EPIC AgTech Energy Innovation Virtual Tour

David Hochschild was appointed Chair of the California Energy Commission by Governor Gavin Newsom in February 2019. He fills the environmental position on the five-member Commission where four of the five members are required by law to have professional training in specific areas - engineering or physical science, environmental protection, economics, and law. 

Chair Hochschild's career has spanned public service, environmental advocacy, and the private sector. He first got involved in the solar energy field in 2001 in San Francisco as a special assistant to Mayor Willie Brown where Chair Hochschild launched a citywide $100 million initiative to put solar panels on public buildings. He also cofounded the Vote Solar Initiative, a 60,000-member advocacy organization promoting solar policies at the local, state, and federal levels. He was executive director of a national consortium of leading solar manufacturers and worked for five years at Solaria, a solar company in Silicon Valley. From 2007 to 2008, he served as a commissioner at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. 

For his work to advance clean energy, Chair Hochschild was awarded the Sierra Club's Trailblazer Award, the American Lung Association's Clean Air Hero Award, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Million Solar Roof True Champion Award. Chair Hochschild holds a bachelor of arts from Swarthmore College and a master of public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. 

Mr. Adler is Senior Advisor for Climate Finance at the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) and the Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank (IBank), where is leading the development of the Climate Catalyst Fund and related programs. Prior to this role, he was Vice President for Policy at the Energy Foundation, a partnership of philanthropies advancing clean energy markets across the U.S. He was previously Managing Director of the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) and President of CalCEF Ventures, where he led the firm’s efforts to identify and catalyze transformational new investment theses across venture capital and project finance. 

He has served as senior analyst in the Division of Strategic Planning at the California Public Utilities Commission, where he was responsible for the design and implementation of California's Renewables Portfolio Standard and was senior staff for climate policy, and on the boards of the American Council on Renewable Energy, the Coalition for Green Capital, the Vote Solar Initiative, and Energy Efficiency for All. He has a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in Public Policy from Harvard University. 

Mai Ann is VP of Sales and Marketing for BioFiltro where she leads the market development of their worm powered wastewater systems across the United States. She has managed the sales and implementation of projects ranging in size from 600 gallons per day to 1.15 million gallons per day for wineries, dairies, rural communities, and food processors. Originally from New England, Mai Ann attended Middlebury College and then worked in salmon production and processing as well as consulting in Chile and Argentina before joining BioFiltro.

Derk Hendriksen is Co-CEO of Treasure8, a SF food tech group leading a Resource Revolution® to bring accessible, sustainable nutrition to a rapidly growing planet. Previously, Derk ran a consultancy, Hendriksen Ventures, dedicated to enabling purpose-driven companies. He spent most of his career at The Coca-Cola Company, serving 23 years in various roles worldwide, including VP of Business Integration in the Office of Sustainability. Here, he led TCCC's Social Enterprise Unit, EKOCOMPANY, then EKOCENTER, a social initiative for health and sustainability. A Dutch native, Derk lives between Atlanta and San Francisco and is inspired by transformative startups — like Treasure8.

Olivier Jerphagnon is a serial entrepreneur with a talent to bring new technology to market. He grew up around farms in Britany, France and he is an expert in applying data mining techniques to solve practical infrastructure problems. He founded Agmonitor Inc.’s data mining platform to address climate risks at the nexus of Food, Energy, and Water. Prior to that, Olivier was CEO of Monitoring Division Inc., which sold professional services to telecom carriers worldwide using patented data sensing and machine learning technologies from Melbourne University.

He started his career in fiber optic networks at Calient Technologies where he built the first 3D-MEMS fiber switch that powers data centers around the world today. He holds 8 patents granted and published more than 30 peer reviewed articles. He was the Primary Investigator on two EPIC funded projects. Mr. Jerphagnon holds a M.S. from UC Santa Barbara and an Engineering Diploma from the Grenoble Institute of Technology, France. 

Bear has a deep interest and knowledge base in energy and sustainable power generation on the individual user scale. His background led him to ALL Power Labs where he initially began his research in developing producer gas analysis equipment. He has orchestrated numerous studies on the efficacy of characterized biochar. Bear’s main focus at ALL Power Labs is developing control systems for gasifiers and conducting research to inform and motivate product development. Bear has a B.S. in Environmental Studies-Earth System Science from San Francisco State University.

Dr. Jennifer Klare is Porifera’s Senior Director of Applications and Operations. She leads the company’s food and beverage sales program and R&D application development. Dr. Klare received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Columbia University in 2006. After a postdoctoral position at Northwestern University, she joined the Porifera team at its founding. Dr. Klare combines her background in chemistry and nanomaterials with her 10 years of experience at Porifera to guide the team's solution for the customer.

Joshua McEnaney is CTO and President of Nitricity, a company devoted to producing sustainable nitrogen fertilizer. McEnaney received his Ph.D. in chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University where he developed novel nanocatalyst materials for water electrolysis. He continued his studies as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, developing several new nitrogen fixation and conversion technologies. McEnaney is driven to work on sustainable technologies, particularly with respect to climate change, to preserve our planet for future generations. He believes Nitricity provides an outstanding opportunity to mitigate up to gigaton-scale global carbon dioxide emissions.

Stephen Perigo is the President/CEO of Perigo Company LLC located in Strathmore, California. Perigo started his career in welding and manufacturing and founded his first company Perigo Welding Works in 1991. The company transitioned into Perigo Company LLC in 2019. It has 15 employees and focuses on providing products, services and innovations to the agriculture industry.

California Bioenergy LLC (“CalBio”) is the leading developer of “dairy waste to biogas” energy projects in the country. CalBio develops finances, builds, owns and operates its biogas projects in partnership with dairy owners and Chevron. Calbio contracts its locally generated renewable power, renewable fuel (R-CNG) and related carbon offsets (CCOs and LCFS credits) to the local utility and to California AB 32 and LCFS obligated parties including Chevron. The company has five owned and fully operational projects in California’s Central Valley. Sixty more are in construction and development. CalBio has arranged over $200 million in project debt, equity and grant financing and is currently developing an additional $200 million of projects that will create the largest dairy waste to biogas fuel projects in the country when completed producing over 20 million diesel gallon fuel equivalents per year.

The Company plays a major roll within the Biogas Association of California (as a founder) and on its own, advocating in front of the CEC, CPUC, State legislature and others in support of dairy biogas resource development and the benefits of dairy biogas. A recent partnership with Bloom Energy is focused on developing dairy biogas to electric vehicle fuel projects. Mr. Perkins served as a unit leader for 21 years in the US Navy, followed by department and regional roles in Fortune 100 companies, and culminating in vice president, plant manager, and senior director positions with other publicly traded companies. He holds an MBA from St. Leo University and a BBA from Excelsior. His engineering education comes by way of the Nuclear Power program offered by the US Navy.

Helle Petersen joined the Water, Energy and Technology Center (WET Center) at Fresno State in 2011, where she currently serves as program manager. She has actively worked in innovation and entrepreneurship for most of her career, first as a part of the Central Valley Business Incubator and later at Fresno State and the WET Center. In her role at the WET Center, Petersen works closely with federal, state, and local funders to support the WET Center’s mission supporting water, energy, and agricultural technology companies and to contribute to regional economic development.

As project manager for the BlueTechValley Innovation Cluster, she is deeply involved with building a robust regional ecosystem to better link, convene, and support entrepreneurs and innovators on the path to commercializing new technologies. The BlueTechValley Innovation Cluster program is a six-year project funded by the California Energy Commission. Petersen was also instrumental in securing funding to develop the first water, energy, and agricultural technology focused accelerator in the San Joaquin Valley. Valley Ventures, is now an integral part of the WET Center’s programs for entrepreneurs and has attracted companies from around the world.

Petersen earned a Master of Science in Environmental Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, and is an alumni of Fresno State’s MBA program. Petersen is native to Denmark but has lived in Fresno since 2003 with her husband and two children.

A Ph.D. candidate studying Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University with a focus on energy systems, Nicolas Pinkowski M.S. ’17 was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 2021 list for his work in creating Nitricity, a sustainable fertilizer startup that could facilitate the decarbonization of the chemical industry.

Mr. David Stout has been a supervisor in the in the Energy Efficiency Research Office at the California Energy Commission for nearly a year. He leads the  Industrial, Agriculture, and Water unit, which funds research and development projects that focus on cost-effective decarbonization of those sectors through increasing energy efficiency and substitution of NG with electricity or low-carbon alternatives as well as large scale demonstration of pre-commercial efficiency and industrial technologies.

Prior to the Energy Commission, he spent 16 years working for a non-profit research organization SRI International,  performing  and managing contract research. At SRI he led a team of engineers performing chemical and biological process optimization and development as well as developing novel chemical hardware systems primarily focusing on energy and energy storage, advanced materials and coatings, and chemical and drug discovery.