Emily McAteer ’07 discusses the challenges and opportunities in deploying renewable energy projects at scale in emerging markets, with a focus on Africa. Electricity grids in emerging economies are often weak or non-existent, however, with abundant renewable energy resources, distributed, off-grid renewable systems offer a viable solution and can have a transformative impact.
Emily is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Odyssey Energy Solutions, a finance platform to rapidly scale investment in distributed renewable energy (DRE) in emerging markets. Prior to Odyssey, Emily was Chief Revenue Officer of Frontier Power, a subsidiary of SunEdison, launched to rapidly scale the deployment of mini-grids in India and East Africa. Emily was also a Fulbright Scholar focused on off-grid solar systems in India and worked in advanced energy management at EnerNOC and Yahoo. Emily holds a BA from Brown University, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.