Peter Bronski was the Director of Program Marketing and Editorial Director at RMI from 2012 until 2016.
He currently leads marketing and content strategy for three initiatives at the nexus of renewable energy and smart cities: Panasonic CityNOW, the Energy Solutions Group of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company, and Coronal Energy, powered by Panasonic. He previously served as Director of Program Marketing at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he oversaw marketing and communications strategy for the organization’s electricity work. He was also RMI’s Editorial Director.
Bronski is a coauthor on several major reports, including The Economics of Grid Defection, The Economics of Load Defection, The Economics of Demand Flexibility, and Community-Scale Solar, as well as a forthcoming white paper on a Panasonic solar+storage microgrid. With nearly a decade and a half of experience as an award-winning writer, his work has also appeared in more than 100 publications, including Harvard Business Review, Christian Science Monitor, CleanTechnica, National Geographic Traveler, and Men’s Journal.
Earlier in his career, Bronski was the Founding Manager of Audubon International’s Sustainable Communities Program and, prior to that, Staff Ecologist for the organization’s Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program. He was a Lockheed Martin Engineering Scholar and earned a BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University.
This has been an exciting week, with Syria announcing that it will join the Paris agreement. Now every nation in the world is part of this historical global effort. Even though the U.S. has declared its intent to withdraw at the national level, non-federal actors—including states and cities—have announced…
When we talk about innovation—with eLab, in the context of the U.S. electricity system—we’re talking about fundamental change in the system. Ultimately, most forms of motivation needed to transform the electricity system boil down to persuasion: convincing your audience that a change from X to Y is worth it. It’s there, at the core of persuasion, that the issue of audience-centric messaging matters critically.
Fortune 500 member Corning Incorporated announces ~50 MW of solar from BRC company Duke Energy Renewables, inching the market tantalizingly close to—and potentially beyond—the symbolic 3 GW number.
On Tuesday last week, more than 160 executives—many of them from the Fortune 500—came together at Bloomberg's New York City office for the Business Renewables Center's latest semiannual meeting. Several major themes will define the corporate renewable energy purchasing market in the months ahead.
As an integrated grid continues to evolve that more-seamlessly blends centralized and distributed assets and capabilities, Order 745 might prove itself in hindsight the first of many debates about who regulates what and how the electricity grid operates.
The basic law of supply and demand says that as demand surges and/or as supply lags, prices go up. Nowhere have we seen that effect more acutely than with wholesale electricity prices through this exceptionally hot summer in the United States. From the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest to the…
Maybe no EV—despite critiques of their upfront cost premium—should qualify as a luxury car … at least not on the pure basis of sticker price.
Fair-weather driving in an EV is one thing, but over the past two or three winters there’s also been no shortage of coverage about winter EV range. The final word from a real world EV driver during winter time.
When I last wrote about electric vehicles, I focused on range anxiety and why it's a non-issue. However, a commenter argued that such a statistic would likely be skewed because EV drivers would be inclined to report satisfaction based on their purchase choice. Is that really the case?
Ever since I became a very happy Nissan LEAF driver earlier this year, I’ve become acutely aware of this: all this talk about range anxiety being a big issue seems to come largely from and/or survey those who don’t actually drive an EV.
Even as some foretell a coming future of smart parking—part of a broader ongoing evolution toward intelligent transportation systems (ITS)—a third-party-driven revolution in parking (and its pricing) is already here.
Imagine if, instead of just my home shifting its AC, my entire community shifted its AC demand to off-peak hours, and what that could mean for the carbon intensity and electricity generation costs of my local grid.
Both baby boomers and coal-fired power plants are fast approaching the end of their working lives and entering retirement in droves, placing huge financial strain on the nation—one on our Social Security safety net, the other on our electric grid.
Desirable shifts in how we as a nation consume electricity can actually make LCOE numbers look worse, not better. This is particularly true when considering the influence of energy efficiency.
Just as with organic supermarket produce, green power programs remain a niche market, though green power is increasingly making inroads to mainstream markets.
The days in which the kWh can be treated universally as a commodity on the retail-facing side of the industry are coming to a close.
On the eve of 2014, we take a look back at RMI Outlet’s most popular blog posts from 2013. From renewables scaling in Europe, to accelerating solar adoption in the United States, to energy efficiency and electric vehicle developments, there was much to talk about.
... and all through the house!
One year ago, Superstorm Sandy made landfall along the coast of New Jersey. This time last October, communities were under water, millions of East Coasters were without power, and the New York-New Jersey region weathered one of the toughest weather-related crises in anyone’s memory.
If there was a silver lining, it was that the 1973 oil embargo prompted the U.S. to make real strides toward energy efficiency.
Ultrarunners are acutely aware of issues involving fuel and energy, of sustaining output over the long haul, of making upfront investments that pay back-end dividends. What can we learn from them?
The latest stats are out and the verdict is in: last year Los Angeles recaptured its long-standing distinction as home to the worst traffic in the United States.
The futures studies are not a guarantee of what will happen. They’re various visions of what could happen. But increasingly, these possible futures are shifting from the hypothetical to the real. Around the world, economies are shifting to ones grounded in high penetrations of renewables.
In recent weeks and months, there’s been much to celebrate about renewable energy and the electricity system. But amidst the celebratory fanfare there’s also been an undercurrent of skepticism—skepticism that a high renewables future could be here soon, or is even possible at all.
A distant century ago, early electric cars were marketed at women. But many of today's EVs have appeal that can cut across gender lines.
With high gasoline prices, barriers to EV adoption continue to drop.
One staffer on his personal motivations behind the work we do at RMI.
There’s a famous clip from the sitcom Seinfeld, where Kramer takes a car out for a test drive and—with a nervous but eventually supportive salesman in the passenger seat—sees just how far he can drive with the needle dipping well below “E” on the fuel gauge.
We can credit Hallmark with capitalizing on consumer demand for desired products and services, and utilities could borrow a few tactics from Hallmark’s century of business refinements.
Whether you watched the game or not, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the third quarter blackout that put a temporary stop to the on-field action and left teams and fans alike in the dark for more than half an hour. Questions still remain about the root cause of the blackout. Meanwhile, speculation about its cause has been rampant in what amounts to a grand teachable moment.
Super Bowl Sunday ranks number one for American TV viewership, rates as one of the top five days for pizza consumption in the U.S., and ranks eighth for beer consumption. But here’s a surprising stat where it ranks far down the list: energy consumption.
It’s that time of year when people make New Year’s resolutions, commitments to do things differently in the coming year that are going to have a positive impact on their lives.
From building codes to solar power, and natural gas to electric cars, RMI Outlet covered a lot of ground in 2012. These were the top 10 most popular blog posts for the year.
It’s Christmas Eve, which means that millions of children are counting on Santa Claus and his reindeer to deliver presents under the tree by tomorrow morning.
Today begins week two of the latest U.N. Climate Change Conference, this edition held in Doha, Qatar. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are in attendance at the event, which comes on the heels of a new World Bank report forecasting that a global temperature increase of 4 degrees Celsius...
My wife, Kelli, worked for Hilton for roughly a decade, beginning her career at Manhattan’s Waldorf=Astoria—Hilton’s flagship property—before transferring to a pair of properties in Denver.
We’re one day away from Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel periods of the year. Whether by plane, train, or—for most Americans—automobile, tens of millions of people are about to crisscross the country destined for turkey, stuffing, and a long holiday weekend of quality time spent with loved ones.