Fleet electrification is my entry point into the renewable energy space where I will dedicate the next decade of my career. But in order to help deliver world-class software solutions for electrification, I first need to understand the critical problems these transportation businesses face.

This is the abbreviated story about how I found a way I can address a planet-sized problem - one of many that need our help. I hope that by sharing my journey, it provides some inspiration for you on your own path.

I want to demonstrate that I am accurately thinking about this problem space and am able to spot good business opportunities. To do that, I am going to publish a brief.

I now feel much more confident in my path forward after aligning my strengths and my passion with a specific segment of the Clean Energy Transition where I feel I can have the greatest positive impact: Fleet Electrification.

I’ve been collecting online resources that attempt to capture, distill and present the full Energy and/or Climate landscape in a consumable model. These have helped me on my own path, and I hope you find some/all of them valuable too.

No two people ramp up on new topics in exactly the same way but for those that enjoy audio-based information gathering, I have been sharing this curated list of podcasts.

Whether or not you have ever thought about where your electricity comes from, if you are on board with the clean energy transition, you will need to understand more about the inconvenient truth behind the intermittency of solar and wind power.

Greenhouse gases are connected to nearly everything that we do on a daily basis as individuals but the emissions activity also highlights challenges that come from rapid growth around the globe.

Rethinking mobility decisions | My last gas-powered vehicle? | Energy Efficiency -> Emissions Efficiency | Negawatt?

The recent COP26 Climate Summit brought much-needed attention to the Energy Transition. Here's hoping we can keep up the collective energy around the crisis, keep our attention focused on solutions and keep our optimism strong for what will likely be a long path ahead.

Either you don't know how scary climate change is and feel like it might be time to bone up a little OR you already understand that things are bad in the world and you want to feel more positive about what might be done or at least where you can start.

I’ve been researching a broad range of energy topics for many months now because I'm captivated by the urgency and scale of our global Energy Transition. I had originally planned to skim over the whole Climate Change area, but I now realize that there is not only a direct and critical connection between the two but that this Energy Transition is being spurred along by our current climate crisis.

It has become much less expensive to build large solar and wind farms to feed significant power into nearby grids, even in remote areas of the planet. But these cleaner energy sources are intermittent so they must be paired with long term energy storage - at grid scale.

Erecting - then dismantling an entire city | Recommending a new podcast: The Big Switch | Hydrogen’s future will certainly come in many colors | That time I came across an Edison dynamo

I am drawn to DER for multiple reasons. Partly its because updating aging technology systems is what I’ve been doing my whole professional life and this is an opportunity to tackle familiar problems on a global scale - with no shortage of urgency. But part of my fascination is that microgrids and islanding just sound cool! I get interested because our global power story is changing - and change usually means new opportunities!

Can a single car really help the Grid in a power emergency? Probably not. But people that are pushing V2G are not thinking about individual cars. They are imagining millions of EVs that can be dynamically pooled together on demand.

If our collective goal is to reduce carbon emissions, we can look for alternatives to the conventional choices we make in our own immediate proximity. But the sobering news is that we are not going to get to zero emissions with these kinds of individual heroics. We can, however have a significantly larger impact by deliberately making conspicuous choices that stimulate or even inspire conversations with others.

This is really the beginning of the story that will ultimately end with me buying an electric vehicle or EV - but I’m not there yet. In the poignant, if slightly altered lyrics of Janis Joplin, “My friends all have Teslas, I must make amends!” I am sharing the results of my brief survey on EV ownership.

This point-of-view represents my current understanding of the renewable energy space as it is coupled to the larger Energy Transition movement and ultimately being propelled by the looming(!) climate crisis.

I like to venture outdoors and explore the wonders of the natural world. Yosemite National Park is one of my all-time favorite destinations and on this most recent trip, I got the chance to also visit the Hetch Hetchy Valley next door and to learn more about the controversial decision to intentionally flood a region to provide clean water and reliable power to the residents of San Francisco.

Manta Biofuel is pursuing a renewable alternative to jet fuel that has the potential to scale to meet the needs of the airline industry and that leverages much of the existing infrastructure already in place! I was so intrigued that I ultimately became an early investor in the company.

If you’re curious about trying to go off-grid and supply your own electricity from seemingly attractive renewable energy options like solar panels, you will quickly gain an appreciation for the inherent challenges of intermittency and the value of reliable power from (battery) storage. You will also get closer to understanding how similar those challenges are for millions of people around the world who currently live without access to reliable electricity.

What I find most interesting is that concentrating solar power (CSP) plants represent a completely different way of harnessing the sun’s energy. Most of us associate solar power with photovoltaic (PV) panels like those on many houses and buildings. But researchers have been looking at other options too and while they don’t yet enjoy the same level of success as PV panels, they are viable options.