Jonah Eidus, right, with his partner, Rob Banagale, and Liz Argo of Solarwrites, a turbine installer, at Babson College, where they and other students managed to get a “clean tech” wind turbine erected.
July 3, 2008
The answer, as the song says, is blowing in the wind — at least for Jonah Eidus it is. The graduate student from Westfield reckons it is for the rest of us too, for he views wind as the best source of clean, renewable energy.
Eidus, 28, and two fellow students at Babson College near Boston spearheaded the effort to have a wind turbine erected on the college’s athletics field. The structure, installed this past April 22 — Earth Day — is generating enough energy to supply 60 percent of the power needed by the business school’s entrepreneurship hall. The totally student-led project is the first of its kind on any college campus in the area.
Given that it could take 18 years for the energy savings to cover the $20,000 price tag, Eidus and his partners needed another sales pitch to persuade authorities it was a good idea.
While Clinton White came up with the concept, and Rob Banagale designed their visual communication materials, Eidus has been the marketing mind behind its success. He came up with the winning argument: that by inspiring students with this example of sustainable development to cut just 1 percent of their energy use, over the 25-year life of the turbine, the college could save $850,000.
He was building on evidence provided by the “dark dorm” competition, which rewarded students for cutting their power usage and had reduced energy costs by $42,000 in a year.
Over the summer, before starting his second year, Eidus is doing an internship in business development at Renewable Choice Energy in Boulder, Colo. He took a break from “crunching numbers” about the total number of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified construction projects in the country, to talk about the turbine and his other involvements in the “clean energy space.”
With all the gloom about the world economy, it is like a breath — or a gale — of fresh air to hear how that “space” is expanding. Eidus said in this job he is seeing just how rapidly the country is adapting to green priorities.
As other options shrink, in this field job opportunities abound. The Entrepreneurial Energy Expo that Eidus helped run on campus this past spring — the largest student-run conference of its kind in the Northeast — drew 400 people and streams of job offers. “There’s been 20 percent job growth in green tech,” he said. Even if the economy continues its downturn, “I’m confident I’ll have a job.”
Eidus said his parents, Lauren Shub and Dr. Robert Eidus, both with a track record of community involvement, have encouraged him all through his somewhat convoluted path. He earned a degree in sociology at Brandeis University, then worked in the nonprofit field, but decided he wanted to earn enough to one day support a family.
“My dad pointed out that marketing and sales skills can be used in so many different areas, and I’d always had an entrepreneurial bent,” he said. As a kid, he had run a lemonade stand, sold golf balls, and — with his younger brother Sam — ran a “very crooked” poker game on the school bus. Sales turned out to be the means to a desirable end.
The family has always been into the outdoors, but the big turn for Eidus came when he discovered surfing. While doing a year of study in Australia in 2001, he encountered the kind of waves he’d never seen at the Jersey Shore and was hooked. Among other places, he has surfed in Costa Rica, Mexico, New Zealand, and Samoa.
The most profound joy of all, however, came on a Birthright trip to Israel, where he surfed the waves off Tel Aviv, he said. “I always felt the connection to God more in the ocean than in synagogue, and that experience really heightened my connection to my Judaism,” he said.
In 2007, he enrolled in the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson and joined the Babson Energy and Environment Club.
The wind turbine project took almost 500 hours of his first year. But Eidus said the planning process taught him “how to prioritize my time.”
Meanwhile, he is busy enough. As copresident of the energy and environmental club, he has developed “clean tech” business courses to be added to the MBA curriculum this fall.
Eidus said he used to worry that there wasn’t much one could do that would have a real impact; that’s no longer his concern.
“I really feel I have the opportunity to make a difference,” he said. “There are almost too many opportunities to choose from. The challenge for me now is to choose wisely.”
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