Leading the clean energy transition: Rob Collier’s path toward a sustainable future
Rob Collier, senior vice president of marketplaces at LevelTen Energy
Centering his career on accelerating climate solutions, Rob Collier MBA ’14 has worked toward his goal through numerous outlets, including community education, policy advocacy, renewable energy infrastructure development, and software. As senior vice president of marketplaces at LevelTen Energy, Collier oversees transaction-related businesses, ensuring that buyers, advisors, and sellers connect and transact efficiently on renewable energy projects. Collier joined LevelTen before its first software product launched in 2017 and led the company’s developer engagement team for five years. Before that, he worked in renewable energy project development and policy.
Collier is one of the 20 for 20 Notable Alumni honored this year in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise (CSGE) at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.
Reflecting on his time at Cornell, Collier notes, “The SGE program was an instrumental launching pad in my journey to the renewable energy industry. This cannot be understated. I had my first exposure to how wholesale power markets work and the early days of capacity market designs during my SGE immersion project — very technical and wonky topics that ultimately became highly relevant to my career. It all started with CSGE.”
Learn more about Collier in this Q&A.
Navigating the challenges of clean energy
Q. What drives your commitment and focus on environmental and social impact?
Collier: The profound awe I have for the natural world drives a sense of responsibility to mitigate the impacts of human-caused climate change, including dramatically altered habitats, massive human displacement, and increased risks to economic and political stability. Building on this motivation, my objective at LevelTen is to accelerate the rapid deployment of clean energy technologies by helping to expedite the most common and important transactions that drive the industry. The goal is to make buying and selling clean energy as easy as those same transactions for conventional fuels. As forward-thinking as the renewable energy industry is, most of the deals are still done inefficiently and do not maximize the use of technology. LevelTen aims to revolutionize these transactions, becoming the Zillow for renewable energy.
Q. Describe the biggest challenge you encountered as you built your career in sustainability and how you overcame it.
Collier: Some of the most challenging, frustrating moments in my career occurred when I was a project manager for a greenfield developer, working on utility-scale solar projects. Developing a tremendously large solar project requires many steps, including working with local communities and permitting authorities to receive necessary entitlements to begin construction. I quickly learned that this was not merely an administrative process of simply checking the boxes and receiving a stamp of approval on engineering plans. Rather, it was far from it. Successfully navigating permitting jurisdictions is about openness and flexibility, active listening, earning trust, and focusing on the matters that are most important to the impacted community. We have an immense challenge in front of us — deploying enough clean energy to avert the climate crisis — and we are running behind. Meeting this challenge starts at kitchen tables, community meetings, and town and county hearings — where decisions about clean energy projects are made and momentum is built.
Insights for aspiring sustainability leaders
Q. Can you share any insights or lessons learned from your experiences that may inspire current students who want to be sustainability leaders?
Collier: Sustainability is ubiquitous these days — there are so many ways you can make an impact. LevelTen is considered a small company by most standards, having around 100 people on staff, but many of our employees did not start their careers in renewable energy or sustainability. We have professional marketers, salespeople, designers, software engineers, product managers, FP&A (financial planning and analysis) professionals, data analysts, and many more. These same colleagues share LevelTen’s common mission, uniting us to make a positive impact in the world while building a successful, sustainable business. Regardless of your background or skill set, the industry is now mature enough to have a role for you if it is something you’re passionate about. Even if you are not currently in a sustainability role, demonstrate your interest in other ways, and don’t be afraid to reach out!
Q. How do you continue to stay informed about emerging trends and best practices in sustainability, and how do you incorporate these into your work?
Collier: I have always been a voracious consumer of industry news and trade press. My Johnson School classmates probably remember me constantly annoying them with links to articles I found interesting. Fortunately, these days the nature of my job keeps me plugged in to trends in renewable energy and carbon-free technologies that are relevant to LevelTen’s business and the broader ecosystem of global decarbonization strategies. Outside of my day-to-day job keeping me updated about emerging trends, I find podcasts a great tool for keeping up to date with sustainability news. Some of my favorites are “Volts,” by David Roberts, “Catalyst With Shayle Kann,” and “The Carbon Copy,” by Stephen Lacey.
Q. What is your favorite sustainability quote or book?
Collier: Even though the book pertains more to the environment and nature rather than solely sustainability, Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness” is one of my favorite books. Written at a time when the U.S. was investing heavily in its national parks system, this book describes the pros and cons of human interactions with remote natural places. This was one of the first books on environmental preservation that I read cover to cover in my early 20s. Abbey makes a case for experiencing and appreciating the natural world in its most raw and basic forms that strongly resonated with me at the time.