An insider's guide to our energy transition

Unpredictable gasoline and heating costs. Reliable electricity. Wars in the middle east and Ukraine. Energy independence. The environment. And more. The energy industry affects almost everything, from the price of groceries to geopolitics.

People have reacted to energy issues by developing new technologies and policies for the production, delivery and use of energy. These innovations are being adopted faster than energy professionals believed possible 20 years ago.

You are probably aware of solar panels, electric vehicles and fracking for oil, but there is more. Far more. Changes of this magnitude have not happened in energy since electricity was introduced on a large scale in the 1870s and internal combustion engines in the 1890s.

Energy professionals call these changes, collectively, an "energy transition."

Hi. I'm Greg Whiting. The La Conner Weekly News has invited me to write about the energy transition, to help readers make sense of the ongoing, rapid changes in energy technologies, markets and policies. I'll address questions like: How will these changes affect me? Are they long-term changes driven by sustainable economics? What technologies are relevant? Can changes happen faster? What can I do? What can businesses, communities and governments do?

The question you probably have now is: Who is this guy and why is he qualified to write about energy?

I'm an energy engineer. In 2019, I moved to Shelter Bay with my fiancée, Jenelle. Although I'm new to Skagit County, my family has lived in the northwest since the 1850s. I have lived in ten cities throughout Washington, from Blaine to Pullman. In connection with my father's jobs, or my own, I've also moved all over the U.S. and Canada. I most recently returned to Washington in 2016.

I'm a good person to write about the energy transition because – unusual among energy professionals – I have significant experience with a large number of both legacy and new energy systems, on both the supply and use sides. I've worked in fossil and renewable energy; for mining companies and utilities; and for organizations that want to use less energy. I've worked on both electric grid and automotive technologies.

I grew up around resource industries. My mother wrote her master's thesis about the sustainability of western water supplies. She worked at the Solar Energy Research Institute in the 1970s. My father was a professor of mining engineering. In 1968, he started working in oil shale and moved on to gas, coal and oil sands. He even worked in nuclear energy, as a consultant on utility fuels.

I paid attention to my parents' work. I used their energy and mining magazines as source materials for high school science papers. In college, I took petroleum engineering and resource economics courses while working towards a degree in materials engineering. My first assignment after graduating was to research new alloys for deep oil wells.

In 1993, while developing new products at a nickel/cobalt mining company, I was one of the earliest people to work on lithium-ion batteries in North America. In 1999, I went to work for Florida Power & Light's energy conservation group.

Most of my subsequent career, at four utilities and as a consultant, has been focused on developing and introducing sustainable energy technologies. Some assignments have been in generation: fossil, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and waste-to-energy. Some, in distribution: microgrids, storage and metering. Others, in hydrogen and electric vehicles. More still, in energy-efficient technologies like LED lighting and advanced heating and cooling systems.

There's a lot happening, including the upcoming launch of a co-op to facilitate innovative energy system use in Skagit County. I look forward to discussing the energy transition with Weekly News readers.