Mark is a principal with the Carbon-Free Electricity Practice at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he has worked since 2008 and currently leads RMI research and collaboration efforts around the roles that distributed energy resources can play in grid planning and investment. At RMI, Mark has led cutting-edge research projects on the value that renewable energy, demand flexibility, and storage offer customers and the grid, and has advised clients including large utilities, regulatory commissions, oil majors, and clean-tech companies on distributed energy topics.
Mark’s work focuses on several topics related to the changing nature of the electricity grid. Mark has contributed to RMI’s work on new approaches to grid resource planning that better account for the expanding role of renewable energy and distributed energy resources. Mark also helped lead RMI’s analysis of the potential of demand flexibility to reduce grid emissions and costs, and has engaged with several industry partners to launch new business models that take advantage of that potential.
Prior to joining RMI, Mark worked at Ascend Analytics, helping deploy software for grid dispatch optimization and financial modeling to several large energy companies. Mark has also held research positions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory working on improving regional electricity system planning models, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working on analysis of the potential for aggregated demand response programs to provide ancillary services.
Mark received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Carleton College, and his master’s degree in the Energy & Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Mark has also worked in research roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Lab, and for a half-dozen utility clients in several large consulting engagements.
M.Sc., Energy & Resources Group, University of California – Berkeley
BA, Computer Science and Geology, Carleton College
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship – Energy Engineering
Boulder, CO
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