GoodLeap

• GoodLeap enlists celebrities and entrepreneurs to help make electrifying your home cool.
• The NFL Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez and the actor Shailene Woodley are on the 10-member council.
• GoodLeap is the largest financier of residential solar loans in the US, with 28% of the market.

Tony Gonzalez calls himself a “deathbed thinker.” 

The former NFL tight end and Pro Football Hall of Famer told Insider he often reflected on whether, in life’s final moments, he’d be proud of his choices.

The tendency led him to join a star-studded advisory council at GoodLeap, a fintech company that’s financed more than $19 billion in residential solar and green-home retrofits since 2018.

Its 10-member council is stacked with Hollywood celebs like Edward Norton and Shailene Woodley and business veterans including former General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt who are tasked with raising the profile of a mundane climate solution: electrifying your home. 

Homes account for about 15% of US greenhouse-gas emissions because so many use fossil fuels for light, heat, air conditioning, and cooking, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These emissions have generally been on the rise for two decades. 

Gonzalez, who’s also invested in plant-based-food companies like Beyond Meat, told Insider the climate crisis was the most important issue of his — and his children’s — lifetime.

He invested in GoodLeap following a chance meeting with the company’s founder and CEO, Hayes Barnard, who was named to Forbes’ billionaire list for the first time in November because of his company’s growth. GoodLeap is the top provider of residential solar loans, with a 28% share of the market.

Gonzalez said the company hit the mark in three ways: saving people money on their utility bills, creating jobs, and benefiting the planet. He is featured in GoodLeap ads promoting workers who install solar panels, calling them “warriors of light.”

The ad campaign and advisory council was dreamed up by Barnard, who told Insider it’s part of a broader effort to educate the labor force and homeowners about the benefits of decarbonizing where they live. He acknowledged that unlike owning a sleek electric car, it’s difficult to make installing solar panels or replacing an HVAC system cool. But if people knew that it could save them money amid rising energy prices or provide a stable career path, they might get excited, Barnard said. 

The solar-installation field is growing faster on average than any other occupation, with job openings expected to jump 27% by 2031, the Labor Department reported. The median wage is nearly $48,000. The growth is buoyed by new tax breaks and rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act for homeowners who install green technology like solar panels, home-battery systems, or electric appliances. 

A new model for solar loans 

Solar installers are among the 40,000 contractors using GoodLeap’s app, which allows homeowners to apply for a low-interest fixed-rate loan with no money down to finance green upgrades. The loans are bundled and sold off to banks and other financial institutions, just like mortgages. Homeowners can claim green tax credits to reduce their federal tax bill, as well as use the savings in their energy bills toward monthly loan payments. The default rate is less than 1%, Barnard said. 

One solar installer that GoodLeap worked with, Pink Energy, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in October and is under investigation by at least nine attorneys general over customer complaints about power systems that didn’t work as promised. The officials asked GoodLeap to suspend the loans of affected customers until the investigation was complete. Jesse Comart, a spokesperson for GoodLeap, said the company vetted all its contractors to ensure they met high standards and that it’s working with customers influenced by Pink Energy’s issues. 

GoodLeap’s model is different from Barnard’s first foray into the solar industry. He founded Paramount Solar, which was acquired in 2013 by SolarCity, where Barnard became chief revenue officer. The companies leased solar systems to customers through tax-equity financing, in which investors funded projects in exchange for the tax credits. 

“It was too complicated,” Barnard said. “We needed a very simple way for consumers to own the system. They should get the tax credit.”

Barnard left SolarCity after it was acquired by Elon Musk’s Tesla in 2016 and founded GoodLeap, formerly known as Loanpal. By then, banks no longer considered residential solar so risky, Barnard said, and GoodLeap’s model made it easier for less-wealthy homeowners to install solar power or other renewable-energy upgrades. 

GoodLeap provides loans to customers with credit scores as low as 600, and in its two largest markets, California and Florida, about one-third of its customers were considered low income based on the definition used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Comart said.

Expanding access for less-affluent communities was important to Stephen DeBerry, the founder of the social-impact fund Bronze Investments and a member of GoodLeap’s advisory council. The clean-energy transition will be a huge inflection point in the global economy, and he doesn’t want it to exacerbate the inequality he’s witnessed his whole life, from the South Side of Chicago to East Palo Alto, California.

“Part of my work has always been making sure folks who typically are unconsidered are considered,” DeBerry told Insider. “I’m also a venture capitalist, and you can get paid to fix the problem. So my job is to make sure people understand that.”