As co-founder of Peoples Alternative Energy Services (PAES), Mr. Valdez has promoted alternative energy for low-income sectors, sustainable planning, and environmental reform since 1976. PAES's grassroots organizing workshops and hands-on initiatives were featured in a variety of publications and highlighted in a PBS documentary. Valdez also served as trainer for Peace Corps and other government sponsored solar projects since the 1980s. After studying advanced adobe dome construction techniques in India, he collaborated on a design for a high altitude adobe village and spearheaded several construction projects for the Sangre de Cristo Parish, including a design of a local environmental education center, restoration of the oldest non-Amerindian religious structure in Colorado and the co-design and supervise construction of a domed adobe chapel (La Capilla de Todos Santos, San Luis CO, 1996). Since 1990, his firm has undertaken cultural landscape research and an architectural survey of the Hispano enclaves of Costilla and Conejos County of southern Colorado.

Currently, Arnold is the principal of Valdez & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in earthen designs and an associate of Architectural Harmonics.