Today’s guest is Lara Pierpoint, Director of Technical Strategy at Exelon.

Exelon is America's leading competitive energy provider with one of the cleanest and lowest cost power generation fleets. Its utility serves millions of electric and gas customers. Lara's team is tasked with enhancing Exelon's ability to capitalize on new technology and respond to disruptive innovations. Her expertise is in systems analysis, modeling and policy. And her knowledge is deep in nuclear, gas and electric interface and energy finance as well as widely across the electricity spectrum.

Prior to Exelon, Lara has had a number of different roles. She was Senior Advisor for energy policy and Systems analysis at Department of Energy. She was a AAAS fellow at the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. And she also has her PhD in Engineering Systems from MIT, as well as a Masters in Nuclear Engineering and in Technology and Policy also at MIT, and an undergrad in physics from UCLA. Suffice to say Lara's got a really interesting perspective to talk about everything energy and everything climate change.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Overview of Exelon and Lara’s role within the company
• Overview of the utilities market, and history of deregulation
• Lara’s career history, and what motivates her to do the work she does
• Deep dive into the technical strategy team, its history within the company, the work they do, and some example projects
• Broader discussion about the optimal energy mix, and the roles of nuclear, renewables, etc
• Some of the headwinds, and the best ways to accelerate the energy transition
• How you and I can help

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

• Exelon: https://www.exeloncorp.com/
• AAAS fellowship program: https://www.aaas.org/programs/science-technology-policy-fellowships
• US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources: https://www.energy.senate.gov/public/
• Volta Energy Technologies: https://plusvolta.com/
• Constellation Technology Ventures: http://technologyventures.constellation.com/
• MIT energy club: https://www.mitenergyclub.org/
• Department of Energy (DOE): https://www.energy.gov/
• Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI): https://www.epri.com/#/?lang=en-US
• Hydrogen electrolyzer: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-electrolysis

You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at [email protected], where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Enjoy the show!

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant