Citizenre, We Hardly Knew Ye

I've been planning to write a piece summarizing my concerns about Citizenre. The company has been generating quite a bit of buzz recently with their residential "solar rental" program called ReNU. The program has a number of features that struck me (and many other experienced solar types) as to good to be true. I've grown increasingly convinced that the company was either a multi-level marketing pyramid scam...or just a really naive business plan.

As luck would have it, I don't have to go to the trouble of writing because groSolar's Jeff Wolfe has written a very thorough and insightful piece published on Renewable Energy Access today. In addition to exposing all the unbelievable claims in Citizenre's plans, I think the most important point that Jeff makes is that this sort of thing is really bad for the industry for two reasons: it undermines public trust and confuses the marketplace.

It's worth reading the internal criticism of Dr. Richard George, a former regional sales director for the company. Talk about a blistering insider critique...here's a link to the 63-page powerpoint.