[Updated 2:00 p.m. 4/28/10] There’s an unexpected transition underway at Boston-based energy management company EnerNOC (NASDAQ:[[ticker:ENOC]]) and the Cambridge, MA-based New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC). In a pair of announcements today, the organizations said that Nick d’Arbeloff, founding president of NECEC, has joined EnerNOC as vice president of enterprise energy management. Peter Rothstein, former senior vice president of the three-year old council and director of its Clean Energy Fellowship program, has been appointed as the council’s new president.
d’Arbeloff’s role at EnerNOC will be to help customers with multiple sites, such as state governments, understand how to make the most of EnerNOC’s energy management systems. (Just this month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced the state will put $10 million over three years into a project using EnerNOC’s software to monitor 17 million square feet of state-owned facilities, and the company has similar contracts with Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.)
In a statement, d’Arbeloff called EnerNOC “a leading player in the clean energy sector” and said “I very much look forward to bringing the power of these applications to state governments, which are constantly under pressure to derive greater efficiencies and savings from their operations.” [Update: Xconomy reached d’Arbeloff by phone after this story was published; our interview is transcribed on the next page.]
In the same release, EnerNOC chairman and CEO Tim Healy said the company had come to know d’Arbeloff well through his work on the Clean Energy Council. “His relentless dedication to building New England into a cornerstone of our country’s clean energy economy, coupled with his broad awareness of the energy management opportunity within a range of organizations, make him uniquely suited to this new role,” Healy said. “Nick is a great addition to our team, whose accomplishments and knowledge of the sector-combined with his passion for bringing clean energy solutions to market-will help EnerNOC continue to grow its market-leading position.”
d’Arbeloff, who will remain as co-chair of NECEC’s board, is no stranger to the private sector. Before founding NECEC, which was originally known as the Massachusetts Clean Energy Council, he was CEO and founder of sales productivity software startup Conjoin, which was acquired by Intranets in 2005. He was also vice president of marketing for Wildfire Communications, which was founded by Avid Technology founder Bill Warner and Android founder Rich Miner and acquired by Orange in 2000.
Meanwhile, Rothstein tells Xconomy that he is looking forward to leading “the next stage of growth” for NECEC. “I think Nick has done a phenomenal job as the founding president of the council,” growing its membership from an original 20 organizations to over 175 today, Rothstein says.
d’Arbeloff’s switch from a non-profit clean energy policy and advocacy group into the private sphere is not a terribly surprising one, Rothstein argues, because “We are all entrepreneurs here. I would say Nick and almost everyone who is part of the council community driven by
