Green Jobs: Aquion, SunEdison, sPower, Renewable Funding, Nexant, Just Energy

New CEOs, executives and directors in utilities, cleantech, venture and alternative energy

Eric Wesoff August 26, 2014

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.

Advanced battery maker Aquion added Tom McDaniel to its board of directors. McDaniel spent 37 years with Edison International, where he served as CFO. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Tendril Networks, an energy management software firm, and he is a director at SunPower, the high-efficiency PV panel maker.

John Henry Robison is now director of business development at SunEdison, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was formerly VP of business development at Sungevity and a principal at venture firm NGEN before that.

Ad de Pijper moved from director of product engineering to VP of operations at Alphabet Energy, a startup developing thermoelectric industrial waste heat recovery systems.

Bradford Copithorne has joined Renewable Funding as VP of commercial PACE programs. Copithorne was previously director of financial innovation in the energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Patrick McCullough is now CFO at competitive retailer of natural gas and electricity Just Energy. McCullough was previously CFO of solar firm Amonix, and later CEO of the firm as it restructured.

Jigar Shah joined the board of sPower (Sustainable Power Group), a renewable energy provider. Shah founded SunEdison, a solar services firm. SPower is a vertically integrated owner-operator of utility and distributed electrical generation systems across the U.S., actively buying solar development assets in any stage of development. SPower is a portfolio company of Fir Tree Partners, a global investment fund.

Nexant added Larry Goldstein as senior director of product management for customer engagement solutions Goldstein was previously a director at PG&E where he led the energy-efficiency core technology roadmap and oversaw PG&E’s energy efficiency programs.

RGS Energy, a provider of solar installation and financing for homes and businesses, has named Dennis Lacey as CEO, succeeding Kam Mofid, who has left "to pursue other interests." Mofid had been CEO since July 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining RGS Energy in April as president of RGS Energy's Residential Solar Division, Lacey held a number of senior executive positions, including CFO and EVP at Imperial Bancorp, a $6 billion publicly traded commercial bank acquired by Comerica.

Proterra, a maker of all-electric municipal buses, added Matt Horton as VP of sales. Horton comes to Proterra after five years as CEO at alternative fuels retailer Propel Fuels. Proterra CEO Ryan Popple, like Horton, is also an operations professional and former VC. In June, the company raised $30 million in fourth-round funding co-led by KPCB and GM Ventures. The firm has raised a total of more than $180 million in VC funding from investors including Hennessey Capital, NMT Capital, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, 88 Green Ventures, Vision Ridge Partners, Edison Energy and Constellation Technology Ventures, the VC arm of Exelon. Because buses drive fixed routes at moderate speeds and most bus routes are less than 30 miles long, they're an ideal application for electric vehicles. The relatively predictable short distances traveled allows Proterra to minimize the size of the battery pack, so the vehicles use battery packs in the 54-kilowatt-hour to 72-kilowatt-hour range. As a point of reference, the Tesla Model S has an 85 kilowatt-hour pack.