Thomas Baker
Managing Director & Partner
San Francisco - Bay Area
Thomas Baker joined The Boston Consulting Group’s San Francisco office as a consultant in 2011. A core member of the firm’s Energy practice, he has worked for clients in the utility and renewables industries. He is the global topic leader for distributed energy resources at BCG and is a leader of the firm’s green energy and environment sector in North America.
Tom has worked on clean-tech and other power topics with a variety of clients, including utilities, technology, industrial goods, and public sector companies, as well as clean-tech pure-players. He has rich experience across the US and globally, including project work in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Tom is a scientist with experience and expertise in energy and clean technology—specifically solar photovoltaics (PVs) and other renewables, as well as energy efficiency. He has been a featured speaker and panelist at many industry conferences.
Among Tom’s projects are a rooftop-solar investment strategy he developed for a US utility—and a strategy he devised for a PV manufacturer to enter the distributed energy space (energy efficiency, energy storage, demand response). He also helped a US utility transform its business to integrate more renewables and offer new customer solutions.
Before joining BCG, Tom worked in strategic marketing at First Solar and also as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with renewable technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Tom has contributed to several BCG publications on the energy sector.
In his graduate work at Harvard University, Tom focused on computational solid-state physics applied to heterogeneous catalysis and PV.
President Joe Biden has proposed the most ambitious climate policy in American history. How should companies get ready for the changes that are coming?
By tailoring an incremental approach to their constraints and opportunities, upstream players can reduce their carbon footprint while limiting any negative economic impact.
Utilities must upgrade the grid to handle demand from electric vehicles. The catch? They must avoid driving customer rates through the roof in the process.
The boom in electric vehicles could create as much as $10 billion in value for the average utility. But companies must plan now and develop the right capabilities first.
The growth in demand for natural gas could flatline by 2030, even as the supply expands. Players must take steps now if they are to thrive amid disruption.
Traditional power companies can no longer ignore the popularity of green energy. M&A is the quickest and most effective approach to entering this market.
As renewable energy and battery storage transform power grids around the world, companies find themselves at a crossroads: Will they forge a path toward consolidation or remain fragmented?
To meet the challenges of a rapidly changing market, utilities must overhaul their operating and business models before a significant downturn in performance occurs.
