Brendan helps drive RMI’s technical and economic modeling in the electricity industry and advance energy efficiency and renewables from theory to commercial application. His current areas of focus are systems analysis, renewable integration, utility strategy, and demand-side planning. Brendan joined RMI in March 2011.

Select RMI Projects

• Reinventing Fire: Electricity—RMI initiative to analyze the build out of the electricity sector over the next 40 years. Brendan has helped develop power dispatch modeling and worked in collaboration with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Energy Analysis Group using their ReEDS system expansion model.
• Reinventing Fire: Buildings—RMI initiative to calculate techno-economic potential for energy efficiency in the buildings sector as well as to highlight key opportunities for business leaders and policymakers to capture this potential.
• Next Generation Utility—Brendan helps lead RMI’s initiative to increase both the breadth and depth of conservation program performance and better incorporate conservation into the integrated resource planning process.

Background

Before joining RMI, Brendan worked as a consultant to electric utilities in the Pacific Northwest. He brings an expertise in conservation resource planning, model development and program implementation strategies. Specific projects included designing a utility demand-side planning tool for Bonneville Power Administration, setting economic efficiency targets for Snohomish PUD, and Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) for Clark Public Utilities. In addition, he has published research in life cycle assessment of transportation networks through international fellowships in Japan and Iceland.

Education

• University of Washington, Master of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering, 2008
• University of Michigan, B.S. in Environmental Sciences and Geosciences, 2004
• University of Washington, Graduate Certificate in Global Trade, 2008

Publications

• “Utility Potential Calculator (UPC)” simulation and handbook providing customized savings potential for Bonneville Power Administration utilities. 2010.

• “Life Cycle Assessment of American Wheat: Regional Variation in Supply Chain Energy and Relative Transportation Contribution” Transport and the Environment. 14(7), 487-492. 2009.