Inevitable Ep 52: Phil Giudice, Current board member at FirstLight, PRIME Coalition, Clean Air Task Force and NE Clean Energy Council and former Board Member at Ambri, FirstFuel and EnerNOC (amongst others)
Today’s guest is Phil Giudice, Board Member at Ambri, FirstFuel, PRIME Coalition, Clean Air Task Force and NE Clean Energy Council.
Most recently, Phil was the CEO of Ambri. Ambri, formerly Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, is a technology company creating cost effective, reliable, wide spread grid electricity storage solutions, enabling separation of power demand from power supply. Phil has more than 30 years' experience in the energy industry as a geologist, consultant, executive, and state official.Phil was appointed by US Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu to US DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee as well as its State Energy Advisory Board. In addition, he is a board member for the energy business leadership trade group Advanced Energy Economy as well as the efficiency start up FirstFuel.
Prior to Ambri, Phil served the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as Undersecretary of Energy and as Commissioner of the Department of Energy Resources, the state agency with primary responsibility for fulfilling Governor Deval Patrick's vision for a clean energy future. Prior to his service in the Patrick-Murray Administration, Phil was senior vice president and board member at EnerNOC, a start-up providing electricity demand-management services to businesses, institutions, utilities, and grid operators that became a public company in 2007. He was previously a senior partner and leader of Mercer Management Consulting's global energy utilities practice for 20 years. He started his career as a metals exploration geologist with Freeport-McMoRan and with Chevron.
Phil is also active in the nonprofit realm, having help found the Center for Effective Philanthropy and serving as Board Chair for 8 years as well as currently serving on the President's Council of ACCION. In addition, he completed full terms on the boards of the City Year Boston, First Parish Church of Wayland, and Haitian Health Foundation. He was also the founding chair of Boston Cares. Phil is a geologist (B.S. from University of New Hampshire and M.S. in Economic Geology from the University of Arizona) and a management professional (M.B.A. from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth).
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Phil’s fascinating career, and the different hats he has worn over the years as a strategy consultant, in oil and gas, in government, and in cleantech.
- The EnerNOC ride, from employee #3 to publicly traded
- Phil’s time as Energy Commissioner, and then as Undersecretary of Energy for the State of MA.
- The Ambri story.
- Phil’s reflections on decades of work on this area, and our seeming lack of progress.
- Some reasons for optimism.
- Phil’s rallying cry to me, and anyone else who wants to help in the climate fight.
- Phil’s views on carbon pricing.
- Some examples of how we have successfully solved some adjacent problems.
- Phil’s words of warning to me about my podcasting :)
- A substantive discussion about some of the barriers preventing more people from helping and more progress from being made.
- Phil’s advice and the areas he is most excited about.
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
- Ambri: http://www.ambri.com/
- Enel X (formerly EnerNOC): https://www.enelx.com/n-a/en
- Chevron: https://www.chevron.com/
- Mercer: https://www.mercer.com/
- Deval Patrick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patrick
- Ian Bowles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Bowles
- Dr. Donald Sadoway: https://dmse.mit.edu/people/donald-r-sadoway
- Total: https://www.total.com/en
- Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative: https://www.rggi.org/
- 350.org: https://350.org/
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant