Chester Energy and Policy: What Have I Been Up To?

If you haven’t read my previous post updating on why Chester Energy and Policy has been relatively quiet since earlier this spring, please read that brief post first. As promised in that update post, another question I wanted to be sure to answer is what exactly I’ve been up to in the meantime while that geographic and career move has been taking place. “Surely he hasn’t completely stopped working on his energy analysis and writing,” I imagined my cherished readers asking themselves in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Well, of course that’s true. I’m too restless to ever stop working on something, so I indeed have been keeping busy and working to further my goals of education others (and myself) about important energy issues, pushing advocacy regarding the clean energy transition, and more.

So, since I haven’t graced visitors of this page with any new content on a few months, I wanted to offer a sampler of some of the writing and other work that I have done in that time and had published elsewhere.

Writing for Partners

Energy Central

At Energy Central, I’ve been working as a Community Manager since the end of last year, employing various strategies to grow the already strong community of utility professionals on this site through writing, outreach, publication planning, and more. As I move forward, this partnership is poised to grow, and I will continue to write pieces for the Energy Central community. You can comb through the articles I’ve written for Energy Central at my site profile. However, a few particular articles I’d point out in the context of ‘What I’ve been up to’ that are especially interesting content would be highlights from a few series of interviews I’ve conducted, as well as posts that have struck a chord and spurred great discussion on the site:

• Countering the Wind Energy Misconceptions of POTUS

• PG&E Marketplace And Enervee: Conversation With AESP’s ‘Outstanding Achievement In Residential Program Design And Implementation’ Winner

• Electric Vehicle Managed Charging: Conversation with Erika Myers on SEPA’s Report of Turning EVs into Grid Assets

• Flexible Connections And Dynamically Managing Distributed Energy Resources: Exclusive Interview With Joris Soens Of Fluvius

• SoCalGas Winter Demand Response Program: Interview With Winner Of AESP’s ‘Outstanding Achievement In Demand Response And Pricing’ Award

• Using Thermal Energy Storage As A Grid Asset: Interview With Viking Cold Solutions, Winner Of PLMA Technology Pioneer Award

Solar Tribune

Another partner I’ve been working with since before this hiatus that will likely see growth as I get set up in Florida is with Solar Tribune, a news publication that covers important developments in the renewable energy industry. In the meantime, I completed a few more articles for them that I haven’t yet shared on Chester Energy and Policy:

• Are the 2020 Democratic Candidates Serious About Climate? Twitter Data Says No

  • This one in particular is exciting as it represents the first in a series-to-come of investigating the climate & energy credentials of candidates in the upcoming Presidential election

• Solar Power Keeps Pounding with Panels Installed on Bank of America Stadium

• Investing in Solar: Beyond Rooftop PV

• Inspiring the Next Generation of Solar Power Enthusiasts at a Young Age

• Strategies to Minimize the Oft-Overlooked Soft Costs of Solar Installations

Atlantic Energy

Atlantic Energy Co. is an energy supplier for a number of deregulated utility states that sets itself apart from the competition through not only affordable and clean energy mixes, but also by being a trusted energy adviser. They accomplish this through programs to provide smart home technology to consumers and helping them to use them in a way that will minimize power use, as well as through their blog that discusses important industry news and developments. I’ve had the opportunity to continue writing articles for their blog over the recent months– in particular I’d suggest checking out the following pieces:

• Charging Your Electric Vehicle at Home: What You Need to Know

• How Energy Efficiency Can Be Considered the Invisible Renewable Energy Source

• What is a Smart Grid and How Smart is Our Current Grid?

See Change Institute

I’ve also been proud to do plenty of work with partner See Change Institute, an academic research and consulting powerhouse that takes behavioral science to provide clients with actionable advice, experimental results, and effective implementation strategies. A number of See Change Institute’s clients are in the utility and energy space, which has been where I’ve found my role since working with them. While my work is not public facing content to which I can link, I wanted to throw them a shout out in this ‘what I’ve been up to’ post because I’m excited to have finally be added to their People Page as an official Research Associate.

Other partners

The above all represents just a taste of what I’ve been up to, with some new additional partners and clients building up as well– including Ecotagious, the Energy Choice Coalition, World Wind & Solar, an online green energy education firm, and more. This is all just a taste of the growing network of partners for Chester Energy and Policy!

Interviews & Citations

In addition to the projects and articles on which I’ve worked for partners, I’ve had the opportunity to be interviewed and featured in a number of stories in other publications thanks to the work done on this blog.

Electric Scooter Sharing & Sustainability

The pair of articles I wrote diving into a data analysis of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the suddenly ubiquitous e-scooter sharing programs have been among the most read and cited articles written on ChesterEnergyandPolicy.com. That trend continued during these recent months, having been cited in a Financial Times article and a French article and Podcast on the topic on The Conversation; while I was called and interviewed by Ensia to go into more detail on the topic (while my quotes weren’t directl used or cited, our conversation directed the angle of the author’s research).

Atlantic Journal-Constitution

Another topic I delved into early on in Chester Energy and Policy was exploring the increasing trend in California wineries to install solar power. This article and my previous research led Nedra Rhone of the Atlantic Journal-Constitution to reach out to me about those ideas for an article she wrote in response to a similar solar/winery trend occurring in Georgia.

Crowdfunding in Renewable Energy

Another topic I touched upon in a number of Chester Energy and Policy articles was the trend of renewable energy projects turning to crowdfunding to finance them. Based on this work and research I had done, Ron Day of the Karma Network reached out to get some of my thoughts on the crowdfunding/renewable energy alignment and how it might play out for one U.K. startup looking to build out a wind farm. You can read the resultant piece here: “Ripple Energy Turns to Environmentalist Consumers for Funding.”

Big Tech and Renewable Power

A final topic on which I was interviewed was how certain technological giants, such as Google and Amazon, were seeing increasing energy demand thanks to immense data centers that required powering. I had written on this topic for previously mentioned partner Atlantic Energy, and then Anastasia Ustinova contacted me to discuss more for an article she wrote on the topic. The article is behind a paywall, but you can read it on a free one week trial here: “How Big Tech’s Hunger for Data Centers id Driving Renewable Energy Adoption.”

After this quick overview of just some of the work I’ve helped others put out in the past few months while ChesterEnergyandPolicy.com has remained more or less dormant, I’ll wrap up at the end of this week previewing what’s coming next for Chester Energy and Policy.