FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
World’s first Power Plant for Poverty to be Built in Ontario
– an idea whose time has come
Toronto, Ontario – January 26, 2015
NEUTOPIA ecoSOLUTIONS Inc. today has announced plans of their first Power Plant for Poverty, expected to be operational by the end of this summer. The social impact renewable energy project located in the municipality of Clarington, will receive guaranteed monthly revenue from supplying clean energy into the Ontario power grid for the next 20 years. It will be the first power plant in the world of its kind…not because of the technology, but because of how the profits are used: 100% of Neutopia’s profits are re-invested into projects to help empower people with technologies that fight the root causes of human suffering around the world. It will generate millions of dollars not to line the pockets of corporate shareholders, but to save tens of thousands of lives.
The Re-distribution of Wealth via a New Socio-Economic System
Unlike a charity or a not-for-profit where the money is gone once it’s raised and spent, with Neutopia the money is first invested into a cleantech project of the investor’s choice and the investment is paid back with guaranteed financial returns over 2 – 25 years while Neutopia uses its own profits from the project to bring technologies to help empower people in need (with ROI’s as high as 25%). The ‘pay-it-forward’ business model changes the face of investing because every dollar invested results in a guaranteed financial return unlike charities, and has an associated social impact unlike the stock market. Neutopia has basically united the two to attract both traditional investors and social impact philanthropists raising the bar to a whole new level for People Profit Planet initiatives.
Neutopia says “the answer to solving many of the problems in our world is not to be found in any particular technology, they already exist; the solution is in a new way of doing business with those technologies, essentially a new economic system that actually makes it profitable to help people in need”.
Neutopia’s business model is essentially using the profits from selling clean energy or biofuel to purchase technologies that help lower the operating costs of a local food bank, a building to help people with special needs or seniors in a long-term care facility, or to provide renewable energy to a village in Africa or even clean water technologies to an orphanage in India, or bring measles vaccines, or education, sustainable food supply etc.. The ideas are endless, but Neutopia has a blueprint on how to change the world with this system and has been attracting international interest. As Laporte stated at the International Vertical Cities Conference in Seoul, South Korea: “Our system works not by stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but by earning a profit by helping the rich get richer and using our own profits to help the poor. It’s a twist on Robin Hood meeting the Internet of Things and our time has come.”
Project Was Destined to Expire
The solar project was suspended over the past couple of years because the three original owners were in a legal battle over default of payments during development. It remained at a stand-still, destined to expire during a lengthy litigation process until Robert Laporte, CEO of Neutopia, approached each owner individually to figure out a solution:
“I met with each owner to get to know them. I wanted to understand what their goals were originally, and what their problems were now, in order to think about what kind of solutions may be possible”, said Laporte, “if the problem was only financial then Neutopia has unlimited funding for energy, green buildings and landfill diversion projects from the Neutopia Social Impact and Green Investment Network, so forming a partnership or buying the project at higher than market value would be an option.”
The owners did not want to have any partnership but rather to sell their respective ownership stake in the project, and were simply not able to establish a path forward with each other until Laporte came into the picture and never gave up.
“It took almost a year of on-going negotiations, whether by telephone, sending emails at 2am or even begging them to let us take on the project as it would result in millions of dollars being devoted to help ease suffering as part of Neutopia’s Social Impact initiatives”.
“If you want to change the world you need to think outside of the box, I’m just so thankful that these three businessmen had the heart to give Neutopia a chance. Now they will earn a profit rather than let it die in the courts and Neutopia will be able to help thousands of people in need every year for the next 20 years!”
Strategic Partnership is Key with Powerful Legal Team and Board of Advisors
Award-winning eco-engineers and distinguished professors (including a team of students from Canada’s largest college, Humber) will be assisting with the project, which is part of an emerging ecoPARK network Neutopia is planning around the world.
The solar project put Neutopia’s innovative tendering process to the test, inviting more than 300 cleantech and social impact investors to participate. They finally selected their investment partner on January 9th tapping into a multi-strategy hedge fund. The strategic partnership is with a project development company backed by an independent multinational asset management firm with more than $600 million in real estate assets and who now has a commitment to invest tens of millions of dollars into cleantech projects in Ontario. It also brings with it one of the most powerful law firms in the industry to protect Neutopia’s projects from hostile take-over’s, corporate corruption and circumvention so prevalent in the energy industry.
“We re-introduced the project to dozens of companies that were hungry for a piece of the pie, and some have already attempted circumvention, even calling the project owners directly,” says Laporte, “it’s a very dirty game and if any person or company attempts to slow down this project or bribe one of the original owners it will be regarded as stealing food and medicine from the poor and will not be taken lightly; it will be made public and dealt with in both social media and in the courts. Indeed, they better have deep pockets and prepared to sacrifice their shareholders stock value if they attempt to circumvent Neutopia, as we have already tapped into social media where millions are now learning about the project. We will defend the people we’re trying to help with whatever it takes.”
Neutopia is now uniting a powerful Board of Advisors including various scientists and champions of environmental sustainability and social change from local community groups and due to the global impact it could have, Neutopia has also invited members from the United Nations Task Force on Climate Change, UN Food and Agriculture Association, signatories to the UN PRI (United Nations Principles on Responsible Investing), Doctors Without Borders, Engineers Without Borders, and a host of world renowned organizations that could also benefit from Neutopia’s projects.
In an effort to create more awareness about the innovative business model that simultaneously fights climate change while solving many of the root causes of poverty, Neutopia has already reached out to Hollywood by contacting the agents of pro-active environmental and social change advocates including Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Sean Penn and Leonardo DiCaprio who was the host of a popular documentary on climate change but which lacked the solutions that Neutopia proposes.
Neutopia has also reached out to local hospitals such as St. Josephs and St. Michael’s, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Kids, and even the Salvation Army and YMCA where Neutopia urged some of their property managers to join the $600 Million Retrofitting Canada Community Initiative last year (another program that implements the same business model via Green Building efficiency retrofits). Participating would enable these charities and community organizations to save millions of dollars by integrating Neutopia’s solutions to simultaneously lower the cost of waste management, water and energy in their buildings above and beyond their current efficiency efforts via traditional companies (which in-turn would prevent millions of dollars given to them by the public from being wasted on inefficient general building operations and maintenance while simultaneously enabling them to save thousands of lives under Neutopia’s unique program).
Neutopia has already attracted international interest with their $1 million Green Community & Social Impact Scholarship Program, and has signed exclusive development rights for various cleantech projects across Canada and the United States, including an innovative partnership agreement to retrofit 250 buildings across Canada with utility cost reduction technologies and also to develop food waste conversion and up-cycling projects in Toronto and New York.
In the words of Neutopia’s CEO, Robert Laporte, “No other company comes close to matching the social impact Neutopia can have in a community.”
“The innovative Green Development and Social Impact pay-it-forward business model is a blueprint on how to change the world in the fastest and least expensive way possible. We didn’t see the Occupy Wall Street protests as a solution; sure it raises awareness on the importance of the redistribution of wealth and that’s a start, but it’s not the solution in itself. And we didn’t think starting a charity and begging people for money was a viable answer either, neither is lobbying governments or the big energy companies to devote more to climate change because they’ve heard enough complaints and we’ve waited long enough for action. Instead, we decided to create a new way. A completely new business model. And I knew there was only one way to do it. I knew the traditionalists needed a serious wake-up call and it would take something absolutely revolutionary…
Unprecedented Business Feasibility Study
“I quit my job in 2008 and traveled 80,000 km across North America in an effort to conduct an unprecedented business feasibility study. The goal was to interview community leaders, land owners and business executives to find out what the most common problems and obstacles were, what technology solutions solve them, and to test the business model. I presented to Town Councils, Municipal Public Works departments, and held free educational seminars from coast to coast in Canada and the United States. When money was tight I slept in my rental car behind hotels or in farmers fields, and I ate things that would make some people sick, but I had a vision. You need to become the change you want to see, right? That’s how paradigm shifts happen. Soon the old way dies off and the new way has a following.
We are now recruiting Neutopia Ambassadors around the world to help with our 10-minute Community ecoPARK and Green Building Efficiency SOS Program. We’re training reps on Skype and arming them with the tools and blueprint. We have an international network of technology solutions united into one company, and our only obstacles are complacency and corruption among community leaders and property managers. If the people are educated about what others are doing around the world and what is possible, then they can demand change in their own communities and buildings and we’re going to win this damn war, but we need to mobilize students and like-minded community members who want this change to happen NOW. We need an effort with a force such as in times of war if we expect to see dramatic results.
“Neutopia is now transitioning from working on laptops in coffee shops to inspiring a global tribe on the internet, uniting a Neutopia army like sleeper cells on every continent with unlimited funding from forward-thinking investors and the passion of like-minded people. And the amazing thing is that even at-risk youth who were destined for a life of crime and people living in despair in third world countries can find a new way of life with Neutopia; getting paid to make the world a better place.
“I’m living my dream; I knew I couldn’t sit in a cubicle and look at a screensaver of a beach or mountains, knowing they are slowly being destroyed…or let pictures of diseased and suffering people make me sad. I sharpened those tears into a solution to cut through the government and corporate ignorance and we are going to educate our leaders and they can either watch us or they can join us…but they definitely cannot stop us.”
Neutopia is now training Ambassadors around the world via Skype and identifying development sites for the investment network, lowering the global carbon footprint in the fastest and least expensive way possible while ensuring the redistribution of wealth among society. Robin Hood meets the Internet of Things combined with Environmental and Social Impact.
Indeed, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.