Adolfo Menéndez is Chairman and CEO of PERI and the Chairman of Solidaris, LLC., Global Management Partners, LLC.; and Tristar Petroleum, LLC. Prior to establishing Solidaris, LLC and the Solidaris Group of companies, Mr. Menéndez was a co-founder of K&M Engineering & Consulting Corporation, where he provided the leadership in company operations necessary for its successful international expansion and growth. He also served as the Managing Director of the Hub River Power Group, the development company for the first large private power project in Asia. In this capacity, he led the critical negotiations for the various project agreements, and the coordination and securing of the project financing. Prior to forming K&M, Mr. Menéndez was a Senior Project Manager for International Operations at Bechtel Power Corporation and has over 25 years of experience in the management of large infrastructure projects. Mr. Menéndez is fluent in three languages and holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manhattan College.
Joseph M. Cohen is a Vice President in charge of PERI's renewable energy practice. For the past 21 years he has conducted extensive energy, environmental, and financial analyses for federal and state governments, electric utilities, private industry, and the U.S. military. His work has included assessments of the technical, economic, and market status of renewable energy, energy conservation, and energy efficient technologies. He has also analyzed environmental impacts and benefits, projected cost performance trends, and non-technical barriers to deployment of such technologies, and formulated recommendations for RD&D actions to address technical, institutional, and financial barriers to technology adoption in the market. Mr. Cohen has also performed engineering design for renewable energy systems development, and has conducted energy systems field analysis, system sizing, and energy auditing services. Mr. Cohen has a B.S. in Physics from the College of William and Mary and a M.S. in Technology and Human Affairs from the Engineering School at Washington University in St. Louis.
A. John Rezaiyan is a Vice President at PERI in charge of the firm's fossil and biomass energy and environmental services practice. He has more than 25 years of engineering and management experience in the energy and environmental fields. His experience includes technical and management roles in power sector restructuring, technical feasibility studies and economic evaluation, and process design and operations. Prior to joining PERI, Mr. Rezaiyan was a Senior Project Manager with K&M Engineering and Consulting Corp. where he was responsible for day-to-day management and quality control for power sector restructuring projects, technical feasibility and economic evaluation of clean coal projects, and technical support to infrastructure development projects. He led a team of experts to reform and restructure Ecuador's power sector and to develop emergency power systems in Nigeria; he also performed due diligence evaluations on behalf of investment banks and commercial institutions. Mr. Rezaiyan is fluent in two languages, holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland, and has completed graduate course work in Business and Management (Finance) at the University of Baltimore.
Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff, is a Chemical Engineer at PERI with more than 21 years of experience in policy/institutional development and strengthening, international business partnering and financing, commercialization of new technologies, and project management. For more than 12 years, Dr. Cheremisinoff worked at Exxon Chemical Co. and Exxon Research and Engineering Co., where he was a worldwide Product Development Manager, Project Manager, Group Leader or Section Manager responsible for petroleum refinery expansions, chemical/petrochemical plant construction, synthetic fuels and synthetic elastomers product development and marketing. In Venezuela, he provided technical expertise for three refinery modernization projects as well as fluid catalytic cracker, lube oil distillation, and petrochemical production plants. He spent four years as a resident manager in the Ukraine for USAID programs and has served as an international technical and finance investment advisor for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the World Bank and USAID. Dr. Cheremisinoff holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson College of Technology. He is a recognized authority in pollution prevention and waste management, having authored or co-authored more that 100 books and several hundred articles dealing with environmental management, pollution prevention, and advanced site remediation technologies.
Daniel F. Ancona III is a Senior Mechanical/Industrial Engineer with more than 31 years of experience in wind energy and other electric power technology development, market analysis, and policy formulation. His expertise is in the integration and utilization of grid-connected and off-grid renewable energy technology. He has represented commercial clients and the U.S. government on numerous overseas missions and served as Chairman of the International Energy Agency Wind Turbine Systems Agreement Executive Committee, with 17 member countries. Prior to joining PERI, Mr. Ancona worked for the U.S. Department of Energy for 20 years in various management positions in the wind energy research, development, and deployment programs. Mr. Ancona graduated from the University of Michigan, with a master's degree in industrial engineering and from the University of Maine with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.
Daniel J. Entingh is a Senior Economist at PERI. He has 27 years of experience in the technical management of federal R&D programs with emphasis on the analysis of physical, economic, environmental, and social aspects of energy resources and technologies. Dr. Entingh conducts technology performance and energy/power development analyses for broad-based sustainable applications, develops technology forecasts, and benefit/cost assessments. In addition, he has been intimately involved in the modeling of technology adoption and technology transfer processes, life cycle cost and cash flow analyses, market and market penetration characterizations, and employment impact estimates. Dr. Entingh designed a technically detailed handbook on the status of U.S. geothermal technology to help industry successfully promote that technology in the international marketplace. He has a Ph.D. in Biopsychology from the University of Chicago.
Allan R. Evans is a Senior Engineer and Project Manager with more than 26 years of experience in energy efficiency and renewable energy studies, technology transfer, and energy policy analyses for federal research organizations, the international donor community, state energy agencies and private industry. Dr. Evans has prepared extensive technology options protocols to inform stakeholders about renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies for buildings and utilities. As part of this work, he served as U.S. representative on the Experts Group contributing to the International Energy Agency's Promotion Manual for District Energy Systems, a "how-to" publication to inform decision-makers about the implementation and potential benefits of district heating and cooling. In addition, he has assessed advanced technologies to estimate their energy savings and analyzed the potential role of utility demand-side management programs and other incentives for increasing market penetration. He developed and presented technical material for training courses on renewable applications for decentralized rural electrification in Middle Eastern countries. Prior to joining PERI, he was an Associate Division Director and Director of Conservation R&D Programs at Argonne National Laboratory. He has a Ph.D. in Physics and Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.
Kathryn George,with more than 20 years of project finance experience, is a Senior Economist and Financial Analyst at PERI. She developed the FATE2-P model (Financial Analysis Tool for Electric Energy Projects) that is used by DOE and certain U.S. research laboratories, to calculate Cost Of Energy (COE) and rate of return on investment. She designed and prepared smaller, quicker, project-specific cash flow spreadsheets, to model improved technology design, resource variability, and different tax treatment of renewable energy projects. She has worked on a mix of energy and environmental projects, involving finance, marketing, and economic policy, and she traveled to Hyderabad India as part of a PERI team to teach private power project finance. Prior to joining PERI, Ms. George structured and closed debt and equity financings for hydroelectric and gas-fed cogeneration plants with independent power producers and worked as Assistant Manager for Alternate Energy at Texaco Inc. She has an M.B.A. degree from the Harvard Business School, an MSE in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Cornell University.
