<Jill Gunardson-Johnston Post> The last Long Story Short blog post featured a number of memories on the solar projects my dad was part of. He noted about the crazy solar hippies that they set up next to at a conference. After some research, I was able to find out additional information about this group. Quite an interesting story and turn of events. I was totally sucked in and decided to share it as a follow-up post.
The crazy hippy that my dad was writing about was Michael Zinn. He went on to hold an interesting life, but it was cut tragically short. The following post can be found at http://besicorp.com/legacy.php I am posting it here as well:
Now we call it social impact investing. Not long ago, it was just conscious living: different language, same idea. Michael Zinn understood impact investing long before it had the title. He simply believed in business that also achieved positivity for people and the planet.
From the humble beginnings of working out of his garage, Michael was tenacious in his quest to achieve financial and business success while staying true to his vision: making renewable energy and clean power generation a viable alternative for society. In his own words, Michael said, “It has been my belief that the only way to save the natural environment is through the development of new technologies that are both environmentally sound and economically competitive. Driven by market forces, the economy itself might thus become the means by which we save the natural world.”
To achieve that goal, Bio-Energy Systems, Inc. (BESI) was founded in 1976. Bio-Energy was initially created as a product distribution company based on solar thermal technology. Their first product developed was the “Solar Roll” which was designed as an affordable, lightweight solar collector made of rubber tubing used for residential water heating applications. Business took off when the company was featured in a Popular Science article in June of 1979. The solar roll technology was expanded to include commercial applications and BESI continued in its distribution of solar thermal technologies through the ’80s. During this time, Michael broadened his activities in the development and deployment of alternative energy technologies and began to develop small on sight cogeneration projects for commercial applications. Cogeneration is a process that efficiently produces electricity as well as thermal energy in the form of steam or hot water which can then be used for other applications. These new project development activities required the formation and management of permitting, engineering, construction, and financial services.
Michael continued to develop the company’s project development skills, and with a dedicated executive team and the expertise of joint venture partners, he and the Besicorp team went on to develop six cogeneration plants around New York State.
In 1993 Michael purchased SunWize Energy Systems, a solar electric distribution company based on photovoltaic technology (PV). Over the next 14 years, the company (now under the name SunWize Technologies) was carefully restructured, and a management team and business strategy were created and implemented. Ultimately, the company evolved into a major force in the solar industry with global activities in distribution, project development, and product creation.
In the span of over two decades, Michael’s strength of character, strong vision, business acumen, and environmental ideals led Besicorp and his portfolio of companies to success while bringing its investors a substantial return on their investment. The business activities all operated under the same core principle: create environmentally sound and socially responsible projects that are economically successful while making a positive and sustainable contribution to society.
His foresight to build stable, long-term management teams that operated under a common goal and vision was key to the successful management of his companies. Following his untimely death in 2005, the strength of that common vision propelled the company through the continued successful development and sale of his final development project—a 500 MW power project and the successful marketing and sale of SunWize Technologies. The development and market success of these projects validates Michael’s vision, unwavering attention to core principles, and commitment to long-term value.
Besicorp’s legacy is one of visionary leadership, strategic thinking, and the commitment to projects that are both financially viable as well as good for society—proof that people, profit, and the planet never go out of style—in fact, these principles stand the test of time.
Michael Zinn Jailed – Barrons Article (Poetic Justice by Richard Karp Jan. 12, 1998)
Michael Zinn, founder and former CEO of Besicorp Group, a Kingston, New York-based owner of electric power plants, certainly has seen happier days. So have all his new roommates, also doing time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fairton, New Jersey. On November 12, 1997, Zinn began serving a six-month sentence for federal tax evasion and election fraud in connection with campaign contributions to U.S. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, whose congressional district, north of New York City, covers the area in which Besicorp is based. The 44-year-old Zinn had pleaded guilty to the charges in June, a month after a grand jury in the Southern District of New York had indicted him for illegally funneling $27,000 of Besicorp capital to the Saugerties, New York, Democrat’s 1992 election campaign.
According to federal prosecutors, Zinn induced his employees to make smaller contributions to Hinchey’s war chest and then reimbursed the donors with corporate funds. In court papers, the prosecutors also said that Zinn had reimbursed himself with Besicorp money for his own $7,000 gift to the politician, and illegally declared the outlays as “business expenses” on the company’s tax returns.
Zinn, who was Hinchey’s campaign finance manager at the time, allegedly persuaded Ansaldo North America, the American subsidiary of an Italian government-owned power plant contractor, which did business with Besicorp, to kick in $43,000 to Hinchey’s 1992 war chest, too. Of that, prosecutors contended, $40,000 was funneled through Besicorp. Two months before Zinn’s indictment, Ansaldo pleaded guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and paid the maximum fine of $200,000.
Just before going into prison, Zinn sent a written reply to questions posed by Barron’s. In his statement, he vehemently denies all the civil charges. As for the shareholders’ charges of egregious self-dealing, Zinn states: “In the mid-1980s, the company entered a long period of insolvency, and remained in business for years solely through my own personal financial support.” (According to Besicorp lawyer Nachimson, that “support” included $8.9 million in bank loans between 1985 and 1989, personally guaranteed by Zinn.)
Michael Zinn’s power-industry career was inspired by the 1970s energy crunch and the government’s attempt to spur research into alternative power sources. In 1974, the then 25-year-old Zinn went into the solar-energy business in the garage of his parent’s home in the little Catskill town of Spring Glen. With the help of federal tax credits, the enterprising young man-manufactured solar-collector screens, as well as light-powered gadgets and appliances, including rubber mats for warming up swimming pools. But when the solar craze died by the early ‘Eighties, the promising little operation became virtually insolvent.
Zinn switched his focus from making solar gadgetry to building conventional, mainly gas-fired, electric power plants. And with a federally mandated customer base, plus a state price floor, the necessary capital wasn’t difficult to find. In 1981, his new operation, called Besicorp (an acronym for Biomass Energy Systems), went public, listed on Nasdaq.
Besicorp’s plants were to be state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly. To build them, the company set up a subsidiary called Beta Development, which went into partnership with an experienced electric-plant builder, Kamine Development of Bedminster, New Jersey, and subcontracted with such veteran energy-industry developers as Ansaldo’s subsidiary.
Financed mainly by General Electric Credit, Zinn, over the next decade or so, set out to build six power plants, five of which were running. (The other was shelved before completion.) And, given state and federal mandates, major customers were almost automatically available as the plants came to completion. In the early ‘Nineties, Besicorp signed up Niagara Mohawk Power, whose territory runs 300 miles across upstate New York, from Albany to Buffalo; the deal involved five Besicorp plants. Moreover, in 1990, Besicorp agreed to build a cogeneration facility in Corning, New York, for the sale of electricity to New York State Electric & Gas, a utility in the state’s southwest corner.
The Besicorp saga could take another turn, too. A month before surrendering to his jailers, Zinn announced at the annual shareholders’ meeting that Besicorp had hired PaineWebber to find a buyer or merger partner for the company. The per-share proceeds from any such deal could have been affected by the recently dismissed suit, too.
Zinn wrote a book on his dealings and thoughts about business called Mad-dog Prosecutors and Other Hazards of American Business
Michael Zinn died in a Cessna plane crash in 2007 when he was departing from the Boca Raton, FL airport headed to Myrtle Beach, SC for a round of golf. https://www.floridabulldog.org/2011/12/u-s-ordered-to-pay-4-4-million-for-weston-air-traffic-controllers-negligence-in-fatal-crash/
SO long, good luck and have a nice day!
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 