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Contents
4 Executive Summary
12 Resilience
17 Grid Modernization
22 Decarbonization
27 Climate Change
32 Electric Vehicles
37 Cyber Security
41 About the Authors
Executive Summary
About the Author
Laszlo von Lazar is president of Black & Veatch’s Energy & Process Industries (E&PI) sector and serves on the company’s board of directors and leadership team. Before being named to head E&PI, he was president of BV Operations and was a key architect in successfully establishing the group as part of a companywide transformation. Having joined Black & Veatch in 2019 as leader of global projects for the company’s previous power organization, he oversaw engineering, procurement, construction, quality and business excellence. He has more than three decades of worldwide project experience — including global project leadership for GE and Bechtel — comprising work in conventional power generation, solar and wind generation, transmission and distribution, oil and gas, and industrial markets.
Resilience
Grid Modernization
Decarbonization
Climate Change
Electric Vehicles
Cybersecurity
Alex Bettencourt
About the Authors
Mike Bianco
Shibu Cherian
Jonathin Cristiani
Scott DeGeeter
Kristie Deiuliis
Heather Donaldson
Ryan Hoye
David Hulinsky
Alex Bettencourt is a member of Black &Veatch Global Advisory Consulting group and leads the advanced transportation and decarbonization practices globally for thecompany. He and his team are working with many leading organizations around the world looking to meet their decarbonization goals, including through the electrification of their transportation fleets. Before coming to Black& Veatch, he led grid-modernization efforts of leading utilities around North America.
Mike Bianco is a managing director on the Black & Veatch Global Advisory team. He brings more than 20 years of consulting in power and utilities, focusing on solutions development and delivery in grid modernization and resiliency,smart grid program design and execution, DER strategy and planning, and IT strategy and systems integration.
Shibu Cherian is the global chief information security officer at Black & Veatch. He leads all aspects of the cybersecurity management program and strategy aligned to industry leading controls and regulatory best practices to ensure that confidentiality, integrity and availability of critical systems are implemented and maintained to enable the business to deliver secure solutions to build and protect critical human infrastructure. Cherian has more than 20 years of global experience in cybersecurity strategy and risk management and has led in the areas of cybersecurity program management, security architecture, security engineering, cloud enablement, cyber operations and risk management in various industries, including financial services, retail and ecommerce, consulting, healthcare and telecommunication.
Jonathan Cristiani serves as Black & Veatch’s bioenergy and hydrogen technology manager with nearly two decades of experience invarious renewable energy technologies. He provides insights across the global organization in low-carbon fuels, supports front-end project development/consulting assignments, and manages engineering, projects and programs.Cristiani has developed notable expertise with respect to the conversion of biogenic and anthropogenic feedstocks into energy products as well as with the production, storage and utilization of low-carbon hydrogen for a multitude of end uses.
Scott DeGeeter is the vice president of operating asset services, leading the operating support solutions. With more than 30 years of experience in the energy industry, he leads the solutions development and deployment to solve client operational infrastructure support needs, including data analytics, AI tools deployment, engineering services support, project management and outage management services, resiliency planning, and operations and maintenance services.
Kristie Deiuliis is a managing director at Black & Veatch, leading decarbonization strategy and planning initiatives. With more than 25 years in the energy industry, Deiuliis leads strategic initiatives, driving the development of all economic, policy, technology, and feasibility assessments for a broad range of global top-tier clients. Her experience spans energy industry domains, including wholesale and retail (regulated and competitive) markets, distributed energy resources, market entry and expansion business cases, and investment strategies for companies seeking to pivot or accelerate specific goals.
Heather Donaldson is managing director of Black & Veatch Management Consulting, where she is responsible for supporting clients through grid modernization, transportation electrification, DER integration and other transformations. A recognized expert in the energy industry, Donaldson has served as aspecial advisor to the California Public Utilities Commission, as a principal with Southern California Edison, and as a director with California ISO.
Ryan Hoye is licensed professional engineer who has worked with Black and Veatch for 10 years as an instrumentation and controls engineer, with an emphasis on cybersecurity. Hoye is bridging the gap between engineering and cybersecurity through his training at Idaho National Labsin Consequence-driven Cyber-informed Engineering (CCE) and his participation in the Cyber Informed Engineering (CIE) Communityof Practice. He regularly works on control system designs from the instrumentation up through the network design, and also assists utilities in the development of their internal cybersecurity practice through assessments and implementation guidance of cybersecurity programs.
David Hulinsky is the private networks leader in Black & Veatch’s energy and process industries business. He previously served as the company’s director and business unit lead for telecom, automation and distribution services for electric utilities. Hulinsky has more than 20 years of experience successfully developing and leading some of Black & Veatch’s largest utility turnkey communications and smart grid EPC projects for leading utilities.
Rich Jacober
Jaimin Jani
Arron Lewis
Kevin Ludwig
Deepa Poduval
Leslie Ponder
Algert Prifti
Dougals Preece
Mike Prescher
Rich Jacober is an executive vice president and the grid solutions business director at Black & Veatch. With more than 30 years of experience, Jacober leads Black & Veatch’s global grid business, which includes transmission, distribution and battery energy storage solutions. He also has joint responsibility with growing the grid self-perform construction business within Black & Veatch and oversees the company’s Bird Electric construction subsidiary. His focus is on providing strong execution results while growing grid solutions globally to assist clients in meeting their needs for the energy transition, digitization and grid modernization, as well as infrastructure construction and upgrades that deliver reliable, resilient energy to customers.
Jaimin Jani is a management director at Black & Veatch. He advises utilities in North America on aligning investment to maximize value for customers. Jani has more than 16 years of expertise in business strategy, road mapping, risk assessment, investment planning and engineering across various sectors, including electric transmission and distribution, water, electric generation, electric vehicles, data centers, microgrids and other emerging solutions. Jani has successfully led and directed engagements related to complex utility markets in 21 countries, assisting customers to participate in rapidly changing business ecosystems.
Arron Lewis is a vice president and the energy utility West Region managing director at Black & Veatch. With more than 30 years of experience, Lewis previously served in Black & Veatch’s global power distribution business, heading the global deployment of services for power distribution infrastructure. His focus is on solutions to client’s needs for the energy transition, digitization and grid modernization, as well as infrastructure construction and upgrades that deliver reliable and resilient energy to customers.
Kevin Ludwig is a vice president and grid portfolio leader at Black & Veatch. With more than 20 years of experience in the power industry, Ludwig serves as the solution leader for Black & Veatch’s offerings in transmission, distribution and private networks across all markets and industries.
Deepa Poduval is a Black & Veatch senior vice president and the company’s sustainability leader, responsible for continuing to implement the company’s sustainability strategy while further shaping sustainability as part of the company’s next-generation strategy. She also leads the global advisory practice within Black & Veatch, providing executive leadership for the company’s strategic and digital advisory services. Poduval and her team partner with a wide variety of clients spanning governments, and electric, water, oil and gas, commercial, industrial and financial sectors who seek integrated solutions related to their critical infrastructure as they pursue goals around sustainability, growth and resilience.
Leslie Ponder is a global solutions leader for Black & Veatch’s energy and process industries market segment. She is responsible for developing industry-leading solutions through technology innovation. Ponder uses her industry experience and technical acumen to align Black & Veatch’s portfolio of advanced energy storage technologies, grid modernization, IT/OT integration, renewable and distributed energy, electrification, decarbonization, and environmental and sustainability solutions for small-scale services engagements through large-scale engineering, procurement and construction projects.
Algert Prifti leads the carbon capture, sequestration and utilization (CCUS) efforts at Black & Veatch. He focuses on exploring existing and emerging decarbonization technology solutions that contribute directly to new and traditional industry clients seeking to manage their carbon emissions and generate value-add opportunities. Prifti has experience assessing and implementing CCUS solutions across the value chain, including point-source, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), CO2 dehydration and compression, CO2 pipeline and storage, and CO2 utilization technologies. As part of the New Energy Solutions team at Black & Veatch, Prifti also is involved with projects focused on implementation of other advanced decarbonization technologies.
Douglas Preece is a managing director of Black & Veatch Global Advisory and a co-lead of the digital grid practice. He leads programs spanning the energy ecosystem to meet today’s challenges and prepare for the distributed energy future. His recent focus has been in development of strategies and roadmaps, advanced distribution management systems (ADMS), grid modernization, the integration and management of distributed energy resources (DERs), and demand response management (DRM). With more than 37 years of experience in and serving the energy and utility industry, Preece’s knowledge and experience spanning field operations, engineering, business, information and operational technology, and consulting enable him to immediately add value and assist clients with their most challenging, multi-faceted issues.
Mike Prescher is a principal network and cybersecurity architect for Black & Veatch, contributing to critical infrastructure digital modernization projects and cybersecurity strategy and planning initiatives. With more than 25 years in the packet networking and cybersecurity industry, Prescher participates in strategic initiatives, supporting development of policy, technology and feasibility assessments for a broad range of technologies and clients. His experience spans investigation and product development work for OEMs and consultancies and includes contributions to industry standards and frameworks organizations, including the NIST and NERC energy and cyber domains, as well as extensive participation in various thought leadership groups and contributions to IEEE, UTC and others.
Craig Preuss
Jason Rowell
Sean Tilley
Paul Stith
Craig Preuss is a system architect for utility automation at Black & Veatch. Preuss, who is a professional engineer in the states of Illinois and Washington, performs many different tasks since he works in utility integration and automation. Preuss is a senior IEEE member who chairs of the Power System Communications and Cybersecurity Committee (PSCCC), providing strategic electric industry direction in the PSCCC for cybersecurity standards and supporting the development of those standards as well as implementing cybersecurity designs on various projects for electric and gas utilities.
Jason Rowell is a vice president and sustainable solutions leader at Black & Veatch. He is responsible for aligning Black & Veatch’s technology portfolio across the full breadth of project execution capabilities, from small services projects to our largest engineering, procurement and construction projects. Technology portfolio areas under his direct leadership include decarbonization, hydrogen, carbon capture, and sustainable fuels.
Paul Stith is associate vice president of global transportation initiatives for Black & Veatch. He focusses on building the ecosystems needed to plan, finance, deploy and operate sustainable transportation and distributed clean energy infrastructure at scale. Stith’s projects support investors, utilities, fleets, energy and transportation providers in electrifying, decarbonizing and automating their ground, aviation and marine fleets. With more than a decade of zero-emission vehicle infrastructure experience he is a member of numerous industry advisory and working groups and serves on the Forth and North America Council for Freight Efficiency boards of directors.
Rob Wilhite is a senior vice president and leader of the strategic advisory business line at Black & Veatch. He and his team provide advisory services on the topics of zero-emission transportation, distribution grid planning, decarbonization, strategic planning, clean fuels strategies, transaction services, and rates and regulatory services. With 37 years of experience in energy business strategy and utility operations, Wilhite serves as a board director and executive committee member for GridWise Alliance, is chairman for the city of Belmont’s Environmental Sustainability Board and is co-chair of the technology & innovation pillar for Dentons’ Smart Cities & Community Think Tank. In 2009, he was recognized as one of the top 25 consultants in the United States by Consulting Magazine in 2009.
Shane Williams is a managing director at Black & Veatch, leading gas operations and compliance initiatives. With more than 25 years in consulting to the utility industry, Williams leads various system planning and implementation efforts, cybersecurity risk and compliance assessments for gas, electric and water utilities. His experience spans industry domains, including customer engagement, wholesale settlements, asset and work management, outage management and SCADA operations.
Rob Wilhite
Shane Williams
Sean Tilley is the emerging renewable energy solutions leader within Black & Veatch’s energy and process industries power business. He is responsible for the optimization and growth of the company’s portfolio of renewable energy project solutions, with the expertise to meet current and future client needs. Tilley leverages more than 20 years of global experience on more than 100 renewable energy projects ranging from 1 MW to 3 GW in capacity. His experience across the lifecycle of projects includes portfolio planning, project development, technology selection, detailed design engineering, major equipment procurement and construction contracting, project execution and repowering for a wide range of clients. His experience also extends into strategy development, marketing and business development, technology innovation and process improvement.
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