Who Are We?
Okovate is a minority-owned and -operated firm empowering farmers to reap the economic benefits of solar energy without sacrificing their crop production, promoting profitable and sustainable farming practices. In turn, our business model accelerates origination and development speeds and provides higher returns for project buyers.
We are a group of commercial solar and agriculture professionals that saw the lack of sustainability through typical groundmount solar development. The best ClimateTech solutions challenge the status quo, and the co-founders' passions for dual-use solar and agrivoltaics lead to a burning desire to increase commercialization of the technology.
Through a bespoke business model inspired by Jigar Shah's Creating Climate Wealth, which tells the inception story behind the modern "pay-as-you-save" Power Purchase Agreement, Okovate champions land stewardship, solving the food-energy-water nexus by unlocking the economic and environmental benefits of solar for active crop farmers.
Our name, Okovate, comes from a strong hunter and farming deity in Yoruba culture, Oko. He was associated with the annual new harvest of the white African yam. Furthering the tie between Oko and dual-use farms like pollinator habitats, bees are considered the messengers of Oko, spreading agricultural abundance to unfertile lands.
Meet the Co-Founders
Miles Braxton
Miles Braxton is a doodle dad to Svante, cleantech innovator, and equity champion who has spent the last 6 years wearing various hats in commercial solar development: business development, project finance, array design, project development, asset management, and risk management. In his work for solar developers and asset owners, Miles has built a repository of lessons learned, having been involved with derisking every stage of commercial and community solar project development.
Miles started his career on a chicken farm, converting chicken manure into electricity though anaerobic digestion, then shifted quickly into solar at Sol Systems. He noticed early on that solar was not as sustainable as the industry was making it out to be. Through his various roles over the years at Goldman Sachs Renewable Power and Summit Ridge Energy, he witnessed the closure of prime farmland firsthand for solar infrastructure, partly because farmers did not understand their options to keep farms active and receive economic benefits of solar simultaneously.
Miles launched Okovate Sustainable Energy, which develops community solar atop active farmland, to take these issues head on. Observing the increasing pressures of climate change and resource scarcity, he believes agrivoltaics to be a transformative solution, offering not only environmental benefits but also economic opportunities for farmers and rural communities.
In 2020, Miles co-founded BlackOak Collective, a non-profit boasting a network of over 400 Black students, professionals, and advocates in the sustainability space. From 2020 through 2022, Miles served as the Director of Partnerships and executed partnership agreements with large tech and renewables companies to offer sustainability career opportunities directly to BlackOak members through recruitment programs and job board postings.
Miles serves as a Board Member at the Colorado Agrivoltaics Learning Center, home to Jack's Solar Garden and the Ridley Scholarship Board at the University of Virginia.Miles graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Environmental Science as a Rodman Scholar, minoring in Engineering Business. In 2020, he completed a year-long hybrid program, Financing and Deploying Clean Energy, at the Yale Center of Business and Environment (CBEY).
Savannah Whitfield
Savannah Whitfield is an entrepreneuer who has worked in the commercial solar energy industry for the past 4 years. She is an expert in US solar markets, project feasibility analytics, and creatively answering the question “how can we make a solar system pencil at this site?”.
Savannah has the unique experience of beginning her career at Black Bear Energy while it was still in its start-up phase, and working there through the successful exit and acquisition by Blackstone Portfolio Company, Legence.
Savannah graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.S in Chemical Engineering. During her time at CU, Savannah was heavily involved in a diversity in engineering program committed to empowering traditionally underrepresented students to find success in Engineering through community building and academic resources.
While in the workforce, Savannah found herself missing the diverse community that she had found at CU so founded The Society of Black Solar Professionals, a member based organization that increases the retention and representation of Black people in the Solar industry through education programs and community building events.
Our Guiding Principles
Sustainable Development
Current solar development processes lock up agriculturally-zoned land for up to 35 years which put stress on the country's agricultural infrastructure. We are making clean energy work for every stakeholder, including the farmer and his/her land.
Community Benefit
Equity: We are ensuring LMI and minority communities reap the same benefits of dual-use solar throughout the technology's maturation.
Impact: Okovate serves communities we work in by incorporating local feedback into our projects and creating awareness around the importance and benefits of dual-use solar.
Empowering Farmers
Okovate is a farmer-first partner and has the mission of equipping farmers with the resources to harness the sun’s power without sacrificing their crop production, ensuring profitable farming practices.
Humanity stands before a great problem of finding new raw materials and new sources of energy that shall never become exhausted. In the meantime we must not waste what we have, but must leave as much as possible for coming generations.
Svante Arrhenius (1925). "Chemistry in Modern Life"
