Danny Kennedy
Senior Advisor at The Sunrise Project
Danny Kennedy
Senior Advisor at The Sunrise Project
Oakland, California
Overview
Work Experience
Venture Partner
2024 - Current
Working with our amazing SE Asian teams to bring early stage catalytic capital to entrepreneurs that need it most in the fight to slow climate change in a key market.
Chief Energy Officer
2019 - 2024
I was grateful to handover to Henri van Eeghen on the first of the month for a very smooth transition. I cannot wait to see how he and team evolve NEX to achieve its mighty mission and support 100,000 diverse entrepreneurs in the energy transition.
Senior Advisor
2024
Sunrise is a strategic re-granting organisation that supports global networks of organisations to collaborate to drive the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.
Senior Adviser
2024
Wollemi Capital exists to accelerate climate innovation, investment and action. See Wollemi.com
Unreasonable Mentor
2022
Unreasonable focuses on scaling what works. The Unreasonable community of entrepreneurs is shaping trillion-dollar industries and uplifting the lives of more than 1.4 billion people. They handpick and privately invite the world's most impactful growth-stage companies into the Unreasonable Fellowship. As an Unreasonable Mentor, I get the incredible opportunity to help scale the efforts of these history-defining ventures.
Managing Director
2015 - 2024
CalCEF’s team of leading financial professionals, entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and scientists believes that a new model of entrepreneurship and financial innovation in the public interest is required to speed the transition to a clean energy economy. We curate an ecosystem to optimise the energy transition.
President
2015 - 2023
CalCharge was a public private partnership we ran for a decade to boost battery startups in the energy innovation ecosystem of the golden state. After a decade of success' we started to globalize the work, with our Just Batteries initiative, and decided to wind down this organization. Li costs are around $107 kwh and the IRA is putting billions into the industry, Lithium Valley stemming from Imperial County is becoming a reality and some of our little startups like Cuberg have exited and are building big factories. It feels good to claim victory and move on to what's NEX!
Member of the California 100 Commission
2021 - 2023
Founding Board Chair
2020 - 2023
A joint venture of RMI and New Energy Nexus, Third Derivative is a new vertically-integrated engine for climate innovation. We find, fund, hone, and scale the world’s most-promising technologies to achieve larger, faster reductions in global carbon emissions.
Cofounder
2012 - 2023
Powerhouse is an innovation firm and venture fund. The firm partners with corporations and investors to help them find and engage with cutting-edge startups, tap into proprietary market insights, and lead the next century of clean technology innovation. The fund, Powerhouse Ventures, identifies and supports founding teams building innovative software to rapidly transform our global energy and mobility systems.
Cofounder
2007 - 2016
We're a new kind of solar company. We want to change the game by making photovoltaics simple, efficient and affordable for every homeowner in the US and around the world. Sungevity has created a revolutionary and innovative approach to the entire solar installation process that saves everyone time, money and effort. Building on this, together, we can save our Planet Earth.
Education
BSc
1990 - 1994