Welcome to kW Energy Strategies!

Welcome to the new website of kW Energy Strategies! I launched kW Energy Strategies almost a year ago to provide strategic consulting on policy development, coalition building, and communications for businesses, state and local officials, non-profits, and foundations to accelerate the clean energy transformation. Over the last year, I have been quietly building a base of clients doing interesting work in the climate, energy, security, and resilience space, as well as putting in place the administrative processes that are the necessary but less fun aspects of running a business. I have also been growing a network of relationships I can leverage to help clients with their policy, advocacy, and communications needs. Some of the work we are doing I’ll be able to talk about in future blogs, and some you’ll have to trust is moving the needle by engaging new constituencies, forcing consensus-building discussions, or enhancing the security of our increasingly digitized and connected modern electricity system.

Consulting is giving me the flexibility to serve in new capacities that were, for reasons of ethics and good governance, off-limits to me when I worked in government. For example, I am now on the board of the Center for Sustainable Energy, a non-profit that implements clean energy incentive programs for states, cities, and utilities. I recently became a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy with the esteemed Peter Fox-Penner and David Jermain, and a Distinguished Associate at Energy Futures Initiative, the think started by my former bosses at the Department of Energy, Secretary Ernest Moniz, Melanie Kenderdine, and Joe Hezir. I am looking forward to highlighting the work of these organizations on this site.

After years of being tethered to an office in Washington, DC, consulting is also giving me geographic flexibility.  I’ve officially become a resident of the great state of Nevada, where my husband has lived for decades, and kW Energy Strategies is incorporated in Las Vegas. 

​Some of my projects have a Nevada connection, but most are national in scope or involve comparative analyses of how an energy issue is playing out across different state and local policy environments.

I will continue to spend a significant portion of my time in Washington, DC and hopefully more time at the family farm in Connecticut (which, by the way, will be available shortly on AirBnB if you’re looking for a rural get-away close to New York and Boston). 
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And best of all, my offices are dog-friendly, so the inimitable Jax Teller can bring joy to the workplace. 

I’ve had a lot of time to take Jax Teller on hikes around the country. The problem is that Jax, who prefers outside to inside, stops moving when the outside temperature is over about 85 degrees. Last week, October 2 was the 61st time this year that it was over 90 degrees in the Capitol, and he stopped in the middle of a trail in Rock Creek Park and refused to go any further. And temperatures in Las Vegas broke all sorts of records this summer, so no hiking with Jax there either. In Connecticut, it’s been hot, but also very dry. While the state on average gets about 20% more precipitation than it did 25 years ago, 50% of the state is currently experiencing abnormally dry conditions. That made it easier to get equipment into the fields to make hay than last year when it rained incessantly, except that with the dry soil, the hay hasn’t been growing.

Climate change is real, and we are already experiencing its impacts around the country, from drought to excessive heat, more severe storms and more unpredictable weather patterns. The transition to a low-carbon economy is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.  I can see the impacts in my own life, but I can also see big-picture solutions that deliver not only carbon reductions, but economic opportunities we can unleash with the right policies and investments. My goal with kW Energy Strategies is to help accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy by identifying opportunities and reducing barriers that my clients face in deploying big-picture solutions to the existential challenge of our time. ​