Green Jobs: Agassi Leaves CEO Post at Better Place; New Enphase CFO; First Solar in China

Plus executive moves at Solartech, Ioxus, Kurion, and Lunera

Eric Wesoff October 02, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Enphase Energy (Nasdaq:ENPH) appointed Kris Sennesael as its new CFO. Sennesael was most recently CFO at Standard Microsystems (SMSC). The previous CFO, Sanjeev Kumar, gave notice in August. Enphase stock is trading near record lows.

The board of electric car battery swap startup Better Place has "removed founder Shai Agassi as CEO and replaced him with Evan Thornley, CEO of Better Place Australia." Agassi will continue as a board member, according to an article in Israel's Globes. The firm has racked up immense losses. Globes quotes Better Place investor Israel Corp president Nir Gilad as saying, "I too would be glad to know when we will start making a profit from Better Place."

Better Place was founded in 2007 with VC funding of more than $750 million from GE, UBS AG, Israel Corp., HSBC Group, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, VantagePoint Capital Partners, Ofer Group and Maniv Energy Capital The firm's business model has drivers lease the batteries in its electric vehicles, and charge or swap them at battery charging stations or at home.

Either you're in the camp that holds that electric vehicles are going to look like internal combustion vehicles with proprietary designs and battery packs integrated into the platform (like Tesla's platform, for instance), or you're in the swappable-battery camp with Better Place. It's always been a controversial idea and the recent rollout in Israel and elsewhere has happened much slower than expected.

First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) appointed Bruce Yung as Managing Director and VP of Business Development for China, to be based in First Solar’s Beijing office. First Solar currently has no projects built or under construction in China, although the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government to build a two-gigawatt PV solar power plant in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia in late 2009.

GTM Research forecasts 5.5 gigawatts of new solar capacity to be built in China in 2012.

Kurion, a VC-funded firm in nuclear and hazardous waste management, named Ralph DiSibio as chairman of the board. DiSibio has forty years of experience in the nuclear waste industry. Kurion is backed by Lux Capital, Firelake Capital Management and Acadia Woods Partners.

Lunera named Shannon Paul Biggs to SVP of Operations, George Sigler to CFO and Michael Bremser to CTO and VP of Engineering. Lunera builds LED-based interior commercial lighting.

Doug Payne has left his post as Executive Director of SolarTech to join Distributed Sun as SVP of Corporate Development, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ioxus, an ultracapacitor manufacturer, added Ken Rudisuela as chief technology officer (CTO). Rudisuela has nearly three decades of experience in the advanced battery and ultracapacitor market.