Hurricane Sandy, one of the largest Atlantic storms on record, was the catalyst that shifted Phil’s career toward resilience. He was living in Hoboken, New Jersey when it was hit hard by the storm and experienced devastating flooding across the city. That’s when he says, “the energy resilience conversation found me.” Since then, he has dedicated his career to contemplating resilience and working with clients on projects designed to help communities think differently about resilience.
Discover more about Phil’s commitment to helping communities prepare for a more sustainable future.
Describe some of the biggest challenges in your field and ways that you're working to help resolve those.
At the highest level, the biggest challenge within the energy business is how to transition to energy systems that don’t cause air pollution and climate change. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about how to change our energy systems. But to me, the easiest thing to do is to electrify everything. That's actually a very difficult challenge, but I’ve looked at lots of different solutions, options and ideas during my career. We can help address a changing climate through increasing electrification, increasing the size of our grid, and implementing new technologies such as heat pumps, electric vehicles and batteries.
More specifically, what are the major challenges posed by electrification and the energy transition?
Large scale electrification creates new challenges, such as electric grids that peak in winter for heating instead of summer afternoons for air conditioning. At the same time, solar power produces less energy during winter.
I'm very into electric storage solutions right now because the electric system must be constantly balanced all the time. The sun is never going to shine at night, so as we move to a world with more renewable energy, we're always going to have lots of sun and power during the day and less power at night. Finding the solutions to store that energy to use it when it's needed is what clients are thinking about as they look to make individual transitions. Electric storage options include pumped hydro, battery energy storage systems, and high temp thermal storage systems.
