Danny Kennedy is a veteran clean-tech entrepreneur and ecosystem builder whose work spans activism, company creation, and capital formation. He co-founded Sungevity, one of the early pioneers of remote solar design and residential solar sales, and helped launch Powerhouse in Oakland to support solar founders; he was also an early backer of the solar-loan leader Mosaic.

From 2015 to 2024 he served as the founding CEO of New Energy Nexus, a global platform of funds and accelerators that supports climate entrepreneurs across Asia, Africa, and the Americas; he remains a Venture Partner with NEX’s Catalyst Fund. Danny advises organizations including Sunrise Project and Wollemi Capital and has served in leadership roles linked to the California Clean Energy Fund. He co-hosts Audible’s Climate of Change with Cate Blanchett and is the author of Rooftop Revolution (2012). Recently, he’s written widely read pieces on Asia’s rooftop solar surge and China’s push into virtual power plants—signals of a distributed, software-orchestrated grid that’s arriving faster outside the West.

His through-line: back the builders, standardize the playbooks, and deploy proven solutions at massive scale.

Join Sharon Reishus for a unique inside look at how USA's first multi-state carbon credit trading market was born and why those hard-won lessons are crucial for navigating today's unprecedented electricity demand surge. 

As a founding board member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and former Chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, Sharon will share the story of creating the nation's first mandatory regional carbon market, from the political negotiations to the pushback from stakeholders, to set up a carbon regime that delivered millions in consumer savings over two decades and helped cut regional power plant emissions in half.

But this isn't just a history lesson. With electricity demand growing at rates not seen in decades, driven by AI data centers and rapid electrification of the economy, Sharon will decode what this means for climate goals, energy costs, and grid reliability. Drawing from her 35 years of power sector expertise, she'll connect the strategic thinking that made RGGI successful to the market dynamics reshaping America's energy landscape today.