The Future Is Green: Chris Taylor Of GridStor On Their Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet
An Interview With Wanda Malhotra
Move fast, be patient. Act on ideas because we need to implement these solutions now. But expect setbacks; they will happen, and they can be overcome.
As we face an unprecedented environmental crisis, the need for sustainable solutions has never been more urgent. This series seeks to spotlight the innovative minds and passionate advocates who are leading the charge in environmental conservation and sustainable practices. We aim to explore the most effective strategies, breakthrough technologies, and transformative policies that are shaping a more sustainable future for our planet. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Chris Taylor.
Chris has been a leader in clean energy for two decades. He is the founding CEO of GridStor, a Goldman Sachs-backed independent power producer with over 2,500 MW of large-scale battery energy storage projects currently in operation or under development. Previously, Chris led clean energy investing for Google’s global data center business, where he managed investments totaling over $1.5B. Prior to Google, he built portfolios of wind and solar power projects totaling more than 10,000 MW across two companies.
Thank you so much for joining us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Absolutely, my first work on energy policy began when I was Legislative Director at Environment Oregon (then called OSPIRG). I worked on legislation that allowed wholesale energy customers to choose their suppliers and created the Energy Trust of Oregon to ensure continued investment in energy efficiency and renewables. While at OSPIRG I served on the board of an organization called Renewable Northwest, an energy advocacy group committed to decarbonizing the region by accelerating the transition to renewable energy.
At a certain point, I determined that as much as policy was needed to enable the clean energy transition, businesses were going to be the ones to build that transition. That’s why I decided to join a wind power company, Zilkha Renewable Energy, in 2002. I was there for seven years before I co-founded a global wind and solar energy company, Element Power. After Element, I did a stint as the head of a multistate infrastructure group, and then went on to Google, where I led the Portland, Oregon office and had the chance to help define their data center clean energy strategy.
Now I’m the CEO at GridStor, a battery energy storage developer and operator enabling the transition to a clean energy grid by deploying flexible grid-connected batteries at scale. I think it’s the most exciting place to be in clean energy right now, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
One of the first clean energy projects I ever developed was the Elkhorn Valley wind farm in Union County, in rural NE Oregon. We were the first company to develop a utility scale clean energy project in that part of the state. We spent a lot of time in the community explaining the benefits of wind power and answering questions and I developed a friendship with one of the Union County Commissioners who saw the potential of wind power to boost the economy in his area. He is the only person I have known who is both a lifetime member of the NRA and drives a Prius.
Being an outsider in communities that are distrustful of investors from the city is a unique experience, and it has taught me how to get beyond labels and assumptions about people and get to really know them on a human level. Despite being from literally opposite ends of the state both geographically and politically, we shared a vision of how clean energy could drive rural economic development. Thanks to his support, we ultimately got the project approved and built, creating jobs and boosting the tax base for local governments while reducing carbon pollution.
He taught me a lot about the perspectives of local policy makers in rural, resource-dependent areas, and I taught him about the economics and financing of large clean energy projects. We are still friends to this day, and I would never have had the chance to meet him, or the many other fascinating people I have met over the course of my development career, if I had not been developing clean energy projects in remote areas far from where I live. Being in this industry has given me a unique window into the cultural and economic divides between urban and rural America, and to help break down those divides and find common ground that benefits everyone. Learning those lessons early is in part why GridStor works to develop projects in both rural and urban areas across the country.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Curiosity. I have a passion for knowledge, and I knew a lot about clean energy before going into the battery storage industry, but I also knew that I would be required to learn more. Batteries are on the bleeding edge of clean energy solutions and there is no textbook because we are doing things that have never been done before. I thrive on the challenge of learning something new every day, and my curiosity drives me to push forward.
Candor. It’s important to be direct, to explain what you expect from others and ask them to do so in return. I’ve built many teams throughout my career, and open communication has been central to each team’s success.
Conviction. I have a fundamental belief that if we don’t solve the climate crisis, we are simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There are many important causes in the world that I care about, and that I have dedicated my time to, but we must fix this issue to even have a chance to solve the rest. Clean energy is the most important thing I’ve done in my life.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that might help people?
We have a lot of exciting projects in various stages of planning and development right now. Our goal is to accelerate America’s transition to a carbon-free economy by building and operating batteries on the power grid across the country. We just brought our first project online at the end of 2023 in Goleta, California, which is already beginning to take midday solar power and deliver it during the evening, displacing gas power. That’s exactly what I came here to do.
In the next five years, we have plans to add more storage capacity throughout Southern California, with more projects underway across the United States. This means reliable electricity during heatwaves, and during winter storms for both households and businesses. It also helps the communities economically. We expect the construction of these projects to employ hundreds of skilled tradespeople and apprentices.
In the longer view, we have over 2,500 megawatts of projects in early stages of development across primarily the western U.S. We are excited not only to meet the needs of the larger power system, but to also help solve the clear and near-term challenge of enabling grid operators to add large, energy-intensive facilities to the power system, like data centers.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. What pivotal moment led you to dedicate your career to sustainability, and how has that shaped your approach to environmental challenges?
My clean energy career inspiration has two sources. I completed my undergraduate degree at Amherst College, and while I was studying abroad in Kenya as part of my college coursework, I had an internship in Marsabit. The town had built a single wind turbine that was helping generate power for the entire population. I had never seen a wind turbine before and found this type of development very inspiring.
Then when I was in grad school at Princeton, Professor Daniel Kammen introduced me to the idea that renewable energy was finally reaching cost parity with conventional generation and that a clean energy transition was finally feasible both technologically and economically. That is when I decided to devote my career to clean energy.
Could you describe a groundbreaking project or initiative you’ve been involved in that significantly contributed to sustainability?
What I find groundbreaking is calculating that over the course of my career, I have put enough clean energy on the grid through solar and wind farms and battery storage to replace the equivalent of multiple Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Stations. To put that in context, Palo Verde has been the country’s largest power producer for nearly three decades.
Clean energy has one of the biggest impacts we can make on the world. It is a long-term investment. Power plants have 30 to 40 year working lives, so if we can affect the outcome of one of them — replace even one of them with clean energy sources — we have a multigenerational impact. To have a similar impact with electric vehicles, you need to convince millions of people to change what they drive. Or you can replace three or four traditional power plants.
How do you navigate the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation in your sustainability strategies?
As our economy evolves and grows, with revitalized manufacturing and new data centers and electric vehicle adoption, having reliable power exactly where and when it is needed is ever more critical to sustained growth — and that growth needs to be built on clean energy. Every state and utility that is embarking on clean energy transition will need to build energy storage at significant scale just to relieve daily stresses on our power infrastructure, let alone decarbonize the power system. I see our work as helping to resolve this tension — with a lot more energy storage deployed, you can supply all this new demand reliably with wind and solar that might not otherwise be possible.
We also have our own internal commitments to sustainability. We plan to do Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reporting as part of our ESG commitments, which will keep us accountable for demonstrating that we are providing net emissions benefits.
What emerging technologies or innovations do you believe hold the most promise for advancing sustainability and why?
Battery storage is amazing. Most folks don’t know that electricity can’t be stored easily — it’s this ephemeral thing and if you don’t use it the moment it’s generated, you lose it. Our power system is built on fossil fuels because of that.
Battery storage solves that problem by enabling electricity to be saved and used later, precisely when and where it is most needed. That unique flexibility enables power grid operators to rely on much higher amounts of variable, clean sources of electricity, like solar, wind, and hydropower, and to reduce our dependence on fuel-based generation, like coal and gas.
Delivering more clean electricity with energy storage reduces local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from our power system.
If we deploy lots of batteries, we can unlock a huge amount of progress to a decarbonized power system — we can probably get to around 80% fully decarbonized on today’s renewables and battery technologies alone. This helpfully provides the time for other clean energy innovations and further build out of the transmission grid that we’re going to need to reach commercial maturity.
Based on your research or experience, can you please share your “5 Top Strategies for a Cleaner Planet”?
1 . Coalition building. The community must be bought in for projects to progress. We want a cleaner planet so we can all have better lives; we also want communities to have positive experiences with renewable projects. We saw this in action with our first project which went online in December 2023; our facility neighbors a restaurant, apartment homes and businesses, and they were all supportive of the project.
2 . Location, location, location. Just like in real estate, where we put clean energy projects matters. Look for areas that are already zoned for industrial and manufacturing use or should be. Take back unused or underutilized spaces and turn them into efficient, emission-free, revenue-generating assets. It benefits everyone. We have projects in process right now that utilize this philosophy, such as a site that was a former petroleum refinery-turned chemicals manufacturing facility that we plan to build into a pollution-free energy storage facility.
3 . Be technology agnostic. Focus on the environmental result you want and be flexible with the best solution. We even do this with our batteries. We are not wedded to one provider — we are committed to the right solution for each project.
4 . Stoke curiosity and care. We change the things that matter to us. Clean energy isn’t something just for governments, investors or startups to solve; if we do our jobs right, it can engender curiosity from communities, homeowners, students. This is our shared future, and our shared responsibility. We each have a role, from voting in people with a clean energy mindset to creating laws favorable to clean energy development to bringing in the expertise and financial backing to execute these projects responsibly and in a timely manner.
5 . Move fast, be patient. Act on ideas because we need to implement these solutions now. But expect setbacks; they will happen, and they can be overcome.
In your view, what are the key steps individuals, communities, and governments need to take to achieve a more sustainable future?
The biggest step individuals can take is to vote for candidates who will act on climate change. We have the technology available to solve this crisis and we can finance the projects. What we don’t have is fast enough interconnection, enough transmission lines, and the support of enough people in power who can solve those challenges.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would encourage people to become YIMBYs — Yes In My Backyard proponents for transmission, wind, solar, battery and other sustainable development. Testify at hearings about why you want this in your neighborhood, tell your friends and family members why their support matters, post your views on social media.
When I was in the Peace Corps working in Ivory Coast, I learned how impactful local support can be. My job was to secure funding with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other international aid agencies to develop city-wide sanitation projects in cooperation with the local municipal government. We were successful because local people said yes, I want this development to happen here. We need more of that support for clean energy.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Keep up with us on our website at gridstor.com, as we post thought leadership pieces, new projects, and press releases there. You can also follow our company LinkedIn page at linkedin.com/company/gridstor.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com.
