James Sherwood

Principal
Rocky Mountain Institute, USA

James is a Principal with RMI’s international and electricity practices, where he is the project lead within the ECE program in sub-Saharan Africa and supports RMI’s U.S. electricity program. He is an expert in electric grid operations and distributed resource integration, as well as energy strategy and planning for electric utilities, governments, heavy industry, and corporations. James has worked with government, regulators, utilities, and the private sector in Nigeria to develop the business case for minigrids to improve their value proposition to customers and to accelerate private sector deployment to increase electrification and drive economic development. In both Africa and the U.S., James has helped electric utilities to perform financial and technical modeling of the costs and benefits of distribution system design for distributed resources.

Before joining the ECE program, James led RMI’s U.S. electricity practice work on rate design and the grid integration of distributed energy resources. This work includes a wide range of experience, from developing a strategy for the U.S. Navy to identify cost-saving distributed resource options that increase resilience on installations, to analyzing the operational benefits and costs of batteries and solar photovoltaics deployed on utility distribution grids. James has worked with numerous utilities, policymakers, and customers to accelerate the deployment of more cost-effective and sustainable electricity solutions, including serving as a strategic advisor to the New York Public Service Commission on their Reforming the Energy Vision initiative and helping to run RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab, a collaborative network of stakeholders working to address cutting edge electricity system issues. An experienced project manager, James has facilitated RMI’s participation in the Energy Transition Commission, particularly its work on power market design and demand flexibility, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Energy, helping to co-lead its working group on policy recommendations for energy transitions. James holds a MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University and a BS in Environmental Studies from Sonoma State University. He is a member of the Power and Energy Society at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.