Charging Up: Climatetech career moves at Pine Gate Renewables, Fluence, Form Energy, Wattch, AES and more

1. How did you end up on this career path? 

My career in renewable energy started in eighth grade with a science teacher who installed solar panels on people’s houses in the summer to supplement his teacher’s salary. Once I realized that in northeast Ohio, there was an alternative to acidifying lakes and questionable nuclear-plant safety, I could not understand why we didn’t have solar panels and wind turbines everywhere. So I spent my high school and college years trying to figure out everything I could about the energy sector and renewables specifically.

I had an internship at AES while I was still in college and ended up going there after college. I spent a total of about 10 years there. It was really central to my understanding of the power industry. Every year, I would work in the strategy meeting to prepare the question about when AES would get into renewables, and every year the answer was a few years from now. Finally, after going to business school, I joined Green Mountain Power — at that point, the second-largest utility in Vermont and the first entity in competitive retail markets to offer renewable power. That was my great leap into the renewables industry, which I’d been aching for since I was 13.

2. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

When I was an intern, I was considering a few different job offers, one of which was at AES. I spoke with Denis Hayes and he said, ​“You should go work for Roger Sant.” He did not say, ​“You should go work for AES.” His advice was to know who you’re going to be working with, and if it is a wonderful person who’s doing good things, even if they’re tough, go for it — and that I should take advantage of an incredible opportunity with a young company that needs lots of help as it grows really quickly. And he was right. I got ridiculous amounts of responsibility and experience as an intern at 20, and then afterward from ages 22 to 30.

3. What is a barrier you faced, and how did you overcome it? 

In college, I was usually the only female in my engineering classes. We had no female faculty. We had no female administration. But that engineering major was unbelievably valuable because it let me have the competence to listen to our contractors and advisers in building power plants and other projects. When you’re faced with barriers, being fully loaded with all the data you can get your hands on and the capability to communicate it clearly is very important. That alone does not assure success, but it leads you in that direction. Find other voices to join you and create momentum for both political and community success.

4. What do you think are the most exciting new career opportunities in climatetech? 

We are about to build a huge number of solar, wind and battery power plants. It is extraordinary — 1.4 terawatts of capacity in the queue, overwhelmingly solar, wind and battery, 40% larger than the entire installed base in the United States. We are in the decade of deployment. Whether you’re interested in manufacturing, development, the engineering side or the commercial side, this is the build, build, build decade, as fast as humanly possible, so there are lots of opportunities.

5. What is your superpower?

I connect dots. I see consequences and facilitate communication between folks who might otherwise be siloed. Identifying the streams of information, moving them around and focusing them where I think they need to go is one of the things I do really well. I love bringing that skill to my board work because I can help each of the companies that I’m working with have better peripheral vision about what’s happening upstream, downstream or abutting them, and how that influences their strategic view going forward.

Career moves

Emily Burks has been promoted to VP of origination and market development at the AES Corporation, a large independent producer of renewable power.