April 2025 Newsletter

April 28, 2025

EQT raises $21B. BLM resumes permitting. New CEOs at Heelstone Renewables, Electrical Power Engineers, and New Energy Equity. Job seekers in the market en masse.

Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA

Welcome to Megawatt Recruitment’s monthly newsletter to keep you connected to what’s going on in the renewable energy industry in the United States and provide more insight, knowledge, and connection to the people and companies who drive our industry.

Hot Talent

“Are you maximizing your connectivity?” was the headline of a marketing email I received this morning that gave me pause regarding my recruitment business.

There is no denying that the energy industry is in turmoil. Over the last six weeks or so, I have had more calls with active job seekers than I have since the pandemic shook the market in 2020. Many people have been laid off or fear one may be coming soon.

Thus, to do my part to keep highly talented individuals contributing to the renewable energy revolution, I am using this platform this month to maximize connectivity. So, rather than start the newsletter with “Hot Jobs!” we are going to start with “Hot Talent.”

Available Job Seekers:

Project Development:

Sales and Business Development:

Project Engineering:

Corporate Functions and Other:

If you are a job seeker who would like your information featured, contact us.

Additionally, for any employers who start the interview process with any of the above-listed job seekers by the end of May 2025, Megawatt Recruitment will offer a flat fee of $15,000 per placed candidate. Click the “Contact Us” button at the top of our website for more information.

What the Market is Talking About

Swedish EQT hit its hard cap of EUR 21.5B for its EQT Infrastructure IV fund and will pursue digital infrastructure; generating, storing, and distributing energy; decarbonization and electrification of industrial processes and transport; resource efficiency and circularity; and social infrastructure.

Big data continues to drive new energy capacity growth, but in this case not renewable energy. A $10B investment will build a 4.5GW natural gas plant in Pennsylvania to power an AI campus, backed by NY-based Knighthead Capital Management.

Following its purchase of a stake in ENGIE’s 2.7GW portfolio of solar, wind, and BESS in September 2024, U.S. based alternative asset management firm Ares Management, bought into another 900 MW solar portfolio owned by ENGIE.

Macquarie Asset Management-backed Treaty Oak Clean Energy (TOCE) is planning to raise $1B in debt which will include Galehead Development which is merging with TOCE.

Israeli developer and IPP Enlight Renewable Energy raised $773M for its 403MW solar + 688MWh BESS project in California with a busbar PPA agreement which effectively pushes curtailment risk to the offtaker, in this case the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Longview Infrastructure, a budding electric transmission development company, is partnering with Stonepeak to originate, develop, constructing, and operating electric transmission projects in the United States.

XGS Energy secured $13M from various investors to support its multi-gigawatt pipeline of geothermal projects in the Western United States using a water-independent technology.

If data centers plan geothermal into their siting, costs could be as low as $50/MWh according to Rhodium Group. Especially for data centers co-located near major metro areas, having this kind of consistently low pricing for 24/7 reliable power can be a huge benefit. For reference, the price of natural gas in NYC spiked from $35/MWh in Dec 2024 to $154/MWh in Jan 2025 according to the EIA.

In Australia, phosphorus and nitrogen-rich treated wastewater is being piped 22 km to the “Berry Belt” region where it will fertilize crops of pineapples, avocados, strawberries, raspberries, and turf which no only prevents fresh water from being dumped into the ocean but fulfills irrigation and fertilizer needs.

After an extensive investigation over the past year, the Commerce Department has finally announced final affirmative determinations in the antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) case for solar cells with some rates soaring to over 3,000%.

The BLM resumed permitting reviews on federal lands for solar, storage, and geothermal projects after a 60-day moratorium as promised and approved EDF’s 117MW Sapphire solar + storage project in California and the Newcastle Geothermal Development project in Utah with is associated with GeoFrame Energy.

Sinovoltaics, a leading solar supply chain consultancy, released a comprehensive map of the North American Solar Supply Chain showing manufacturing locations for modules, cells, ingots, and more.

Recent Personnel Moves and Promotions

Backed by Spanish investment firm Qualitas Energy, Heelstone Renewable Energy appointed Mike Weich as CEO to oversee U.S. utility-scale solar development. He was previously Co-Founder and CEO of Valor Infrastructure Partners and spent almost 5 years with NextEra.

Austin-based Electrical Power Engineers (EPE) welcomed company veteran Stephanie Badr into the CEO position as the former CEO and co-founder of the firm, Hala Ballouz, stepped into the Chairwoman of the Board role and Chief Vision Officer.

Annapolis, MD-based C&I and community solar developer, New Energy Equity (owned by ALLETE, a publicly traded utility and energy provider), will promote current President Josh Kunkel, to CEO effective July 1st, 2025.

FERC Commissioner, Willie Phillips, a Democrat, stepped down at the White House’s request, leaving a 2-2 partisan split on the board according to Politico.

Pete Williams, who has been with Fluence since July 2023, was promoted to SVP and Chief Product and Supply Chain Officer.

GridStor promoted Daniel Dedrick to Chief Technology Officer from his previous role as SVP of EPC and Technical Operations.

Ultra-long duration energy storage company, Noon Energy, hired Seungmin (Andrew) Oh as Chief Operating Officer from ReCarbon Inc where he was also COO.

Former Chief Commercial Officer of Heat Inverse, a start-up for reflective films, Ethan Shenberg joined Endeavor, Inspired Infrastructure as Director of Investment Strategy based in NYC.

JK Renewables, based in Texas, has expanded the team with at least 6 new hires in 2024 and 2025 including Cameron Luce as Director of Commercial Sales and Nicholas Yount as Commercial Sales Consultant.

Pivot Energy, which develops, finances, builds, owns and manages impact-driven community-scale solar and ESS projects, hired Don Buchholz as Director of Emerging Markets which includes not only new states but also experimental project types and novel offtake strategies.

Blue Horizon Energy, a Midwest-focused C&I developer, has cut its staff from about 50 at its peak to around 25 now.

The EPA plans to lay off 280 employees from its environmental justice office and plans to reassign another 175 in July.

Market Insights: Earth Day

Tuesday, April 22nd was Earth Day. Did you turn your lights, air conditioner/heater, and other electronics off for one hour in observation? If you missed it or forgot, there are still many ways you can make up for it because there are choices we can make every day to have a positive impact on our planet. Here are 3 ways things you can do:

1. Plogging. “What in the world is plogging?” you might ask. Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter (merging the Swedish verbs plocka upp (pick up) and jogga (jog) gives the new Swedish verb plogga, from which the word plogging derives).[1] It started as an organized activity in Sweden around 2016 and spread to other countries in 2018, following increased concern about plastic pollution. As a workout, it provides variation in body movements by adding bending, squatting and stretching to the main action of running, hiking, or walking. An estimated 2,000,000 people plog daily in 100 countries and some plogging events have attracted over 3,000,000 participants.

2. Carbon Offsets. With peak travel season in the USA typically spanning from June to August, many people are starting to book their plane tickets now, which means you may have the option to purchase carbon offsets with your ticket. Did you know that tourism alone contributes up to 11% of total annual emissions globally with flights contributing the lion’s share? So, what is a carbon offset and how are they helpful for air travel? Generally, a carbon offset is a way of investing into a project or action that eliminates, captures, or reduces greenhouse gas emissions. While most major airlines in the U.S. no longer offer these for purchase directly, you can use a third party such as TerraPass or Cool Effect to offset your travel.

3. Calculate your Foodprint and Eat Lower Carbon. Many websites and apps exist that allow you to input common foods from our diets to calculate the calories but did you know there are also ones to help you calculate your carbon? Most of us know that beef is one of the largest offenders and has the most greenhouse gases emitted per serving, but did you know that chocolate from deforested rainforests is not far behind? Once you are aware of your impact, you can consciously make choices to reduce it. For example, if you are at a restaurant and can choose one protein to add to your salad, maybe go for the egg at 4.8 Kg of Co2/1 Kg versus the turkey at 10.9 Kg Co2/1 Kg versus pork at 12.1 Kg Co2/1 Kg versus beef at 27.0 Kg Co2/1 Kg. Maybe one day, instead of counting calories we will be counting carbon.

Talent Trends: Shortage of Electrical Engineers

According to a new report by Latitude Media, over 70% of employers in the energy sector report struggling to find all the skilled labor they need — and electrical and power engineers are in particularly high demand.

With the growth of AI and new data centers, there is fierce competition for the skills brought by electrical engineers. In the article, the author interviews multiple leaders who talk about how their data center business lines have grown, in one instance from 5% of the business’s revenue to over 20% in just the last few years.

Another interviewee, Jason Carolan, Chief Innovation Officer at U.S. data center developer Flexential cited that there is so much demand that one of their electrical power consultancies is planning 2-3 years out.

What may be more worrying for the renewable energy sector is that it is seen as unstable at the moment and without less robust cash resources as the tech sector at the moment. Naturally, engineering firms need to be selective in which projects they take on and where they focus their resources. So, the shortage of talent may see renewable energy projects pushed back later in the queue.

“In this space, to hire somebody, you’re only stealing somebody from somebody else.” – James Richmond, Founder and President of e2companies, a microgrid provider.

So, if you are a company struggling to find talent, seeing low application rates to your job postings, having job offers outbid by competitors, or simply spending too much time to find Mr./Ms. Right when you should be focused on growing your business, contact us to launch a proactive search.

Hot jobs: View our posts and Apply Now!

Business Development Manager for Solar – fully remote

Business Development Manager for Solar Supply Chain Consulting – fully remote

Community Solar and DG Project Origination and Development – fully remote

C&I Solar Origination and Marketing – fully remote – JD coming soon!

Technical Due Diligence Manager for DG and Community Solar – hybrid in the Northeast – JD coming soon!

Thank you for joining us for another issue of Interconnection: Renewable Energy USA. We hope you enjoyed it and we look forward to keeping in touch and exchanging ideas, insights, and opinions. If you are a company considering hiring, we welcome the opportunity to present our services and capabilities. If you are a candidate, please check our jobs page or reach out to us to discuss your background, skills, and future aspiration

If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like future issues delivered directly to your inbox, use the button below to subscribe. Also, be sure to add me (Amy.Marietta@MegawattRecruitment.com) to your contacts to ensure the newsletter does not get filtered to spam.