Green Jobs: Prudencio New CEO at Hara; New Itron CEO; Plus Enphase, LIPA, LDK

Lots of greentech personnel movement this holiday season

Itron (Nasdaq:ITRI) named Philip Mezey as CEO. Mezey was most recently COO for Itron's Global Energy segment. John Holleran was named Itron’s EVP and COO.  

Rodrigo J Prudencio was named the new CEO at Hara, a cloud-based energy and resource data management firm. Prudencio was most recently a partner at Nth Power, a Hara investor along with GE and KP. He replaces Dan Leff, Hara's CEO for less than two years and formerly COO of Enron Energy Services.

Enphase Energy (NASDAQ: ENPH) announced several new senior executive hires: Ciaran Fox is the new VP of quality and reliability, and Martin Rogers is now VP of customer service and support. Rogers was previously at Schneider Electric and Power-One. Steve Lapointe, formerly with Cadence, has been named VP of human resources. 

Robert Roche was named VP of Sales, Marketing and Communications at flexible thin-film CIGS solar firm Ascent Solar.

LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK), appointed Xingxue Tong as CEO. LDK recently received investment from a China state-owned entity.

Long Island Power Authority's COO, Michael Hervey, resigned over criticism for the utility's alleged slow response after the recent storm. Eighty-two percent of LIPA customers lost power during Sandy.

Boralex, a Canadian renewable power producer with an installed capacity of more than 500 megawatts in Canada, the U.S., and France, named Robert F. Hall as Chairman of its Board of Directors.



Harris Utilities SmartWorks named Chris Lewis as VP of business development, focused on smart grid products. Lewis was most recently director of market development with Cognera, a Harris Utilities firm.  

Retroficiency announced that Bill Richardson, former New Mexico governor and Secretary of the U.S. DOE, has been added as a member of its Advisory Board. The Boston-based startup's technology platform combines public and proprietary data to create building energy models -- ones it says can shed light on where energy is being wasted without entering the building.

Sapphire Energy, looking to produce algae-based green crude oil, named Jeff Webster as COO. Prior to Sapphire, Webster was COO at Solazyme (NASDAQ: SZYM), another algal oil and bioproduct firm. 

Aurora Algae named Lee Covert as SVP of sales. Aurora develops methods for growing, harvesting, extracting and producing algae-derived products. 



Ceramic Fuel Cells (AIM / ASX: CFU) named Bob Kennett as CEO, replacing Brendan Dow. The Australian firm builds SOFC-based small-scale on-site micro combined heat and power (CHP) and distributed generation units.  



Fallbrook Technologies, an engine transmission technology innovator, named John K. Penver to CFO.  

See our article on cleantech VC investor Mohr Davidow and its recent personnel changes here.

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) is seeking an Executive Director.