Background
Kennedy was born in Los Angeles to Australian parents.
Kennedy was born in Los Angeles to Australian parents.
Kennedy attended Saint Aloysius School.
He founded Sungevity, a rapidly growing residential solar power company. He is currently Sungevity"s president Kennedy and his family moved between the United States of America, Europe, and Australia until he was 11 years old, when his family settled in Sydney, Australia.
As a youngster Kennedy was a community organizer, fundraiser, journalist, and youth activist.
At the age of 12 he was involved with a successful campaign to prevent construction of a dam in Tasmania. From 1983 he worked with the Australian Conservation Foundation on various projects including forestry protection and ozone depletion.
In 1990 Kennedy was a representative at the Montreal Protocol Negotiations in London, where he met Alec Guettel (with whom he would later found Sungevity). In 1992 Kennedy organized around the first Rio Earth Summit and worked for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.
Kennedy began working with Greenpeace in the early 1990s, as a researcher seeking to end new oil exploration in Papua New Guinea.
He almost died of malaria in the process. He left Greenpeace in 1995. In 1996 Kennedy founded and directed Project Underground, an organization focused on human rights and committed to protecting people threatened by mining and oil operations.
Kennedy became the Director of the United States of America Clean Energy Now Campaign in 2000, and forged the California Clean Energy Now Campaign in 2001 and 2002.
This campaign helped create the state’s California Solar Initiative, which provides substantial market support that has helped many citizens go solar. He moved back to Australia in 2003 and was the Campaigns Manager for Greenpeace Australia Pacific from 2003 to 2006.
The company designs home solar systems Finances new systems with its Solar Lease program
And manages system installation, maintenance, and performance.
Kennedy founded Sungevity to promote the use of clean energy and eliminate the world’s dependence on fossil fuel. He is president of the company, serves on its board of directors, and oversees government relations and community engagement programs. In 2010 Kennedy offered to install solar panels on the roof of the White House.
He also installed 48 solar panels on the roof of the residence of the president of The Maldives.
Kennedy serves on the board of The Solar Foundation, a global research and education organization in Washington, District of Columbia, and Mosaic, a solar-focused, crowd-funding start-up in Oakland, California.