Skipping school to travel interstate? Sounds like a high-school adventure.
But for Darren Kimura, president and CEO of Hawaii-based Energy Industries, it was a necessity to run his business.
Hawaii-born Mr. Kimura started his business at 20, and as a student of Portland State University, he would cut school for a couple of weeks, come back to Hawaii and then leave again to keep his business up and running.
“We got a local Hawaii fax number, a local Hawaii cell phone and a pager number, and when I was at PSU, I was still actually doing consulting for companies in Hawaii without actually having them know that I was not in-state,” he said.
“For the most part, it really is a tribute to communications and the development of it. You could be intrastate working in Portland, yet working for Hawaii businesses and helping them do their thing while learning about how those businesses out there in Oregon were operating.”
Mr. Kimura’s company specializes in energy efficiency services catering to commercial industries and since inception in 1994 it has expanded nation-wide to deliver energy saving alternatives to its clients.
Learn more of Darren Kimura’s success story as he gives tips and advice to would-be entrepreneurs.
BIO:
Darren T. Kimura, President and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Kimura is a 14 year energy serial entrepreneur. Over his career he created several companies which he led to multi-million dollar success and liquidity. Mr. Kimura is the founder and Chairman of the Board for Energy Industries, a large national energy project developer. Energy Industries features 12 offices in 3 countries and over 200 employees. Mr. Kimura also founded Facility Solutions a national service broker, Pacific Energy Services an energy engineering company, Energy Conservation Hawaii an energy retrofit company, eCONTROLS a digital technology company and Energy$mart a utility consulting company. In addition, he has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions having purchased the Quantum companies and other independent energy companies.
His entrepreneurship accomplishments include awardee of the Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2000, Awardee of the coveted SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2002 (regional – CA, HI, AZ) and EPA Energy Pioneer of the Year.
He attended the University of Hawaii and Portland State University. He is also a Certified Energy Manager, Certified Demand Side Manager, Certified Distributed Energy Professional and Certified Sustainable Development Professional.
He is currently the President and CEO of Sopogy, Inc. a leader in solar power technology. Sopogy specializes in the development, design, manufacturing and distribution of its solar energy collector that is used to generate electricity, create air conditioning, agricultural drying and for industrial steam systems.
Education:
1992 Waiakea High School
1992 University of Hawaii at Manoa – Business
1996 Portland State University – Electrical Engineering
Energy Industries, LLC:
1994 Started Energy Industries in Hilo during summer break from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
1996 Created Energy Conservation Hawaii (ECH)
1998 Created Pacific Energy Services
2000 Created eCONTROLS
2001 Created Energy$mart
2003 Created Lighting and Electrical Company
2004 Created Facility Solutions
2005 Acquired Quantum Lighting and Quantum Energy
Other Facts:
1991 Eagle Scout
2000 PBN 40 under Forty
2002 SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, Guam)
Darren is married to his wife Kelly and they have a 18 month old daughter Aya.
Brief Company Bio.
Energy Industries, LLC. (EI) is a national energy efficiency company with offices currently in Honolulu, Kahului, Hilo, Seattle, Spokane, Boise, Portland and New York. Originally founded in Hilo, Hawaii, in 1994, Honolulu is currently the location of our corporate headquarters.
Today, our firm’s staff exceeds 90 professionals experienced in a wide range of disciplines all focused on the goal of helping our customers save money by saving energy. Our strength lies in our ability to provide high-quality products that meet our client’s needs and objectives of saving energy.
At EI, we specialize in finding solutions to the problems that commercial and industrial customers face. With divisions encompassing contracting services, advisory, building automated controls and energy services there are not many issues confronting building owners and operators that we haven’t addressed before.
EI was founded by Darren T. Kimura who had a vision of being in a business where he could make a living by helping others. He was able to achieve this in the energy efficiency field by helping businesses save energy by reducing energy consumption.
By helping businesses save energy, we help the environment in reducing atmospheric pollution, the electrical utilities by reducing rolling blackouts and deferring new power generation, the customer by saving money and of course the government by paying taxes. Additionally, we help reduce Hawaii’s dependence on imported oil, help integrate renewable technologies into today’s facilities and help provide efficient solutions without the sacrifices of traditional conservation. This is a unique win-win-win industry.
We believe the path to helping our customers is by integrating 3 major philosophies into one service provider. These are 1) Proper energy efficient design, 2) Proper installation and 3) Proper long term maintenance. By self-performing our projects, we help to ensure our customers are achieving their energy savings with the highest quality products and services that has become synonymous with Energy Industries.
About Social Entrepreneurship
Darren strongly believes in giving back to the community in education and energy efficiency. He believes that by helping grow the future generation of Hawaii’s leaders into energy conscious, and civic minded individuals, we can aid to end on our dependence on oil and other environmentally detrimental industries.
To support his vision, Darren and EI has donated tens of thousands of dollars in energy efficient projects to help the children live and learn in efficient environments. Additionally, Darren annually conducts hundreds of hours in voluntary educational talks to children at local public schools about the need for energy conservation and awareness.
Links:
Energy Industries
Energy Smart News Podcast