About Us

Hemant Taneja is a Managing Director of General Catalyst Partners, an investor in early-stage companies. Mr. Taneja leads the global energy practice for General Catalyst and serves on the boards of a diverse set of energy companies. He has broad experience in advanced energy, having co-founded and chaired the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC), a nonprofit focused on advancing New England's energy economy.

Mr. Taneja is a graduate of MIT, earning an M.S. in Operations Research, an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, a B.S. in Mathematics, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and a B.S. in Biology & Biomedical Engineering.

Michael J. Ahearn founded True North Venture Partners based on a belief that early stage companies in socially disruptive business sectors require a fundamentally unique approach to funding, growth and market expansion. His perspective is based on his experience with First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), the company he co-founded in 1999. Mike served as CEO of First Solar from 2000-2009 and currently serves as its Chairman. After an initial public offering in 2006, First Solar became a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ and later became the first pure play renewable energy company to be listed on the S&P 500.

Mike also currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Cox Enterprises, Inc.; a member of the Board of Trustees of Thunderbird School of Global Management; a member of the Board of Trustees of The German Marshall Fund; a member of the Board of Directors of Endeavor; a member of the Global Advisory Board of Beijing Climate Policy Initiative; and a member of the Advisory Board of BDT Capital Partners. Prior to First Solar, Mike was Partner and President of an early stage equity investment firm known as True North Partners, L.L.C. (later renamed JWMA, LLC), which was the majority stockholder of First Solar prior to its initial public offering.

Mike graduated magna cum laude with B.S. and J.D. degrees from Arizona State University.

Tom Carnahan is an attorney, businessman and community leader with extensive experience in both the workings of government and private sector innovation.

In 2005, drawing inspiration from his rural Missouri upbringing, Mr. Carnahan founded Wind Capital Group and became a leading developer, owner and operator of utility-scale wind farms in rural America. Under his leadership, Wind Capital Group developed nearly 1000 megawatts of projects, and set in motion over $1B of investment in rural America. Today he remains involved in the renewable energy industry as an investor, and serves as the incoming Chairman of the American Wind Energy Association. He has testified on Capitol Hill and appeared on CNN, Fox Business News, ABC World News, MSNBC, NPR and other major outlets as an expert on energy, public policy and development.

As an attorney, Mr. Carnahan represented the City of St. Louis, Missouri, as an Assistant City Counselor, serving in the roles of prosecutor, litigator and legal advisor. Later, he founded his own law practice, specializing in urban redevelopment, municipal law and business counseling.

Mr. Carnahan has a B.A. degree in International Relations from William Jewell College, including one year of study at Cambridge University, and holds a juris doctorate from the University of Missouri School of Law.

Doug co-founded CPV with Gary Lambert in 1999 and together they raised venture capital funding for the company in a series of separate financings, exceeding $300 million in total. Under his leadership, CPV has focused on traditional and renewable power generation project development and asset management services for major energy and finance industry clients and investors. Doug provides the strategic direction for the company as it responds to the evolution of a highly dynamic North American market. With more than 30 years in the independent power industry, he is well known to the power, natural gas and financial communities.

Prior to forming CPV, Doug was Senior Vice President for Development at PG&E Generating Company, formerly US Generating Company. At PG&E, he was responsible for non-regulated power project development. He was responsible for the initiation of seven natural gas fired power generation projects and a wind project representing more than 5,000 MW of capacity currently in operation across the United States. Prior to assuming control of PG&E's development program, Doug was Vice President and Regional Executive for their Northeast Region where he supervised six operating IPP projects, including fuel supply and transportation and power sale agreements.

Prior to PG&E, Doug was Vice President of Development at J. Makowski Company of Boston where he was responsible for the acquisition and financial restructuring of Altresco Financial, Inc. Additionally, he held the position of General Counsel for Intercontinental Energy Corporation of Hingham, Massachusetts through the development and construction of two cogeneration projects representing more than 600 MWs. In the early 1980's, Doug worked at the law firm of Murtha Cullina Richter & Pinney in Hartford, Connecticut, representing the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority developing and financing several waste-to-energy facilities.

Doug is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Cornell Law School.

Arno Harris is CEO and Chairman of Recurrent Energy, one of North America’s largest solar project developers. Acquired by Sharp Corporation in 2010, Recurrent Energy is now the primary solar development company for Sharp worldwide.

Arno is a passionate advocate for solutions to climate change through the intersection of business and public policy. Arno has spent the last 10 years working in the solar industry to help solar make the transition to mainstream energy markets. For his entrepreneurial success and contribution to the solar industry, Arno was recognized with the Rising Star Award at the 2011 Platts Global Energy Awards and was named 2012 Best Cleantech CEO by the San Francisco Business Times.

Arno came to solar from high tech, where he held founder and leadership roles for startups RedEnvelope, Wine.com, and Novo Media Group. His early experience combines marketing, business development, and consulting such clients as Berlex, Toyota Motor Sales USA, GlaxoWellcome, MCI, Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Nikon Precision, IKEA International and NBC Digital Publishing.

In addition to serving on the board of AEE, Arno is currently serving a two-year term as Board Chair of the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA), the leading U.S. trade association with over 1000 members that acts as the voice of the solar industry. He also serves as a member of the Division on Earth & Life Sciences Committee at the National Academies. He is a member of the Leadership Council of Tipping Point, a grant-making organization dedicated to making poverty preventable. He is a frequent speaker and commentator on renewable energy topics and publishes his views via his blog Clean Energy Future. Arno holds a BA from UC Berkeley.

Timothy G. Healy co-founded EnerNOC in 2001 and serves as its Chairman and CEO. In 2007, he led EnerNOC's initial public offering, which was named IPO of the Year by the Association for Corporate Growth Boston and Mass High Tech magazine, and received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in New England. Today, EnerNOC is one of the world's largest full-service energy management providers with over 600 employees and operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Prior to EnerNOC, Tim worked in the Energy Technology Laboratory for Northern Power Systems, Inc., and held positions with Merrill Lynch, International Fuel Cells (now UTC Fuel Cells), and the venture capital firm Commonwealth Capital Ventures. Tim also co-founded Student Advantage, a Boston-based affinity marketing company that went public in 1999.

Tim currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts High Technology Council and the New England Clean Energy Council, and serves on TechNet's Executive Committee and the Board of Trustees for the New England Aquarium. Tim is an advisor to several area startups and coaches youth soccer.

Tim graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Economics and received his Master of Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

James A. Hughes joined First Solar in March 2012 as Chief Commercial Officer and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in May 2012. Prior to joining First Solar, Mr. Hughes served, from October 2007 until April 2011, as Chief Executive Officer and Director of AEI Services LLC, which owned and operated power distribution, power generations (both thermal and renewable), natural gas transportation and services, and natural gas distribution businesses in emerging markets worldwide. From 2004 to 2007, he engaged in principal investing with a privately held company based in Houston, Texas that focused on microcap investments in North American distressed manufacturing assets. Previously, he served, from 2002 until March 2004, as President and Chief Operating Officer of Prisma Energy International, which was formed out of former Enron interests in international electric and natural gas utilities. Prior to that role, Mr. Hughes spent almost a decade with Enron Corporation in positions that included President and Chief Operating Officer of Enron Global Assets, President and Chief Operating Officer of Enron Asia, Pacific Africa and China and as Assistant General Counsel of Enron International. Mr. Hughes is a Non-Executive Director of APR Energy plc, a London Stock Exchange-listed energy company participating in the global market for gas and diesel fired temporary power plants.

Mr. Hughes holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, a Certificate of Completion in international business law from Queen Mary’s College, University of London, and bachelor’s degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University.

Samir Kaul is a Founding General Partner at Khosla Ventures. He focuses on investments in the renewable energy sector. Since then, Mr. Kaul has been a Co-Founder or Founding Investor in Segetis, CoSkata, Kior, Sakti3, Etagen and Mascoma and has led the firms investments in Amyris, Gevo, HCL , Stion and Transonic. From 1997 to 2000, Mr. Kaul served TIGR and worked on the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Soon, he was promoted to run the project both within TIGR and internationally as the Chairperson of the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative. Under his direction, the project was completed years before schedule and well under budget, culminating in a historic publication in Nature magazine December of 2000. He has been a lead and co-author on papers appearing in Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been a keynote speaker at a number of international conferences. Mr. Kaul holds an M.B.A. from Harvard, an M.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Michigan.

Martin Lagod is a Managing Director and Co-founder of Firelake Capital Management. Previously, Mr. Lagod was the co-founder and CEO of Solo Energy Corporation, a developer of microturbine and clean combustion reciprocating engines for the distributed power market.

For the previous 19 years, Mr. Lagod was an intellectual property attorney based in Silicon Valley first as a partner in the Palo Alto office of Phoenix based Brown and Bain, and then at Cooley Godward in Palo Alto.

Mr. Lagod holds a B.A. in Economics (with Honors) from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and a J.D. from Vanderbilt University. Mr. Lagod serves on the boards of MiaSol, ZeaChem, Simbol Materials, EOS Climate, EnerG2 and HydroPoint Data Systems.

Jim Rogers has served as chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy since 2007. He has 23 years of experience as a CEO in the electric utility industry. Over that period, he has delivered an average total shareholder return of more than 12 percent per year by focusing on stakeholders and finding business solutions to environmental challenges. Rogers has served more than 50 cumulative years on the boards of directors of eight Fortune 500 companies, and has served on numerous nonprofit boards, including current participation on the boards of the Asia Society and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. In 2012, he will assume the chairmanship of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership, the nonprofit organization of the world's largest electricity utilities. He earned his bachelor's degree and his law degree from the University of Kentucky, and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.