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February 17, 2026, Rochester, NY— We’re proud to share that GreenSpark Solar CEO Kevin Schulte has been named to the Rochester Business Journal’s 2026 Power 100 List, recognizing the most influential leaders shaping the Greater Rochester region.
This marks Kevin’s second consecutive appearance on the Power 100 and comes just months after he was also recognized on the publication’s 2025 Environmental Leaders Power List — underscoring Kevin’s role in leading clean energy advancement and economic development across New York State.
The Power 100, presented annually, highlights leaders across health care, finance, education, manufacturing, real estate, technology, energy, and more. Rather than focusing solely on accolades, the RBJ invited Power 100 List honorees to share their perspectives on leadership, strategy, and the future of their industries.
We’re excited to share Kevin’s full responses below.
RBJ 2026 Power 100 Honoree | Kevin Schulte, GreenSpark Solar CEO
What decision or strategic shift in 2025 had the greatest impact on your business?
With the passing of HR1, it was clear we couldn’t rely on business-as-usual and expect long-term stability. We intentionally shifted our focus to our commercial, industrial, and large-scale distributed solar EPC work to ensure the company’s long-term health as we navigated federal headwinds. Ultimately, the decisions of this administration have led to a dramatic increase in electricity prices, allowing us to continue offering local, affordable, clean energy options to both homeowners and businesses. Our customers are seeing a better return on their solar investment now than they would have with the tax credit in place.
What developments in your industry are you watching most closely as you look ahead to the coming year?
As the fastest and most cost-effective energy source to develop on the market, solar and battery storage remain our best opportunity to meet the growing demand on our electricity grid. GreenSpark is at the helm of clean energy policy development, and everything we do is aimed at making it easier and cheaper to deploy solar and storage.
At the state level, that’s pushing for interconnection reform — a solvable barrier that is essential to making real progress on energy affordability and climate goals. At the federal level, that’s helping our customers navigate policy changes to ensure projects progress without roadblocks.
How do you prioritize long-term innovation while ensuring operational excellence day to day?
This is a harvest year with record sales, so right now we’re prioritizing improving operating performance while maintaining our headcount by building out a robust, flexible pipeline. This will allow us to readily redeploy teams and resources across any active project to maximize our efficiency.
We’re also focused on ensuring our teams are aligned and supported, while creating an open-door culture where both challenges and new ideas are shared and discussed. We’ve found that when people have clarity, trust, and room to lead, innovation and strong day-to-day execution go hand in hand.
What regional strengths do you believe position Rochester well for future growth?
Rochester’s push to reinvest in its downtown and attract new businesses is a huge opportunity. That’s a big reason we moved GreenSpark’s headquarters downtown in 2025 — we wanted to be part of that energy. Being on a bus line and closer to the city core makes us more accessible as an employer and helps us reach talent that might have been excluded before.
From an operational perspective, Rochester’s wealth of manufacturing outfits offers strong partnership opportunities to help us complete our growing pipeline of construction work cleanly, efficiently, and to the highest construction standards.
What’s one interest or activity you hope to make more time for in the coming year?
My primary interest is driving efficiency at scale, which involves three things. The first is to minimize climate-induced construction roadblocks by leveraging local partners and our own warehouse space to complete portions of our traditional field work in climate-controlled spaces. The second is to expand our work into new geographies, including Illinois, Maryland, and Vermont. The last is deploying more battery storage systems at scale, which will continue to drive electric grid resiliency and savings to NYS customers.
On a personal level, I am trying to perfect my hot sauce recipe.
Continuing to Lead in a Changing Energy Landscape
Kevin’s recognition reflects not only his leadership but the collective work of the GreenSpark team and our partners across the region. As electricity demand grows and policy evolves, we remain focused on delivering affordable, clean energy solutions that strengthen our grid, our economy, and our communities.
We’re grateful to the Rochester Business Journal for this recognition and proud to be among the leaders helping to move Rochester forward.
