David Crane

David Crane is an investor and strategic advisor to select startups, incumbent companies, and institutional investors engaged in and around the clean energy sector. A climate advocate himself, Crane is uniquely positioned within the industry, having spent his career in the fossil fuel industry, trying to make it cleaner and greener from the inside.

Previously, Crane was CEO of NRG Energy, which he joined in 2003 when it was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He grew it over his 12-year tenure to be a Fortune 200 company, engaged in conventional power generation and, after the acquisition of Reliant in 2009, in competitive retail electricity services. Crane led NRG to the forefront of next-generation clean energy development as one of the nation’s largest utility-scale renewables company (NRG Renew), a top-four home solar business (NRG Home Solar), the owner of the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture project (Petra Nova), and the nation’s most extensive level 3 electric vehicle charging network (EVGO).

Crane is a leading voice on climate change and the energy sector’s role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions having written extensively and spoken widely on the topic, recently as editor-at-large for greenbiz.com. He was an active member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership from 2008 to 2011 and today is a B Team leader, where he co-heads with Mary Robinson, the Net Zero Initiative, and member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and a Board member of VoteSolar, an advocacy organization in the United States dedicated to the promotion and protection of solar power at the state level. Crane previously was a proud member of the Board of Directors of Dean Kamen’s FIRST robotics competition and of ACWA, the leading private energy and water infrastructure company in the Middle East.

Crane was named Energy Industry “CEO of the Year” by EnergyBiz in 2010, top CEO in the electric utility sector by Institutional Investor in 2011 and “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young in 2010. Crane was also awarded the Corporate Environmental Leadership award by GlobalGreen in 2014 and the Equinox Solar Champion Award and The C.K. Prahalad Award for Global Sustainability Business Leadership in 2015.

Crane graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts and from Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor.