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205 N Dougherty Street   Black Mountain, NC 28711
Thomas C. Peters
Mr. Peters was a commercial real estate developer for 30 years, completing more than $650M in projects located in seven different states.  Projects included a high-rise office building in Orlando, a
number of suburban office buildings and strip malls and 35 Paint & Hardware or Homelife Furniture Stores for Sears Roebuck & Co.  In 2009 he started a solar development company for a major regional roofing contractor in the Northeast and consummated deals with supermarkets, colleges and municipal
He started Angel Energy, LLC as a renewable energy development and financial
consulting practice to advise farmers and non-profit forest advocacy groups in California who are developing combined heat and power gasification systems. These systems process ag waste diverted from landfills and wood waste to prevent forest fires. They’ll generate
government for solar installations.  While developing real estate, Mr. Peters and his wife ran a teaching, Permaculture farm in Hawaii for six years selling flowers to lei makers and organic tropical fruits to food stores.
electricity, heat for kilns and food processing and biochar for agricultural soil amendment, water retention and animal husbandry.
Gronom was formed based upon Mr. Peters’ collaboration with the Hydroponic Society of America and Green Applied Sciences, both experts in Controlled Environment Agriculture for cannabis and greens growth. Together they advised two
supermarket chains, one in Pennsylvania and one in California, on the financial feasibility of integrating indoor vertical farming systems into their operations.
Mr. Peters has been a repeat, quest lecturer to graduate architecture and engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics. He has presented subjects including solar renewable energy economics, wet waste to energy conversion technologies and Controlled Environment Agriculture.
He conceived of, and assisted attorneys to prepare,
an application for an IRS Private Letter Ruling (PLR) that qualified white roofs as solar energy property when installed with bi-facial photovoltaic modules. The PLR was granted and is being used by module manufacturers and developers across the U.S. to sell combined roofing and bi-facial photovoltaic systems.
He prepared a White Paper for USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, the White House Deputy Energy Advisor and the National Economic Council Director on the subject of Renewable Energy for Non-Profits and the use of existing tax law to facilitate the collaboration of non-profit institutions with for-profit solar developers so that the non-profits could own solar installations without investing capital.
He was a Steering Committee member for the White House Rural Council’s launch of the government’s promotional campaign for Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) as a sustainable, natural and carbon-sequestering, structural building material for commercial use in the U.S. and a suitable replacement for extractive industry materials like steel and concrete that produce excessive CO2 emissions when manufactured.
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