Solar

Kacie Peters, solar veteran who chronicled cancer battle on social media, dies at 37

Kacie Peters, solar veteran who chronicled cancer battle on social media, dies at 37
Kacie Peters as seen at the Solar Power Mountain West event earlier this year. (Kacie Peters/LinkedIn)

Kacie Peters, a solar industry veteran who chronicled her battle with colon cancer on social media, has died at 37. She’s survived by her husband, Erik, and their 6-year-old son, Nate.

Peters was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer in Dec. 2019. She first shared her diagnosis on LinkedIn the following March in honor of colon cancer awareness month. Less than a year later, Erik was also diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.

A Go Fund Me account has been set up to support Erik and Nate through the transition.

Last month, Peters issued a call to her clean energy colleagues to keep pushing for a more sustainable planet.

She dreamed that wind and solar would one day escape the culture war cycle, that her son would breathe cleaner air than she ever did, and that society would one day prioritize bringing the cost of living in line with reasonable benefits and wages.

“Alright kids, it’s almost time for me to shuffle off this mortal coil,” Peters wrote in her final LinkedIn post.

Peters spent the past five years working in various roles for Colorado-based Pivot Energy, a company she often praised for allowing her to balance medical treatment while continuing to work. Most recently, she served as the senior director of communications.

Earlier this month, Peters was awarded the 2023 Solar and Storage Champion Award from the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, an organization she served as a board member for three years.

In announcing the award, COSSA wrote at the time that, throughout Peters’ tenure, she “continued to push for a greater voice for those not traditionally represented by the stock solar installer photo we’ve all seen on many websites.”

Peters defied professional norms with her public account of battling cancer. She believed that talking about health care creates a better work environment for employees, and addressing health accommodations makes better employers.

Kacie Peters with her son, Nate. (Kacie Peters/LinkedIn)

“I’d forgive you if you thought, ‘LinkedIn is no place for such personal content,’ as you scrolled through my posts,” Peters wrote in Jan. 2022. “But I’m here to tell you that there are probably few platforms better for posts like these.”

Sunnova vice president of government and regulatory affairs Meghan Nutting, who shared the news of Peters’ passing, described her as “vibrant, brilliant, hilarious, secretly artistic, (and) incredibly thoughtful.”

“The world and the solar industry have lost one of their greatest shining lights,” Nutting wrote.