When Amazon Web Services Inc. and the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) partnered on the Accelerate program for startups in the renewable energy sector, the aim was not only to support sustainable solutions, but to support women and minority-owned businesses.

A year later, significant progress has been made toward that goal and new initiatives are in the works.

“We are going to be partnering with Amazon to do a supply chain study on how we can best diversify the renewable energy supply chain,” said Constance Thompson (pictured, left), vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at ACORE.

Thompson and Blair Anderson (pictured, right), director of AWS public policy at AWS, spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Summit Washington, DC event. They discussed the momentum being created by the ACORE Accelerate program. (* Disclosure below.)

Economic equality through renewable energy adoption

The study, which was announced during the recent AWS Summit, is going to be a model for the renewable energy industry on how to develop and support the success of black women and BIPOC-owned firms. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color.

The goal of the Accelerate program is to both break down the barriers of access to capital for minority-led startups and also to introduce them to companies that can help them build a supply chain. This is why the study is “amazing,” according to Thompson, who explained that it will provide baseline statistics on the demographics of the renewable energy supply chain.

The 15 members of the first ACORE Accelerate cohort have been making an impact across the U.S. “in a very equitable way,” Thompson said. “They’re in the communities making these systemic disruptions to the way things happen, to the way we talk about renewable energy, to the way we deploy solar. They’re making those kinds of changes.”

A huge impact on sustainable energy adoption happens when people are educated about the economic benefits of adopting solar energy, Thompson pointed out. The key is making communities understand how they can harness their own renewable energy and save money.

“This renewable energy movement that we’re going through is about economics. It is our next wave of being able to ensure Americans are able to live lives in a way that’s equally economic,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Washington, DC event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for AWS Summit Washington, DC. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE