The 51st State Initiative

Ron Binz is a Principal at Public Policy Consulting, specializing in energy and telecommunications economics and policy issues. On June 27, 2013, President Obama nominated Ron to become Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but following a confirmation hearing in a U.S. Senate committee, he asked the president to withdraw his name from further consideration. He was appointed by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission in January 2007 and served until April 2011. As Chairman, Ron led the Colorado PUC in implementing the many policy changes championed by the Governor and the Legislature to bring forward Colorado’s “New Energy Economy.”

Ron was an active member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, serving as Chair of NARUC’s Task Force on Climate Policy and as a member of both the Energy Resources and Environment Committee and the International Affairs Committee. From 1984 to 1995, Ron directed the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, the state’s utility consumer advocate. His office represented residential, small business and agricultural utility consumers before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, federal regulatory agencies and the courts. While Consumer Counsel, Ron served as President of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA).

Ron received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Louis University and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado.

Nancy E. Pfund is Founder and Managing Partner of DBL Investors, a venture capital firm whose goal is to combine top-tier financial returns with meaningful social, economic and environmental returns in the regions and sectors in which it invests. Ms. Pfund currently sponsors or sits on the board of directors of several companies, including; SolarCity and BrightSource Energy, and, prior to their public offerings, Tesla Motors and Pandora Media. Prior to founding DBL, Ms. Pfund was a Managing Director in Venture Capital at JPMorgan. Previously, Ms. Pfund worked at Intel Corporation, the State of California, Stanford University and the Sierra Club. Ms. Pfund was featured #17 in the FORTUNE World’s Top 25 Eco-Innovators; is Chair of the Advisory Council of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University; a member of the Advisory Board of the UC Davis Center for Energy Efficiency; Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; a board member of the California STEM Learning Network (CSLNet); a C3E Ambassador to the U.S. Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Program, led by the U.S. Department of Energy; and is a founding officer and director of ABC2, a foundation aimed at accelerating a cure for brain cancer. In 1988, President Bush appointed Ms. Pfund as a charter member of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology. In 1999, Ms. Pfund was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Congressional Web-Based Education Commission. Ms. Pfund received her BA and MA in anthropology from Stanford University, and her MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Board: Director

Jim Rogers was the chairman of the board at Duke Energy until his retirement on December 31, 2013. He also served as Duke Energy’s President and CEO from April 2006 until July 2013. Jim became President and CEO of Duke Energy following the merger between Duke Energy and Cinergy in 2006. Before the merger, he served as Cinergy’s chairman and CEO for more than 11 years. Prior to the formation of Cinergy, he joined PSI Energy in 1988 as the company’s Chairman, President and CEO.

During his 25 years as a CEO in the utility industry, Jim engineered a series of acquisitions and mergers creating the largest electric utility in the U.S., as measured by market capitalization. Also, he delivered an average annual shareholder return of more than 12 percent by focusing on sustainable growth during his tenures as CEO. He also owned and/or operated assets in 17 countries in Africa, South Asia, Europe, Central and Latin America. Under Jim’s leadership, Duke Energy was recognized as a leader in sustainability. In 2010 and 2011, the company was named to the elite Dow Jones Sustainability World Index; it has been a part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for North America for the past nine years.

In 2013, Jim was awarded the Edison Electric Institute’s Distinguished Leadership Award by his industry peers in recognition of his 25 years of service and exemplary contributions to the electric utility industry. The Alliance to Save Energy honored Jim with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Prior to becoming a CEO, Jim served as deputy general counsel for litigation and enforcement for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); executive vice president of interstate pipelines for the Enron Gas Pipeline Group; and as a partner in the Washington, D.C., law office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Jim has also served as assistant to the chief trial counsel at FERC; as a law clerk for the Supreme Court of Kentucky; and as assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where he advocated for the state’s consumers in gas, electric and telephone rate cases. Jim was also a reporter for the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader for three years.

In the course of his career, Jim has served on the boards of directors of eight Fortune 500 companies, and is currently a director of Cigna Corp. and Applied Materials Inc. In 2010 and 2011, he was named by the National Association of Corporate Directors’ Directorship magazine to its annual Directorship 100, recognizing the most influential people in corporate governance. Jim also serves on the boards of the Aspen Institute, Brookings Institute, Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, The Nature Conservancy and Asia Society. He also serves on a number of advisory boards including Bloomberg’s Clean Energy Finance Group. Jim is also a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Jim has been recognized as an outspoken and accessible voice for business, earning the reputation as a “CEO Statesman.” In 2009, Newsweek named him one of “The 50 Most Powerful People in the World.” He has testified more than 20 times before U.S. Congressional Committees, and addressed international forums including the United Nations General Assembly, the World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative.

Jim has advocated investing in energy efficiency, modernizing the electric infrastructure, and pursuing advanced technologies and nuclear energy to grow the economy and transition to a low-carbon future. He serves as vice chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and is a member of the global board of directors of The Nature Conservancy. Jim was also a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a collaboration of leading businesses and environmental groups that came together to call on the federal government to enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In the U.S., he was chairman of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) when it changed its position to support federal climate change legislation in 2007. He served on the executive committee of EEI. He was also the founding chairman of the Institute for Electric Efficiency, former co-chair and current board member of the Alliance to Save Energy and past co-chair of the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency. He was a former member of the Boards of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations and the World Association of Nuclear Operators. Jim has been honored with various awards and recognition. In 2014, he was inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame. He is the 2013 recipient of the United States Energy Association Award. He was named the most influential person in the power generation industry by Power Engineering magazine and the energy industry’s CEO of the Year by Platts. He was also named to the STEMconnector® List of 100 CEO Leaders in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). In 2011, he was presented with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® Lifetime Achievement Award and the Charlotte Regional Partnership Jerry Award. The Charlotte Business Journal also named Jim its Business Person of the Year for 2011.

In 2011, Jim received the Asia Society of Washington’s International Business Leadership Award and the Committee of 100’s Business Excellence Award for his efforts to improve business relations between the U.S. and China that benefit customers, the environment and improve dialogue between the two nations. He was also recognized by the U.S.-China Policy Foundation with their Global Executive Leadership Award. Later the same year, the Asia Society elected Jim to serve a four-year term on the organization’s board of trustees. Jim is an active community leader and has received a number of honors and awards for his service including the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Honoree from the Mecklenburg County Council, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO), the 2006 Human Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee, Cincinnati Chapter, the 2005 Ronald McDonald House Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2005 Keystone Center Leadership in Industry Award, the 2004 National Conference for the Community and Justice (NCCJ) Distinguished Service Citation, the 1998 Hebrew Union College Cincinnati Associates Tribute Honoree and the 1996 Energy Daily Corporate Leadership Award.

Jim earned Bachelor of Business Administration and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Kentucky, where he was a member of the Kentucky Law Journal and Beta Gamma Sigma National Honor Society.

Sue Tierney is Senior Advisor at Analysis Group in Boston. She is an expert on energy policy and economics, specializing in the electric and gas industries. She has consulted to companies, governments, nonprofits, and other organizations on energy markets, and economic and environmental regulation and strategy. She previously spent over a dozen years in state and federal government – as Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy; and as cabinet officer for environmental affairs, public utility commissioner, and chair of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority in Massachusetts. She currently chairs the External Advisory Board of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, chairs the ClimateWorks Foundation Board, and is a director of World Resources Institute, the Alliance to Save Energy, Resources for the Future, and the Energy Foundation. She recently co-chaired the NAESB Gas-Electric Harmonization Committee, was a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project, was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on shale gas risk, and was co-lead convening author of the energy chapter of the National Climate Assessment. She served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (and its Shale Gas Subcommittee). She has published widely, and frequently speaks at industry conferences and lectures at universities. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in regional planning at Cornell University in New York, and her B.A. at Scripps College in California.

Jigar is the Manager for Distributed Energy and Grid Services at Electrify America. Jigar is responsible for optimizing Electrify America’s energy portfolio, including managing rate structures, leveraging energy storage to manage exposure to demand charges, engaging with utilities and wholesale energy markets, as well as addressing vehicle-grid integration matters. Jigar has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a minor in Business, from Cornell University, and a Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. Prior to his role at Electrify America, Jigar was a Principal Consultant within the Energy and Utilities Practice at West Monroe Partners, where he advised utility clients on smart grid modernization topics, including rate structures and the use of energy storage to defer utility distribution investments. Previous to this, Jigar was a Senior Researcher at Envision Energy focused on wind farm (plant level) controls and analytics to lower the levelized cost of renewable energy, and an Edison Engineer at General Electric Global Research focused on wind turbine control systems and distributed energy resource (“DER”) controls, including for electric vehicle fleet charging to minimize demand charge costs. Jigar has publications in prominent scientific journals including IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid and Wind Energy Science and has five filed patent applications on topics spanning electric vehicle charging, electric grid congestion, and wind energy control systems.