Seeing Cambridge in a new light
In 1993, Paul Lyons and his young family arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico, where the Zapotec people have thrived sustainably for 3,000 years off of little more than sun, rain, and soil. It was there, living among the Zapotecs, where he learned that wherever you call home, you have a responsibility to its land, and its people.
That’s where, for Lyons, bringing solar energy to the masses evolved from being his job to being his life’s mission.
Four years later, in 1997, he moved his family to Cambridge, where change-the-world conversations around alternative energy were already well underway. He was drawn there because of the city’s growing interest in solar energy — not to mention the proximity to engineering powerhouses Harvard and MIT.
Today, as solar becomes the fastest growing alternative energy in the world, with generation growing by 33 percent in 2015 alone, that Southern Mexico state Lyons called home before Cambridge has taken on even greater importance.
“The Zapotecs are defined by their place. And I realized that when your place is who you are, why would you do anything to degrade your place or to spoil it or to pollute it?” Lyons said, with the same wide smile, though whiter hair, than in the pictures from Mexico that line his office. Read more…