Making a Difference One Panel at a Time with Andrew Yakub

Founder and CEO of California-based solar panel company Rayton Solar Inc., Andrew Yakub, grew up in Santa Clarita and has dedicated his life to improving the environment. As a young child, Yakub developed an early interest in science. “Originally I wanted to work at NASA. But then in college I thought instead of going to NASA, it’s better to solve the problems we have here on Earth.”
Yakub majored in Physics at UC Santa Barbara and was inspired to do his part to affect change. “Back in college, there was a push towards coming up with new technologies and ways to solve the climate change. The movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ had just come out and that kind of started this movement. It made us put the target on the problem and identify that there is a really huge problem. And we have to deal with it now. I figured I’d put the things I learned in science to good use, and try to fight that problem.”
It’s a global issue that many still struggle to understand. Yakub describes the devastating effects of climate change on the planet. “We only have one environment, and it’s so messed up right now that we might be beyond the point of no return. We have what’s called a greenhouse effect. As the climate changes, it’s not just warming, it’s cooling. As we lose ice in the arctic and the Antarctic, there’s less light reflecting into space. The less light that’s reflected, the more the planet warms. It’s kind of a self- propelling effect. And we’re very close right now to losing permafrost. In permafrost, there’s a lot of methane stored, and methane is a huge greenhouse gas. When the methane and the permafrost get released, it’s the point of no return. The climate will warm up to higher than pre-industrial levels, something that we haven’t seen in 56 million years on the earth. It will cause catastrophic change and there are a lot of people on the planet that we have to feed. With this climate change, it’s going to make it really hard to feed them.”
As the driving force behind Rayton Solar Inc., Yakub and his team of professors, scientists, and engineers are doing their part to help the environment. Solar panels are beneficial for the planet. The panels power homes with clean, pure energy derived from the sun, help fight the greenhouse effect, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. “If you do a solar installation on your home, it’s so cost effective right now,” Yakub explains. “You essentially only have to pay for 3-years’ worth of energy, and the panels last for 20 to 30 years. You save a lot of money but also free yourself up from the grids.” While working toward developing the world’s most cost-effective source of energy, Yakub is fulfilling his mission to fight the environment’s problems and make a difference in the world.

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