Thomas Kramer Emmons – 50th Reunion Essay

Thomas Kramer Emmons

1158 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10029

tkemmons@gmail.com

646-943-0513

Spouse(s): Robin Beckett (1980)

Child(ren): Elizabeth (1984), Stuart (1989)

Education: Harvard Business School, MBA, 1975

National Service: US Navy, 1969-72

Career: 44 years in energy, natural resources, and project finance (including 5 years in Hong Kong) with several banks, investment banks, and investment companies; focus on renewable energy since 2003. Served on boards of several wind, solar, and biofuels companies.

Avocations: Sustainability and the natural environment; member of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Leadership Council; contributor, Yale Environmental Sustainability Summit – 2015, 2017; board member, BrightFarms Inc., a greenhouse operator growing local produce.

College: Silliman

Coming to Yale from a small public high school was surely a defining event in my life, in ways I couldn’t fully anticipate. And experiencing the challenge, enjoyment, and privilege of the Yale experience, and sharing in the Yale community since then, has been formative.

To fulfill my national service obligation, and impose some certainty into the years after graduation, I enlisted in the navy, serving as an officer on a destroyer in the Atlantic. It was politically unpopular at the time, but was a useful personal experience in taking responsibility at a young age and working within organizations. It was also deemed valuable by business schools, I later found.

Professionally, I have been involved in energy, natural resources and project finance my whole career. After business school, I started out in oil and gas finance, and later worked in conventional power, mining, water, and infrastructure. Since 2003, when it gained a foothold in North America, I have concentrated exclusively on renewable energy. I have worked in the US, Latin American, and Asian markets. Most interesting has been providing financing for early stage wind and solar developers. I am currently a partner at Pegasus Capital Advisors, a private fund manager in New York City. Renewable energy today provides the majority of new US electricity generation (more than natural gas) and is the key energy source for a sustainable future. Separately, I serve on the board of BrightFarms Inc., a greenhouse operator, which sells greens to local supermarkets from its several locations, cutting thousands of “food miles” off the kale in our dinner salads.

Robin and I have been married since 1980. We have two children, Elizabeth and Stuart, who are living and working in New York City. Robin retired after a banking career and is now involved with the Central Park Conservancy, and in preservation of historic buildings. She is active with her alma mater, Penn Design School, where she earned a masters in city planning. Except for five years in Hong Kong, we have always lived in New York City.

I have been an active Yale alumnus: fundraising, serving as class treasurer, even joining a tour to Russia, England, and Wales (where we visited Eli Yale’s grave) with the Yale Alumni Chorus. I serve on the Leadership Council of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and contributed to their Yale Environmental Sustainability Summit (2015, 2017).

Our class’s generation has grown up during—and has contributed to—what must be the period of most rapid and extreme change in man’s history: from shared telephone landlines to cell phones; from mechanical calculators to distributed AI; a tripling of global population; massive growth in fossil energy and water consumption for travel, housing, data, and food, etc., etc. But we are gradually accumulating a huge payable for this growth, the magnitude, timing, and form of which can’t be accurately forecasted. It appears that mankind is heading toward a day of accountability, but doesn’t have the foresight, ability to plan and collaborate across boundaries, or will to incur short-term material sacrifices to forestall it.