Marcy Bauer, Electric Vehicles, North Carolina
Marcy Bauer, who has been in the industry for 15 years, is the Senior Vice President of Deployment at EVgo.
Why is clean energy important to you? Aside from the core human necessity of being able to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and eat safe food, I put tremendous value on sustainability and resilience. Whether it's human caused or naturally driven, or often a mix of both, we will always be faced with changes in our environment that we need to mitigate or adapt to. Being overly reliant on finite and heavily polluting energy sources not only accelerates and amplifies the challenges we face, it makes us that much more vulnerable to related disruptions and the negative impacts like pollution. Clean energy not only helps reduce those negative impacts, it can also help us be better prepared to adapt to and overcome challenges that threaten our ability to survive and thrive.
What's a memorable clean energy project you’ve worked on? By happenstance my team installed an EV charging station very near where I currently live, and every time I visit the grocery store there I stop and chat with drivers using the chargers. I ask them to share their EV and charging experiences, for better and worse, so I can bring those learnings back and help our industry constantly improve the customer experience and resulting utilization of this vital infrastructure. Most of the world is still largely operating under a more than century-old transportation paradigm with gas/diesel vehicles, and we are only just getting started disrupting that paradigm to better protect this tiny rock in space that we all share total reliance on. While no solution is ever going to be fully perfect, it's truly an honor to be part of the solution, and experience the positive impacts of our work first-hand while I'm just out and about picking up potatoes or hot sauce.
What did you do prior to working in clean energy? Why did you transition to the clean energy industry? My transition into clean energy came out of experience in public service, where I saw firsthand some of the secondary and tertiary costs of operating outdated and dirty energy systems. Serving in the military, where many of our deployments and associated costs (in dollars and in human costs) go towards protecting petrol-centric energy security, and then later serving communities in public/environmental health working to reduce exposure to toxins and build resilience against the impacts of climate change. These experiences made the clean energy imperative very clear for me, and I feel lucky every day to be gainfully employed in a field that allows me to contribute to moving us to a more carbon-neutral energy future.
What do you wish more people knew about the clean energy industry? Clean energy really isn't — or shouldn't be — political. We all want greater personal and national security, and that simply can't be accomplished without paying attention to energy and environmental security. Rather than protecting our reliance on outdated and/or heavily polluting solutions and deepening our vulnerabilities, I consider it to be highly patriotic and humanitarian to be working to onboard and continuously improve technologies that allow us to power the nation and the world with cleaner, more sustainable fuel sources.
Why should congress invest in clean energy jobs? I have roots in public/environmental health, a sector that is woven into the very foundation of all of our laws, aimed at protecting the individual's and community's ability to pursue happiness and vitality, and clean energy very much relates to all of this. As I've described, I view the pursuit of clean energy as an integral, patriotic, and humanitarian endeavor that is necessary for us to be able to survive and thrive. Such a pursuit — moving past an entrenched and still heavily subsidized fossil fuel paradigm — requires investment in transformative change, innovation, and in building up the individuals who power our communities and our economies. If we don't do this in the US, not only will we miss out on the myriad benefits that clean energy brings, we will also get left behind with aging infrastructure and fuel systems while the rest of the world moves into a cleaner, smarter, more sustainable future.
Is there anything else you’d like to share? Even if it may not feel like it every minute of every day, we really are all in this together. No one person has the exact right answers, and no one person can get it done alone. I'm so proud of the work my team does, and the passion and positivity they bring to bear every day.
