Green Jobs: Executive Moves at MEMC, Kurion, Saint-Gobain, EPA, and DOE

Leadership changes in the greentech and clean chemicals industry.

Eric Wesoff March 07, 2013

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.

MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR) named Shihab Kuran as President of SunEdison Advanced Solutions, a group within MEMC's Solar Energy Business Unit focused on advanced grid management products. Kuran was founder and CEO of Petra Solar.

Kurion, a nuclear waste management startup, named former Areva Solar CEO Bill Gallo as Chief Operating Officer. Gallo served eight years as SVP of Transnuclear, part of the AREVA Group. Former DOE Manager of Hanford, David Brockman, was named Deputy COO to lead Kurion’s Technology Development Center in Hanford.

Saint-Gobain named Stéphane Nicoli as GM of its Specialty Films group, responsible for the company’s window films and Solar Gard. Last year, the French glass giant acquired Sage Electrochromics, a developer of smart windows which electronically tint to block light or let light in.

As we reported last week, Ernest Moniz was appointed as Energy Secretary, replacing Steve Chu. From 1997 to 2001, Moniz was the Under Secretary of Energy at the DOE. Before that, Moniz served for two years at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the office of the president.

Gina McCarthy was nominated as EPA Administrator. Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters, comments, “President Obama’s nomination is a slam dunk for the environment. She’s a straight shooter, a straight talker, and she knows how to get the job done.”

Ed Dineen, former CEO of LS9, is now CEO at Siluria, according to reports in the SF Business Times. Dineen replaces Alex Tkachenko, who will continue to serve as President. Siluria is a a spin-off of Angela Belcher's Cambrios Technologies, which specializes in catalyst technology that converts methane to ethylene, an important building-block chemical.

ACAL Energy, a U.K.-based fuel cell startup pledging lower use of platinum, named Greg McCray as CEO.

Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) tracked thousands of clean energy jobs in 2012. California is the top clean-energy job-producing state, with over 26,000 jobs announced from 38 projects, fifteen of which were solar projects. California, North Carolina and Florida led the list, followed by Illinois, Connecticut, Arizona, New York, Michigan, Texas and Oregon. The complete report is here.