go out there and be okay with the fact that we know, all of us know, you're gonna lose a certain percentage of those and it's okay because it's driven down the cost of solar. So there is some advantage of doing it. Whether we can afford to as a country or not is certainly a great question going forward. There's no question.
Kevin Surace, who does it the old-fashioned way. He conserves money. He makes money while conserving energy. Good to see you, Kevin. Thank you very much.
