THE COMMON SENSE COLLOQUY: Q&A SESSION WITH GREENWOOD ENERGY CEO

Washington D.C., United States of America | October 21, 2022

The Common Sense Colloquy is a monthly series of Q&A blogs hosted by RENEWPR and its President, Ben Finzel. Greenwood Energy CEO Guido Patrignani participated in the series in October 2022. The series features brief question and answer interviews with leading figures from business, industry, advocacy, environmental and conservation groups and more. Past interview participants include former US Energy Secretaries Bill Richardson and Ernie Moniz, National Wildlife Federation President and CEO Collin O’Mara, Solar Energy Industries Association President Abby Hopper, Bloomberg NEF Head of Americas Ethan Zindler, Clean Energy Buyers Alliance CEO Miranda Ballentine and Greenwood Sustainable Infrastructure President Mazen Turk among more than 50 others.

The October 2022 Q&A with Guido Patrignani focused on the company’s “Reimagining Development” mission, the challenges of developing renewable energy projects in Latin America, lessons learned from Guido’s career and his perspective on the best communications advice he’s received, and he gives to others.

As Guido Patrignani explained during the session, “’Reimagining Development’ represents a new way of structuring infrastructure projects, based on the original pillars of sustainability, where its social, environmental, and economic features converge into an intertwined configuration – you can’t alter any of these without affecting the others. This series of projects developed by Greenwood Energy presents an alternative to how companies can approach the development and operation of infrastructure projects in such a way that they create a positive impact on communities and the environment.”

In addressing challenges of developing renewable energy projects in the region, Guido highlighted that “to approach Environmental Licensing processes in a successful way, companies are called to turn their perspectives around, not asking how a certain project can be approved by the community, but rather how it should be structured so it improves the lives of the people around it while protecting nature. Our experience in this kind of approach has shown us that by creating a project structure with positive social and environmental impact in partnership with indigenous and local communities, this license ceases to represent a strain for developers.”

Of the diverse lessons learned in his career, Guido explained that “the common denominator when facing each of these challenges has always been the need to listen through the noise to reach the true causes of any given issue, as I have experienced how fully understanding the root problem represents 50% of its solution.”

The complete Q&A session is available at https://bit.ly/3P2yxf7