Speakers

Managing Director, CleanPath.

John Balbach comes to CleanPath with a twenty-five year track record building, scaling and financing environmental and infrastructure companies, projects and investment funds. He has served as a policy-maker, operating executive and investor.  Prior to building CleanPath, he served as Managing Partner of the Cleantech Group, where his teams facilitated financings of over $1.8 billion for cleantech companies and projects, and advised over three thousand investors, companies and governments globally on clean technology asset allocation and market adoption strategies.

Director, Vestas Wind Systems

Alfonso L. Vazquez Caro currently oversees global business development activities for new commercial segments at Vestas Wind Systems. Focusing on deal origination with corporate wind energy investors including carbon conscious companies and energy intensive industrials, Alfonso is responsible for driving early stage commercial activities with new entrants to the wind business whose core business is not within power generation or distribution.

Director, Citigroup

Michael joined Citi in 2005. He currently focuses on North American Power and Alternative Energy advisory and capital markets transactions. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University and an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School. Michael is a CFA Charterholder.

Project Specialist, New York Power Authority.

Christopher Fry is a Project Specialist in the New York Power Authority’s Energy Resource Management department, where he manages NYPA’s Green Power Program including procurement, contract negotiation, regulatory reporting, and Green-e Energy certification.

Managing Director, Morgan Stanley.

Mr. Grow joined Morgan Stanley in 2010 as a Managing Director in the Power & Utility Group covering the clean technology sector.  He has a broad range of industry experience, having managed transactions for such leading companies as A123, Amonix, Clean Energy Fuels, Comverge, First Solar, Sunpower, Suntech, Trina Solar and Westport Innovations, among others.

President and CEO, ZeaChem Inc.

Jim is the President and CEO of ZeaChem, a developer of biorefineries for the conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals with unprecedented efficiency. Jim is an accomplished senior executive with experience in directing multi-billion dollar energy, petroleum, refining, chemical, and trading operations. In addition, he is an entrepreneur who has led new businesses in startups focused on commodities, business services, and software.

President, Capital E.

Gregory Kats is President of Capital E, a national clean energy advisory practice that includes coaching clean energy CEOs and leading a national effort to scale energy efficiency financing. He recently introduced and helped negotiate a $100 million strategic investment by St. Gobain in US electrochromic firm Sage. He is also Venture Partner at Good Energies, a billion-dollar global clean energy investor, where he leads investments in energy efficiency, green building and renewable energy. Greg initiated and developed a partnership with TIAA-CREF establishing a $50 million VC investment vehicle within TIAA’s real estate group to exclusively invest behind Good Energies’ energy efficiency and green building investments.

Environmental Advocate

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from a litany of successful legal actions. Mr. Kennedy was named one of Time magazine's “Heroes for the Planet” for his success helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to restore the Hudson River.

Managing Director, Credit Suisse

Alex is responsible for downstream and renewable coverage and for leading and executing a wide array of corporate finance transactions, including M&A advisory, initial public offerings and debt offerings with specific focus on the midstream energy sector and master limited partnerships

Deputy Director for Commercialization for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy

Dr. Cheryl Martin is currently the Deputy Director for Commercialization for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), responsible for leading the organization’s commercialization program to help breakthrough energy technologies succeed in the marketplace. Prior to this, Dr. Martin was an Executive in Residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California.

Head of renewable team, HgCapital.

Tom Murley heads the renewable energy team at HgCapital and is responsible for HgCapital Renewable Power Partners funds, which have raised over €900 million in fund and co-investment capital for European renewable energy projects.

Founder and Managing Partner, DBL Investors.

Nancy E. Pfund is Founder and Managing Partner of DBL Investors, a venture capital firm located in San Francisco, whose goal is to combine top-tier financial returns with meaningful social, economic and environmental returns in the regions in which it invests.  Ms. Pfund currently sponsors or sits on the board of directors of several companies, including; BrightSource Energy, SolarCity, Solaria, Primus Power, Eco.logic Brands, OPx Biotechnologies, Powergenix and, prior to their public offering, Tesla Motors and Pandora Media.

Vice President of Corporate Development, ECOtality.

Colin Read is the Vice President of Corporate Development at ECOtality with the responsibility of overseeing strategic corporate initiatives, international expansion and business development.

Partner, Paragon Energy Holdings

Mr. Redmond has over 22 years of experience in the development, structuring, financing and management of power plants, pipelines, and gas storage fields, and in the marketing of wholesale power and gas, and is a co-founder of both CP Energy and Paragon. He has held positions as President of Houston Pipe Line Company and President of Louisiana Resource Company, Managing Director of Enron, and Executive Director of UBS Warburg Energy.

CEO, AeroFarms

David is leading an award-winning cleantech technology company that builds and operates advanced farms in urban environments. The company uses an aeroponic system with a focus on leafy green production.

CEO, juwi wind USA.

Mr. Rucker brings the experience of a diverse 15-year renewable energy career to bear on juwi’s commitment to expand operations in the USA.  Most recently, Michael served as VP of Business Development at Clipper Windpower Development. Prior to that, he was Western Region Commercial Director at GE Energy for wind and natural gas turbine sales. Rucker’s experience also includes pioneering work in REC trading and power market operations in the USA at Automated Power Exchange, Inc., along with significant policy and programmatic work at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Europe. 

 Director of Strategy & Economic Studies, Areva.

David H. Saltiel is Director of Strategy and Economic Studies for the North American operations of AREVA, a global clean energy company. David is responsible for the design, and conduct of analyses that support both the development of AREVA’s global strategy and critical investment and business decisions for all of AREVA’s North American businesses. David brings a range of expertise to this role including risk modeling, market analysis and forecasting, asset and energy contract valuation, and policy assessment. Under David’s leadership the Strategy Department has developed tools and approaches that support consistent and robust quantitative and qualitative assessments of economic, market, and policy developments.

Commercial Associate, Duke Energy.

Alanya Schofield currently oversees special projects in the Office of the Chairman and CEO at Duke Energy. She joined the company in 2011 and has worked with corporate communications and the commercial wind power group. Alanya’s power industry experience also includes GE Wind, Southern Company, Uni-Solar and Vortex Hydro Energy.

Senior Director, Development, EverPower

Mr. Sheen has over ten years of experience in the renewable energy field managing the development of both solar and wind projects. As a founding member of EverPower in 2002, he has been involved in community relations, landowner negotiations and permitting projects across many of the company’s portfolio projects with an emphasis in the Northeastern U.S.  Mr. Sheen has helped the company grow from a conceptual idea to one of the fastest growing developers of wind power in the U.S. today.   EverPower currently owns and operates 180MW's of operating projects and has another 170MW’s under construction  scheduled for completion in 2012.

Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer, Fisherman's Energy LLC

Mr. Shore is Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of Fishermen’s Energy, LLC, an offshore wind energy company, and President of Apogee Energy Advisors, which advises renewable energy companies on raising financing.  He has more than 25 years experience in the origination, structuring, negotiation and closing of financings and investments in renewable and conventional energy including debt, equity, mezzanine, and tax equity (leasing and partnerships).  Mr. Shore has closed more than 80 transactions valued at over $18 billion.

General Partner, MDV.

With over a decade of experience in venture capital, Erik has been a catalyst for Cleantech in Silicon Valley and abroad. He leads MDV's Cleantech investment team and applies his expertise in areas of solar, biofuels, energy storage, industrial biotech and clean coal.

Managing Director, OPIC.

Ms. Tabernacki, with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) since 1995, is the Managing Director of OPIC’s Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development Programs.  Her efforts are focused on supporting investments in clean energy, energy efficiency, clean technology, and those projects directly benefiting the conservation of water, forests and other natural resources.  She has a special interest in energy efficiency financing and off-grid, distributed energy generation.

Executive-in-residence, Columbia Business School.

Bruce Usher is co-director of the Social Enterprise Program and an executive-in-residence at Columbia Business School in New York City. In the 2011/12 academic year, Professor Usher is teaching the Carbon Finance and the Finance & Sustainability courses, and is leading the Impact Investing Seminar.

Chief Financial Officer, Solar Reserve.

Michael Whalen has advised or led the successful financing of more than $15 billion in capital for projects in the energy, natural resources and infrastructure sectors in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. These have included several award-winning transactions such as: the first project financing (and refinancing) of a major greenfield liquefied natural gas facility in the United States, one of the first project finance transactions in Argentina following its economic crisis and world-scale process industry facilities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.