Sparks & Currents

Thought leadership from the Irving Institute & partners, focused on innovative ideas & strategies to accelerate an affordable, reliable, and equitable clean energy transition

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Viewpoints on Distributed Energy Resources: Utility Perspectives

Distributed Energy Resources can deliver the capacity, energy, and ancillary services utilities need — often at a much lower cost than alternatives. So why aren't utilities racing faster to adopt them? In a new thought piece, Honor Passow, Senior Lecturer at the Geisel School of Medicine, digs into the utility perspective.

Read the perspective

June 2026

Impact of misinformation on public support for renewable energy

For his honors thesis, Will Ermarth '25 worked with Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science Herbert Chang to test how renewable energy misinformation affects investment support. Their findings, recently published in Energy Research and Social Science and supported by an Irving Institute Student Grant, suggest public support may be more fragile than assumed—particularly among moderates and for less-visible technologies.

Access their paper

May 2026

Crisis as Catalyst: Turning Chaos Into Energy Abundance

Professor Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu, K.R. Sridhar, Jeff Immelt '78, and Faculty Director Geoff Parker.

Urgent demand, strained infrastructure, and enormous opportunity—for those bold enough to seize it. That was the spirit animating a discussion with Jeff Immelt '78, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, and K.R. Sridhar, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, moderated by Tuck Professor of Business Administration Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu.

Read the discussion recap

April 2026

Energy Experts Tackle AI's Voracious Appetite for Electricity

Featuring: Miranda Ballentine and Adrian Anderson

Equinix's Adrian Anderson and Irving Institute Distinguished Industry Fellow Miranda Ballentine draw on decades of front-line energy development experience for a candid, wide-ranging conversation — covering the three distinct types of data centers, the myriad bottlenecks slowing speed to power, and the potential of AI to optimize energy systems.

Read the recap & watch the recording

March 2026

Energy, AI, and Society: Dartmouth at CERAWeek

Three people sit on a stage and participate in a panel discussion.

At CERAWeek 2026, Dartmouth faculty contributed to panels spanning AI adoption, grid modernization, industrial data infrastructure, electricity market design, and wildfire risk management. A common thread ran through all five sessions: AI's technical capabilities are advancing faster than the organizational, cultural, and regulatory systems needed to deploy them responsibly — and closing that gap will require collaboration across industry, academia, and government.

Review CERAWeek insights

February 2026

Orchestrating Power: A Conversation with Voltus CEO Dana Guernsey

Featuring: Dana Guernsey '06, TH'08 and Geoff Parker

The surge in U.S. energy demand, driven by data centers and electrification, has created a moment of opportunity for virtual power plants (VPPs) to scale. VPPs can now leverage immediate demand to create a more agile, affordable, and resilient grid. Join Voltus CEO Dana Guernsey '06, TH'08, for a conversation on how VPPs can solve the "speed to power" problem, reduce energy costs, and unlock new levels of efficiency on the grid.

Watch the video podcast

January 2026

Geoff Parker's Thinkers50 Recognition: Innovative Theories Shaping the Future of Energy Systems

Featuring: Geoff Parker and Charlie Donovan

In a video podcast, Tuck School of Business Professor Charlie Donovan interviews Geoff Parker, Faculty Director at the Irving Institute and a four-time Thinkers50 honoree. The conversation highlights how innovative platforms connecting different user types can modernize energy systems.

Watch the podcast interview

December 2025

Momentum and Hope: Celebrating Progress Beyond the Headlines

A hand holding a lightbulb with the sky in the background and graphics of graphics and lines superimposed over the image.

Author: Geoff Parker

A curated selection of December 2025 energy stories indicates encouraging trends in the clean energy transition. Corporations are integrating climate technology into business strategies, AI data centers can ease peak grid demand, distributed energy resources (DERs) are increasingly embraced as vital resources for expanding grid capacity, and geothermal solutions continue to make advancements.

Explore the signals of progress

November 2025

Unlocking Grid Value with a Common Language for Distributed Energy Resources

A graphic of two houses connected to a storage battery. One house has solar panels and the other is charging an electric vehicle.

Author: Honor Passow

Distributed energy resources (DERs), demand response (DR), and virtual power plants (VPPs) offer tremendous potential for increasing grid flexibility and reliability. But inconsistent definitions and disjointed perspectives are hindering the efficient coordination of these valuable resources. A proposed set of definitions seeks to clarify the landscape and accelerate DER deployment.

Explore the proposed framework

October 2025

Harnessing AI for a Smarter Electricity Grid

Featuring: Geoff Parker and Stina Brock '01, TH'02

In a video podcast, Dartmouth alumna & entrepreneur Stina Brock '01, TH'02, talks with Faculty Director Geoff Parker about how AI can support distributed energy resource integration with the grid—enabling fast, affordable, & flexible energy deployment.

Watch the video podcast

September 2025

The Programmable Grid

A digital graphic of miniatarized electricity transmission towers.

Authors: Sangeet Paul Choudary and Geoff Parker

Around the world, energy assets are being reimagined — shifting from rigid, single-purpose infrastructure to modular building blocks that can be recombined across roles and industries. This transformation is reshaping who creates value, shifting power away from asset ownership toward those who can coordinate and orchestrate asset collections.

Read about the surprising economics of modular, programmable energy

July 2025

May 2025

Energy Insecurity in the United States: Why LIHEAP is essential

An electricity meter on a white house with firewood piled outside and dusting of snow.

Authors: Sarah Kelly, PhD and Derek Walker

In April 2025, federal staff for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) were dismissed. While imperfect, LIHEAP provides critical support for a pressing issue affecting the wellbeing of people in every state of the USA: energy insecurity.

Read the energy insecurity insights

Irving Institute Thought Leaders

Meet the voices behind Sparks & Currents — academic experts, researchers, and industry practitioners driving new ideas and shaping the conversation on the future of energy.

The Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy & Society

Sparks & Currents

Viewpoints on Distributed Energy Resources: Utility Perspectives

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