Redwood Energy’s Sean Armstrong delivers profitability to affordable housing developers by designing solar-powered, all-electric homes.
Growing up on a farm near Brooklyn, Wisconsin, Sean Armstrong and his best friend loved to ride their dirt bikes through cow pastures and corn fields near his family’s home. On one such outing––Armstrong was 9–– the boys discovered a meandering stream polluted by cow waste. Feeling adventuresome, they built a dam in the stream using nearby rocks, mud, sticks, and plants.
The boys weren’t surprised to see cow waste and other organic material backing up behind the dam. They were surprised, however, to see much cleaner water—now free from suspended particles and “scummy” bubbles—draining through the dam. This “voila” moment inspired them to build several more filtration dams. As they watched, the water became cleaner and cleaner until Armstrong signaled that it was safe to drink.
Over the next two summers, Armstrong returned regularly to the cow pastures to investigate and create new filtration dams to replace those washed away by the spring floods. The outings not only satisfied his yearning for childhood adventure but also imbued him with a deep and abiding interest in the environment. He vowed to do whatever he could to make the Earth a cleaner and better place to live.
Achieving Zero Net Energy
Today, as a founding and managing partner of Redwood Energy, Arcata, Calif., Armstrong is making the U.S. a better place to live by designing and guiding the development of affordable, all-electric, zero-net-energy (ZNE) housing.
A ZNE building generates as much energy from onsite renewable sources in a year as it consumes. To date, his company has designed about one-quarter of ZNE homes in North America and one-half of ZNE homes in California.
Armstrong is an educator and building scientist by training. He consults with affordable housing developers, architects and mechanical engineers on how best to meet the energy needs of homes exclusively with solar power. His designs avoid the environmental risks and extra costs associated with using natural gas to provide in-home space and water heating.
“We can meet all the energy needs of a home without modifying any wiring or outlets in a building design,” Armstrong claims. “We use solar power to meet all electricity needs. If there isn’t sufficient power to support standard 240V appliances, we can use retrofit-ready 120V heat-pump-based appliances instead.”
Today’s solar panels commonly pay for themselves in three to four years through reduced electricity bills, making it a “no-brainer” to install solar, he adds.
Harmonizing with Nature
Armstrong spent the first ten years of his life on his family’s farm in Wisconsin. He describes his mom and dad as “back-to-the-land hippies”––enterprising owners of a custom jewelry design business, and “weekend warrior” organic farmers. Their yard, he notes, was “riotously” landscaped with plants, rocks, waterfalls and ponds.
“I deeply loved nature as a young farm boy,” Armstrong recalls. “The flowers and vegetables in that garden were so tall and thick that when I was three I got lost among the rainbow zinnias.”
Armstrong was identified as “academically gifted” in first grade and placed in advanced writing classes. By sixth grade, he’d become a voracious reader, reading up to five books per day.
When he reached seventh grade, his family began daily home delivery of the New York Times, where he learned of the growing deforestation of tropical rainforests in South and Central America, the most biodiverse on the planet. The Times’ coverage inspired him to commit to helping save the rainforests, a vow that would become a guiding star in his life.
Armstrong’s activism kept growing through high school, where he led environmental clubs at each of his two high schools. His passion for reading and academics also earned him a permanent spot on his high schools’ honor rolls, and ultimately, a full-ride National Merit Scholarship to Ohio’s Bowling Green State University in 1994.
Putting Earth First!
After a year in Bowling Green, however, Armstrong yearned to focus instead on saving rainforests and living sustainably. So he gave up his scholarship and went west to Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University), home to a student-led, student-funded, live-in sustainability demonstration house called the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology
At Humboldt, Armstrong also became familiar with the growing use of solar panels by Arcata’s organic (read: cannabis-growing) farmers to power homes operating off the grid in the sunny, mountainous areas of Humboldt County.
“The challenge in those days was to get renewable energy into houses and get non-renewables such as natural gas out," he recalls.
“The gas industry, however, tried to position renewables as too expensive and gas as more affordable. But in Arcata, the cannabis growers had so much cash they didn’t care that solar was expensive. So I got to live and work in a milieu of very progressive thinking about how best to power homes.”
Keeping it Simple
Through his environmental work at Humboldt, Armstrong discovered that he was good at explaining, in simple terms, complicated concepts to consumers. It inspired him to acquire teaching credentials in science and literature, a nod to his lifelong passion for reading and writing. After graduating Cal Poly Humboldt in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in natural resources conservation, he accepted a job in Wisconsin teaching science to middle school students.
“I got a job I didn’t want … and I failed at it,” Armstrong admits. “I realized that my college passion for building science and teaching kids how to install solar arrays was misdirected. I actually wanted to teach building science to architects and mechanical engineers, i.e. how to use heat pumps to help power all-electric houses."
Back to Business
Returning to Arcata in 2005, Armstrong began managing environmental projects for DANCO, a general services contractor. Over the next five years, he helped the company secure sufficient affordable housing grants to reinvent itself as an affordable housing developer.
During the Great Recession, however, DANCO was forced to lay Armstrong off. Undaunted, he teamed up with Michael Winkler, a certified energy analyst, to found Redwood Energy in 2011.
Designing for Sustainability
Today, Armstrong, Winkler and Redwood Energy design energy plans for affordable, all-electric, multi-family, mixed-use developments all over the country. Their projects typically include not only apartments but also offices, public transit hubs, childcare facilities, restaurants and retail outlets.
Surprisingly, notes Armstrong, every state in the U.S. receives sufficient solar energy to power buildings up to three stories tall using rooftop solar alone. All of those buildings are still attached to the grid, however.
“I view the solar-powered apartment complexes that I design as small power plants that discharge electrons into the grid during high-stress periods on hot summer days,” he explains. “At night we pull electrons from the grid during low-stress periods.”
Sometimes, he adds, Redwood Energy projects require additional solar panels on adjacent structures such as carport roofs to achieve the goal of creating 100-percent-solar-powered housing.
Pushing for Profitability
Armstrong’s biggest challenge in designing all-electric houses, he advises, is convincing local architects and mechanical engineers that all-electric buildings comply with local building codes, and that heat pump technology is mature enough to be used regularly for space and water heating.
“My strategy for getting all-electric designs approved is to work exclusively with developers, not architects or mechanical engineers,” notes Armstrong, who honed his expertise in cost-estimating and utility allowances while working for DANCO.
“By showing the developer the financials for each project––all-electric homes typically command higher rents offset by lower utility bills––I can usually overcome resistance by architects and others to my all-electric designs.”
Putting Activism First
If Armstrong is anything, he is a passionate, outspoken environmental activist who lives by a philosophy of action. Armed with facts and logic, he’s unafraid to take radical positions, politically and environmentally, to get clients and colleagues to re-examine their assumptions about the impact of their actions on the environment.
“I’m a technical expert and I will answer any questions you have,” he advises his clients. “I’m going to help you nicely and technically and show you how to make money doing the right thing. But if you don’t listen to my recommendations, I’m just going to walk away. We’re not going to support any projects that include natural gas.”
Rising and Burning
Workdays for Armstrong begin early in the 100-square-foot, all-electric tiny home in rural Arcata that serves as his home and office. Nestled among fruit trees, gardens and a small pond, the tiny home offers him a tranquil view of homes and farmland on the town’s western edge.
On some days, the divorced father of three––his kids live with their mom in a home next door––helps feed and deliver the kids to school. Other days Armstrong starts the day with outdoor aerobics, a light breakfast, and a “nature bath,” i.e. a shower in the 30-square-foot bathroom that looks out on his gardens, pond and flocks of ducks and small birds that call it home.
Making His Way
On a typical day, Armstrong works from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with a one-hour lunch break) writing e-mail, conducting research, and supporting Zoom calls with clients. Given his remote office location––Arcata is a six-hour drive north of San Francisco––he rarely meets clients in person.
Instead, he relies on speaking engagements at annual conferences such as the Affordable Housing Conference to network with larger audiences. Drawing on his teacher training, Armstrong delights in unraveling the mysteries of utility allowances and financial statements for roomfuls of eager developers.
“At the end of each presentation, there’s normally a line-up of three to six people eager to pick my brain about how to make money developing affordable housing,” Armstrong says. “At a typical conference, at least one of those people will become a new client. That’s basically how I fish.”
Inspired by Passion
When asked who has most inspired his environmental activism and commitment to creating solar-powered, all-electric housing, Armstrong points to Julia Butterfly Hill, an American activist and author.
Hill is best known for living in a 200-foot-tall, 1,000-year-old California redwood tree for more than two years in the late 1990s to prevent former logging company Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down. When he founded Redwood Energy in 2011, in fact, Armstrong integrated Hill’s legacy of action into the company’s logo.
“Julia Butterfly was a member of our activist community,” he recalls. “We included her on our logo—a small female figure dancing on branches of redwood trees—because she captures the passion and indomitable spirit that
Redwood Energy brings today to its quest to create
a safer, cleaner all-electric tomorrow.”
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