Jake Berlin, Principal, Distributed Energy Resources at ICF
ICF is a global consulting and technology services provider with more than 5,000 professionals focused on making big things possible for their clients. ICF’s Distributed Energy Resources (DER) team helps utilities, regulators, and other clients understand and plan for the evolving, decentralized 21st-century grid.
So, what do you actually do all day?
I work with utility clients to help them grow and adapt with their changing industry. Utility companies have been generating, transmitting, and selling energy largely the same way for more than 100 years and recent trends have required them to rethink their business models and the way they operate. This can be challenging in an industry that is very large, bureaucratic, and not used to changing quickly. They’ve got to respond to new technologies, new customer demands such as green energy and resiliency during storms, and regulatory changes. It’s tricky and no one knows what the future looks like, but ICF has an excellent understanding of the big trends, decentralization, and customer choice.
My job is to help utilities learn about those changes, start planning for them, and try to get ahead of them. I often hear from clients that they’ve spent a lot of time reacting to what’s happening in the market, and they’d like to be more proactive if they can. That requires new plans, new ideas, and a new mindset for the organization. How successful they are often depends on how open the organization is to change.
A large part of what I do is following what’s going on with regulation and legislation, distributed energy resources adoption (like how fast people are adopting solar, electric vehicles, etc.) and understanding what that means for utilities.
What organizations do you partner with?
ICF partners on a lot of its work, often with local organizations that understand the particular terrain in which they operate. That often includes women-owned, minority-owned, and veteran-owned businesses. We also have some broader partnerships with companies like FirstFuel, which provides a variety of services and analytics utilizing customer smart meter data. In addition, we work with a lot of environmental organizations that are interested in the energy industry; although those aren’t formal partnerships, per se, we certainly operate in the same space.
What are some of the key skills required for success in this role?
General consulting skills are just a place to start. You also need flexibility and agility because there are so many different topics in this space to stay current on. In just one meeting with a client I could need to be conversant in a dozen different topics; sometimes it’s hard to predict what a client will want to talk about.
You need to be constantly learning, you can’t have a certain set of knowledge you learned in school and stop there, you need to be constantly reading and watching webinars and taking in new information because the terrain changes quickly.
You also need to be able to converse with a wide set of stakeholders, the utility space is a complex ecosystem. When a utility develops a robust plan for the future, it has to include stakeholders such as their customers, project developers, the government, finance, and people in customer facing roles.
What is your favorite part of your job?
While I’m generally frustrated that the US lacks a cohesive energy policy at the federal level, the coolest result from that is that the states are really acting as laboratories of democracy; they have widely varying distributed energy efforts across the country. I live in New York and get to watch the state lead the way up close, but there are a lot of states that are still struggling and have different challenges. I really enjoy the complexity of the issues and the diversity across the country. For example, it’s fun to take what’s happening in Oregon and see how it could be applied to Ohio.
What is the hardest part of your job?
My job requires a lot of travel. I have a young family so that’s tough, but it’s just part of the consulting life.
What are the game changers in your world?
Federal energy policy would be huge, but I don’t think anyone’s holding their breath for that; however, regulatory and political changes can shift the terrain overnight. New York is now a leader in the utility space, not because they had high rates of DER penetration (they didn’t) but because of political leadership. Governor Cuomo appointed a strong leader to be head of the Public Service Commission and created a new ‘energy czar’ role and now New York is an example that a lot of other states are looking to.
Technological breakthroughs are important too. Ten years ago, solar wasn’t cost effective for most customers but the price has plummeted since then. It’s still not cost effective for some customers, but a huge number of people are now able to purchase solar cost effectively. Now everyone is waiting for energy storage to follow that same curve. Prices are starting to fall, but we’re not there yet. If storage becomes cost effective, it would allow us to store solar and wind energy for use when they are needed so they can behave more like baseload power. When that happens, suddenly these carbon free assets will be a lot more useful to grid operators and utilities generally.
What was your path to this role?
I worked on a lot of different types of projects and in a lot of different roles – state government, utility, program implementation, and project development. At the time that felt scattered, but in retrospect that diverse set of experiences supported this role perfectly. It wasn’t planned, I just naturally like diverse experiences.
From a tactical standpoint, I don’t think sitting behind a desk and filling out job applications is the way to get a job you’ll like. I was a client for the team I’m now a part of. Twice I hired ICF’s DER team to help me with projects, and they did great work and I got to know and like the people on the team. When I was looking for my next step, it was natural to call them and start a conversation. I had already vetted what it was like to work with them, and they already knew we would work well together.
What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?
Network, get out there, and talk to people. People in this field are especially willing to help. A lot of these positions didn’t exist 5-10 years ago, and people in this field feel like one big family, even across competitors. I was at a conference last month, and our competitors were incredibly open to talking about the issues we’re all facing just because they find this work exciting. Just reach out to people because they’re probably willing to have a conversation about it.
What are your favorite resources?
Greentech Media has a great podcast called the Energy Gang with some very smart people
icf.com/blog/energy – ICF has a blog and white papers which are excellent
Books in this space are tough, the publishing cycle is so slow that books are usually irrelevant by the time they come out; however, I loved the book The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era by Gretchen Bakke. It’s written by a journalist, not an energy expert, and she does a great job of explaining things that make sense to people new to this industry. There’s lots of history in there that I didn’t know.
The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) is great. It’s a wonderful place to meet people and network and has a fairly broad scope – energy efficiency, demand response, and DER. They have a big national conference every year as well as regional and specialized conferences.
The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) is an organization that focuses on the utility side of things. They really get into DER issues, they also have conferences.
Who is your sustainability hero?
Rachel Carson, the conservationist and author whose work and advocacy ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She lived at a time when American expansionism and global commerce generally felt like they would grow forever and people didn’t need to worry about the impact. She insisted that there were real repercussions for what we were doing, it was a real wake up call. Unfortunately, there are still things we can learn from her, we’re still spraying pesticides, but she came around as a female scientist at a time when that was rare, she was a pioneer and I really respect her work.
