Cutting Carbons, Optimizing Optimism

The news these days is rife with uncertainty and anxiety, but Charlie Lord ’92, the managing principal in a Boston-based firm that makes decarbonization possible for its clients, has found his own emotional remedy.

“I think one of the things that is wonderful about doing what I do is that I get up in the morning knowing that I’m going to make a difference,” he said. “It’s a great antidote to the anxiety in the world.”

Renew Energy Partners, which Lord launched in 2013, helps commercial and industrial clients achieve their sustainability goals by overcoming the major hurdle to decarbonization projects: the upfront cost. Renew designs and finances the renovation of existing commercial and industrial buildings to improve their energy performance, providing a market-rate return to investors while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the buildings.

Renew focuses on a portfolio of owner-occupied commercial buildings, such as hospitals, universities, multifamily housing, schools and manufacturers. For a contracted period, the client pays Renew back with the money it saves in energy costs. After the contract period, the client is able to reinvest the savings in its operation.

“Most of these buildings can cut their energy costs by 30% to 50%,” Lord said. But, he added, “we don’t do a project unless it eliminates carbon emissions.”

At any one time, Renew has two to five projects in construction and five to 10 under contract. They have around 100 customers in the pipeline. Most recently, the company helped a school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that was dealing with unreliable heating systems and a semiconductor manufacturer in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund, which invests in growth-stage clean energy companies, announced an investment in Renew in 2022.

“In general, a lot of capital is looking to go to work fighting climate change,” Lord said.

Lord, who was born in Panama, forged his path long before he ever set foot on Grounds, in part through the example set by his parents. His dad — also named Charlie — worked in international business and moved the family to New York when young Charlie was 5. (Lord has an identical twin, Tim, and a younger sister, Deirdre.)

When his father hit his early 40s, he wasn’t happy in his business career, so he switched to education and became an assistant principal.

“In his generation it was rare to switch careers,” Lord said. “He showed me that you have to follow your heart and choose something important for you. It’s OK to do something unexpected or nontraditional.”

Lord said his mother, Gay, was an early crusader in the environmental movement and co-founder of the first environmental organization in New York City, Consumer Action Now.

“She worked for recycling in the early ’70s, right after passage of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts,” Lord said. “I remember sitting at the kitchen table licking envelopes.”

Lord graduated from Yale in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in history, but his senior essay concerned environmental issues. Then it was on to UVA Law, where he first encountered the concept of environmental justice.

Lord knew he was in the right place at the Law School when, during his first day, a speaker said the majority of the incoming class had listed public interest law as their career interest.

During his second year, Lord and a group of like-minded classmates advocated to make it easier for students to pursue government or nonprofit careers. Around this time, the school established the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center and expanded loan forgiveness for graduates who pursue public service careers.

He joined the environmental law society at UVA, which led to an invitation to a national conference in 1990. While there, he was impressed by a civil rights activist who stood up to express concern about a hazardous waste treatment plant proposed for an impoverished Black community.

For him it was an introduction to the concept of environmental justice. “It was the missing piece, realizing this intersection of environmental and justice issues,” Lord said. “Environmental issues tend to fall hardest on low-income communities and communities of color.”

Although he served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Law Review and clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he dove headlong into an environmental law career without much other legal training.

He received an Echoing Green Fellowship and then founded Alternatives for Community & Environment, based in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he served as co-director and board member. 

“At ACE, our first case was to fight an asphalt plant in South Bay,” he said. “When you forge an alternative career, you’re part lawyer and part entrepreneur. But you have to step into the ring at some point, and we stepped into it sooner than a lot of others.”

In 1998, he founded the Urban Ecology Institute at Boston College, serving as its executive director until 2008.

Today, when he talks to young lawyers, he encourages them to be open to taking a traditional law job at first. “There’s a lot to be said for a two- or three-year apprenticeship before going out on your own.”

Still, he said, his grounding in law at UVA gave him the ability to start and run a nonprofit organization. “The soft skills of law — advocacy, the ability to make a case passionately — all of that goes into fundraising.”

His focus gradually shifted from the nonprofit to the for-profit sector. “The barriers between nonprofit and for-profit are breaking down,” he said. “I became interested in leveraging private dollars to fight climate change and work for urban sustainability.”

Lord noted that the U.S. could achieve 40% of its carbon reduction targets in the Paris Accords if buildings were made as efficient as possible.

“Over 70% of commercial buildings are sitting on energy savings they’re not realizing because capital is in demand elsewhere,” he said.

It’s not that there’s a shortage of commitment — executives, employees, customers and investors are all demanding climate solutions, he said. But when “the chief sustainability officer says, ‘I have our roadmap, but it costs $500 million,’ […] there’s anxiety.”

Renew helps alleviate the anxiety with financial backing.

“I feel blessed to have a career I’m passionate about,” Lord said. “It’s a great time to be interested in this issue, with the explosion of technology and interest by investors. We’re doing well by doing good."