Paying It Forward
Alumni amplify RMI’s mission as they advance their careers
By David Labrador, writer/editor at Rocky Mountain Institute.
Hundreds of people who worked at Rocky Mountain Institute over the past 35 years have moved on in their careers, taking the institute’s goal of transforming global energy with them. RMI alumni have espoused the ethos of whole- systems thinking; abundance by design; and the pursuit of a cleaner, smarter, healthier energy system, and carried that ethos into the world in some surprising ways, and to some high heights.
Joe Romm held different assistant secretary positions at the U.S. Department of Energy and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Jigar Shah, the first CEO of Carbon War Room, is the cofounder of Silicon Valley’s Generate Capital. Hal Harvey cofounded and led ClimateWorks Foundation and the Energy Foundation, and introduced RMI to his cofounder, Eric Heitz, who said, “Decades ago, I heard Amory Lovins give a lecture that changed the direction of my career. It led me to found the Energy Foundation with Hal Harvey and to believe in and work toward an affluent, low-carbon economy generally.” Under Heitz’s leadership, Energy Foundation partnered with RMI on Reinventing Fire: China. “It’s been great collaborating with RMI in China, and I know we are making the future we want to see,” he said.
Our alumni take what they built together at RMI and extend it into the world, creating an ever- widening circle of impact. Here we celebrate the positive change they continue to make by profiling a few of our distinguished alumni. (The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length.)
ANNA SHPITSBERG
Global Power Sector Program Manager, Bureau of Energy Resources, U.S. Department of State
Anna was an RMI Stanback Fellow in 2010, while getting her graduate degree at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
Solutions Journal: What do you do now?
Anna Shpitsberg: I support energy security objectives by initiating and managing global projects on power market reform, grid reliability, electrical interconnections, utility and sector solvency, and energy resource optimization and planning.
SJ: How do you use your RMI experiences in your current position?
AS: RMI is always looking for the latest advancements in technology to drive down costs. While at RMI, I utilized my finance background to design energy-saving programs for the transportation and power sectors. Everyone I worked with understood that financing was a key component to diversifying the energy mix. Now, as I design programs abroad, I pull from this experience to ensure prospective projects account for technological innovation and look toward the future.
SJ: How does your current work advance RMI’s vision?
AS: The Power Sector Program, which I had the privilege to help establish and now manage, focuses on partnering with countries to improve power-sector reliability and solvency. In order to attain a reliable and solvent sector, it’s critical to diversify the energy mix so there isn’t an overdependence on any one resource. As a result, a lot of my job entails working with countries to conduct energy optimization analysis, which incorporates cleaner solutions.
SJ: What was your most memorable RMI moment?
AS: There were many great moments at RMI, but I particularly enjoyed the time the entire RMI family visited the Snowmass office to run murder boards on active projects. Murder boards are an opportunity to have everyone critically review projects as preparation for external briefings. If a project passes the murder board, then it’s ready for the outside world. Watching Amory Lovins participate in these briefings was a unique experience.
SJ: What makes RMI a great place to launch a career?
AS: Personally, I believe launching a career is about figuring out what one enjoys doing day to day, what type of environment makes getting up in the morning enjoyable, and which people can teach one the most. RMI is full of intelligent, curious, and energetic staff. The organization encourages curiosity and diverse backgrounds, which in turn stimulates new ideas.
KARL RÁBAGO
Executive Director, Pace Energy and Climate Center, at the Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Karl was an RMI managing director and principal from 1999 to 2002, and coauthored Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size with Amory Lovins and five others.
Solutions Journal: What do you do now?
Karl Rábago: I lead the Pace Energy and Climate Center, which is home to a cross-disciplinary team of lawyers, economists, engineers, and policy experts focused on advancing clean energy in New York, in the Northeast, across the U.S., and around the world.
The center is known for its work in researching and publishing the first comprehensive assessment of the environmental costs of electricity, in coleading a coalition of clean energy NGOs engaged in New York utility policy, and in championing combined heat and power, microgrids, energy efficiency, and distributed solar generation.
SJ: How do you use your RMI experiences in your current position?
KR: RMI was a good fit for my personality: inquisitive, a little bit skeptical, informal, and focused on the big picture — why people and organizations do things, not just what they are doing — analytical, not just descriptive. I learned that there is power in the collection of people who think that way. RMI taught me that I would be happier working with folks who appreciate (in the sense of understanding) the big picture, the system as a whole, the pressure points, and latent inclinations to change.
At the same time, my RMI experiences instilled in me an expectation, even a demand, for high- quality work, comprehensive analysis, and an appreciation of critical review. A half-baked idea wouldn’t fly with Amory or any of the other members of the senior staff at RMI, and it wasn’t going to fly with me.
To answer your question: I always asked good questions; my RMI experiences taught me to ask even better ones.
SJ: How does your current work advance RMI’s vision?
KR: RMI’s mission is compelling, necessary, and right. Over the 27-plus years that I have been involved in the environmental and energy fields, I have come to appreciate that the solutions to our clean energy challenges will come through a focus on change at the community level.
That means that while individual action is necessary, and state and federal policy matters, the changes that are happening — and the greater changes we seek — will happen at and through community-level engagement and initiative. So, we are working on the vision from the community up.
SJ: What was your proudest accomplishment at RMI?
KR: Writing and publishing Small Is Profitable.
SJ: What profile does RMI have in your field?
KR: It’s seen as a thought leader and innovator.
SJ: What brought you to RMI?
KR: A desire to work on sustainability and not just the clean energy/electric utility regulatory reform agenda. I joined to help costart the Natural Capitalism practice — creating a consulting- oriented mission that worked inside RMI.
SJ: Name one thing readers can do to help create a low-carbon energy future.
KR: Refuse to accept the status quo as inevitable or optimal. Be open to change in your life, your work, and your community. And do your homework before you initiate action.
CHRISTINA PAGE
Founder of Page Sustainability Consulting; Director, Energy & Environment, at Amazon until December 2016; Global Director, Energy & Sustainability Strategy, at Yahoo Inc. for eight years before moving to Amazon.
Christina was a senior consultant at RMI from 2001 to 2007, and helped start RMI’s Natural Capitalism practice, the backbone of RMI’s present consulting practice.
Solutions Journal: What do you do now?
Christina Page: I run an independent consulting firm on business sustainability and systems thinking, and I’m raising two little boys.
SJ: How have you used your RMI experiences in your recent positions?
CP: I learned a lot about the importance of systems thinking while I was with RMI, and also a mind-set of optimism and being solutions oriented, which is partially RMI and partially trademark Amory. It’s easy to get discouraged given the seriousness of climate change. Focusing on solutions and maintaining an optimistic mind-set is crucial. At Yahoo, in 2009, we made one of the first corporate commitments to reducing our carbon footprint. In 2010, as part of that, we won a $9.9 million green IT grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the famous Yahoo Compute Coop, a chillerless data center — no centralized chilling system, just direct evaporative cooling. Amory had been talking about the concept of chillerless data centers since 2002 as a way of tunneling through the cost barrier. Eight years later, some really smart engineers at Yahoo managed to pull it off.
During my time at Amazon, there were some exciting opportunities to bring sustainable business to scale — it’s one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. I had the chance to apply ideas to everything from buying large-scale utility wind to on-site solar installations.
SJ: What was your most memorable RMI moment?
CP: The “Sustainable Settlements” charrette we did in 2002. We tackled the problem of making refugee camps and communities more livable. It was incredibly inspiring and seems even more relevant today.
I also just attended the e — Lab Accelerator event this past April, which was packed with new memorable and inspiring RMI moments!
SJ: What was your proudest accomplishment at RMI?
CP: Being part of the team that built the Natural Capitalism consulting practice for businesses, utilities, and government. The team at RMI took the great ideas in the Natural Capitalism book and operationalized them.
SJ: What profile does RMI have in your field?
CP: When I was working at RMI, sometimes I underestimated the respect and authority that RMI as an organization affords the rest of the sustainability community. It’s an incubator for some really creative thinking, and people recognize that.
SJ: What’s your favorite book, blog, or resource for learning about transforming energy use or addressing climate change?
CP: Donella Meadows’s book Thinking in Systems: A Primer. It’s not specifically about energy systems, but about systems thinking.
I think that right now, the biggest energy challenges involve the whole system — supply, demand, and aging infrastructure — more than a specific technology. The challenge is understanding how the system behaves when technology is transforming really quickly but the institutions that are set up to deliver the power are pretty antiquated. Meadows’s book is about how to look at and understand systems.
SJ: Name one thing readers can do to help create a low-carbon energy future.
CP: We need to be mindful of our choices without becoming paralyzed. Changing the mind-set and the paradigm that creates a system is where we really need to focus our attention. The least effective point for changing a system is just messing around with the numbers. The most effective is challenging deeply held beliefs. There’s still a belief in this country that business and the environment are inherently at odds. It’s crucial that we continue to challenge that notion in our decisions and daily actions.
BENNETT COHEN
Senior Associate, Shell Technology Ventures, and Board Chair and Cofounder, Empower Generation
Bennett was special aide to Amory Lovins from 2008 to 2010.
Solutions Journal: What do you do now?
Bennett Cohen: Since 2010 I’ve been a board member of a nonprofit that my wife and I cofounded with a Nepali economist called Empower Generation. It takes a market- based approach to both gender equality and sustainable energy by empowering women to become clean energy entrepreneurs in Nepal and other countries. Empower Generation seeds and supports women-led clean energy enterprises serving the energy poor, and gives clean energy technology suppliers access to remote markets where their products are in high demand.
Since 2012 I have worked for Shell, starting in Amsterdam as a member of the Future Energy Technology group, responsible for informing Shell’s strategy and developing business options in “new energies” — low-carbon and digital energy solutions. Since then, the energy transition and digitization have become pillars of Shell’s long-term strategy, and New Energies is now a division that encompasses renewables, integrated energy solutions, low-carbon transportation, and digital businesses.
In 2015 I joined Shell Technology Ventures, the venture capital arm of Shell. I’ve spent the last two years developing Shell’s network within the Bay Area community of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and working on investments in startups and venture capital funds with strategic relevance to Shell. We just officially opened our San Francisco office in the Transamerica Pyramid, where I am joined by several colleagues from the New Energies group.
SJ: How do you use your RMI experiences in your current position?
BC: There are many similarities in how RMI and Shell look at the energy system. In fact, Amory and RMI have collaborated with Shell on energy-scenario thinking since the 1970s, and I’ve had the opportunity to engage with RMI several times since joining Shell. Both organizations place a premium on very high quality analysis and arguments, thinking in systems, and a global view of energy as a pillar of modern society. As part of an “intrapreneurial” team within Shell, I always remember Amory’s metaphor of institutional acupuncture, and within the venture capital team, I am looking at opportunities that recall projects and thought pieces from my time at RMI. And of course, my passion for the widespread adoption of clean energy, which I honed at RMI, is a big part of what guides my work on the board of Empower Generation.
SJ: How does your current work advance RMI’s vision?
BC: I joined Shell in the spirit of RMI’s philosophy, which puts for-profit business at the heart of solutions that lead to resource efficiency and sustainability. While many organizations with similar missions take a confrontational approach to business, RMI engages the biggest players to punch above its weight in terms of impact. After my time at RMI and a stint in graduate school, I saw no bigger platform for impact than Shell. I’m optimistic about where Shell and its New Energies business are headed.
SJ: What was your most memorable RMI moment?
BC: My most memorable moment at RMI was the screening of a spoof film that my roommate and coworker, Tripp Hyde, and I made for the institute’s annual retreat, which included a film festival. In our film, all the stuffed orangutans in Amory’s house came to life and got into some serious mischief.
SJ: What profile does RMI have in your field?
BC: RMI is known for being at the leading edge of innovation within energy, and it has an impeccable reputation among industry stakeholders.
“In our film, all the stuffed orangutans in Amory’s house came to life and got into some serious mischief.”
SJ: What’s your favorite book, blog, or resource for learning about transforming energy use or addressing climate change?
BC: My favorite classic is Natural Capitalism, which set my career path. My favorite recent book is Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, by Tony Seba. And my favorite website is greentechmedia.com.
SJ: Name one thing readers can do to help create a low-carbon energy future.
BC: Put your money where your mouth is. Drive the consumer energy revolution through installing solar on your roof, buying an alternative energy vehicle or a Nest thermostat, etc. Be an early adopter where you can.
real orangutan, a member of a species that he has done much to protect. Photo: © Rocky Mountain Institute
WEB EXTRA
For more information on this topic visit: https://rmi.org/about/meet-our-team/
