Advancing Electrification’s Role in our Energy Systems

In this Q&A Phil Jonat, vice president of distributed energy and electrification, opens up about his big dreams to electrify everything.

Estados Unidos | viernes, 23 de mayo de 2025
Tiempo de lectura : 5:22 minutes

Hurricane Sandy, one of the largest Atlantic storms on record, shifted Phil’s career toward energy resilience. He lived in Hoboken, New Jersey when it was hit hard by the storm. That’s when he says, “the energy resilience conversation found me.” Since then, he has dedicated his career to working with clients on projects designed to help communities think about the intertwined challenges of sustainability and resilience.

Discover more about Phil’s commitment to help communities reduce emissions and deliver future energy systems.

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 sustainable energy systems without breaking the bank. 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, including transportation systems, our heating systems and our industrial systems. That's actually a very difficult challenge, but electrifying everything is easier than capturing all of our carbon, creating circular fuels or building the hydrogen economy. I’ve looked at lots of different solutions, options and ideas during my career. We can help evolving energy needs and improve environmental impact by increasing electrification, increasing the size and interconnectedness of the electric grid, and implementing new technologies such as heat pumps, electric vehicles thermal storage and batteries. When you combine this with solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and nuclear, we see that wide-spread electrification can reduce our environmental impact, increase quality of life and reduce overall economic costs.

What are some of the challenges posed by electrification?

Electrification of economies previously stalled out at around 20-30% of total energy use, mostly for economic reasons. Fossil fuels are a cheaper way to produce energy for winter heating, transportation fuels and industrial heat. 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.

In addition, electric grids have always been more fragile than other sources of energy due to real time management and lack of large-scale storage options. I'm very excited about large scale 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 (including those longer winter nights). Electric storage options include pumped hydro, battery energy storage systems, chilled water storage and high temp thermal storage systems.

Philip Jonat

Estados Unidos

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The future of electrification promises significant energy savings and efficiency improvements.

How do we store and use that energy in a smarter way?

We'll use significantly less total energy as we electrify, since there are lower total losses in electric systems. As an example, electric cars have significantly better energy efficiency than existing gasoline vehicles. And, since they can be charged during the day from solar panels and store that energy for several days, car batteries will become a larger portion of the daily/weekly electricity storage markets. In the future, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology will allow cars to provide more value to owners.

A new technology that is especially interesting to me is a high temperature thermal storage unit. The simplest way to describe it is like an electric boiler that can time shift when you use that electricity. These are devices that absorb electricity when it's cheap and clean, such as solar energy, and store it for future use. For example, a college campus may have a large solar farm that produces electricity to heat the storage device. Then the device creates steam to heat buildings or to process experiments at night. The steam can be used any time of day, and the facility doesn’t need to buy electricity around the clock. Electricity is currently one of the most time dependent commodities in the world — prices fluctuate significantly throughout the day, week, month and season.

Can you tell us more about electrification opportunities?

The future of electrification promises significant energy savings and efficiency improvements. Fossil fuels involve substantial energy losses in extraction, processing, and transportation, whereas electric systems, particularly those powered by renewable sources like solar, are far more efficient. As an example, when we combust fossil fuels for heat, the highest potential efficiency is ~99%. But electrically driven heat pumps have highest potential efficiencies, far higher than 100%, since they are moving heat from one location to another. Typical heat pump installations will have annual efficiencies more than 200%, with peak efficiencies at 500%. Geothermal exchange systems can make heat pumps even more efficient, especially during the critical winter months.

Another area of opportunity is for industrial process heating. Again, heat pumps are a critical technology that has improved in recent years by leaps and bounds. Industrial processes, from canning vegetables to glass making, require high heat and 24/7 energy flows. Industrial heat is a huge driver of energy use around the world. WSP recently supported a multinational manufacturing company on a worldwide study of electrification opportunities in their factories.

Transitioning to electric solutions can reduce total energy consumption and waste, making our energy systems more resilient and sustainable. As we electrify, enhancing grid resilience and storage options will be crucial to overcoming perceptions of fragility and ensuring a reliable primary energy system. This shift can accelerate progress towards a greener future.

Where are you on your personal energy journey to electrify everything?

Great question. At the residential level, organizations like Rewiring America highlight that most homes have four main fossil fuel appliances: stove, hot water heater, heating system and dryer; in addition to the car. Electrifying these devices can greatly impact energy use and sustainability.

In 2021, I bought a house with an old steam radiator heating system and no air conditioning. We installed new electric heat pumps for heating and cooling, significantly reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We swapped the gas stove for an induction cooktop and found a ventless heat pump clothes dryer. The only remaining fossil fuel appliance is our hot water heater, which we plan to replace with an electric heat pump option. Our car is a plug-in hybrid, chosen for practicality due to frequent long trips to see the grandparents.