Francisco C. de la Chesnaye - Vice President of Energy Strategy & Economic Policy, responsible for executive leadership, energy strategy, and business development
Lessly A. Goudarzi - Founder and Strategic Advisor, provides technical, economic and financial counsel in both the private and public sector.
Frances P. Wood - Senior Director of Analysis, specializes in policy analyses using a variety of integrated energy models with an emphasis on climate policies, buildings and transportation energy demands, and biofuels.
A. Michael Schaal - Senior Director of Delivery, specializes in policy analyses using a variety of integrated energy models, with an emphasis on oil and natural gas and biofuels.
Jasmine B. Greene - Director of Budget and Operations, directs budgeting, planning, operations, systems, and administration as well as supports business development and client projects.
Peter Whitman - Associate Director, specializes in the development of large energy modeling systems and policy analysis in the power and petroleum markets.
Sharon Showalter - Associate Director, specializes in integrated modeling with a special emphasis on climate policies, environmental regulations and the electric power sector.
Reginald (Sandy) Sanders - Senior Consultant, specializes in the design and implementation of energy models with emphasis on linear programming.
Tracy Damico - Senior Consultant, specializes in database design, software development, and modeling.
Amogh Prabhu - Program Manager, specializes in optimization, data analysis, modeling, statistics, visualization, and systems integration.
Samaneh Babaee - Senior Consultant, specializes in techno-economic, environmental, and policy analysis of energy systems and clean energy technology assessments.
Hao Deng - Senior Consultant, specializes in economic analysis at the intersection of energy, environment, and public health.
Banafsheh Jabarivelisdeh - Senior Consultant, specializes in critical materials and energy systems modeling, analysis, and optimization.
Jefferson Riera - Consultant, specializes in development and refinement of energy systems models, particularly for power, natural gas, and hydrogen.
Daniel C. Hatchell - Consultant, specializes in energy and climate modeling with a focus on oil and gas, greenhouse gas emissions, and subsurface topics.
Prior to joining OnLocation, Dr. de la Chesnaye was a Senior Technical Executive at the Electric Power Research Institute and the Chief Climate Economist at U.S. EPA. His prior experience includes domestic and international waste minimization and pollution prevention project implementation (World Environment Center, Uniroyal Plastics).
He earned a B.S. in Economics from Norwich University, the Military College of Vermont, a M.A. in Economics from American University, a M.S. in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University, and holds a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Wood is a Senior Director at OnLocation and has over thirty years of energy and environmental consulting experience with government and private clients. She has performed policy analyses using a variety of integrated energy models, including EIA’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) that provide comprehensive representations of energy markets. Topical areas include impacts of technology and R&D, tax incentives, and regulatory policies across many sectors of the energy economy. Policy objectives have included the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, improving energy security through reducing oil consumption and imports, as well as lowering costs to consumers. The electric power sector plays a central role in environmental policy, and Ms. Wood has analyzed the impacts of various proposals for reducing emissions from this sector, as well as its capability to adopt new technologies, such as wind and solar PV. She also has conducted several analyses of alternative transportation policies, including fuel taxes, vehicle mandates and subsidies, CAFE standards, biofuel mandates, and transportation low carbon fuel standards. She led a model development activity to add representation of hydrogen production and delivery to NEMS. She also is working on the construction of a new transportation model for EIA’s World Energy Projection System Plus (WEPS+). Other areas of interest include the analyses of residential and commercial sector policies, such as appliance standards and subsidies.
Before joining OnLocation in 1997, Ms. Wood was Director of Consulting for the AES Corporation, a global power company. Ms. Wood has an A.B. from Dartmouth College and a M.S. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University.
Mr. Schaal is a Senior Director at OnLocation and has over thirty years of energy consulting experience with government and private clients. He has extensive experience in leading and managing large-scale modeling efforts, including NEMS. He also authors expert reports and has provided expert witness testimony. Mr. Schaal was previously director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Office of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels Analysis. There he had responsibility for those subjects in support of the Annual Energy Outlook, and the International Energy Outlook, and service reports for different branches of the U.S. government. Key reports that Mr. Schaal has lead that have relied upon the application of a variety of models included: U.S. and global estimates of shale gas and tight oil resources; analysis of the impacts of the U.S. exporting LNG that led the granting of LNG export licenses; the analysis of lifting the moratorium on the U.S. exporting crude oil which is credited with lifting that moratorium and allowing U.S. oil exports, the importance of northeast refineries to regional gasoline consumers, reports regarding biofuels and the Renewable Fuel Standard, and a report on the impacts of increased hydrogen production and consumption.
Mr. Schaal’s prior experience includes working as a professional engineer with Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, where he was involved in economic analysis, engineering, construction, and operations of first-of-a-kind facilities, and as a Principal of Energy Ventures Analysis of Arlington, Virginia.
He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the California State University in 1986, his Master's degree in Mineral Economics from The Pennsylvania State University in 1995, is a former member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service, and is a licensed engineer in three states.
Dr. Greene is the Director of Budget and Operations at OnLocation, responsible for budgeting, planning, operations, systems, and administration. She has more than a decade of experience administering organizations and businesses in the public, non-profit and private sectors.
Prior to joining OnLocation, Dr. Greene was Development Director for the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center. She also served as a Research Analyst with the Schaefer Center for Public Policy while earning her doctorate. She graduated, magna cum laude, from Emporia State University (Kansas) with a B.S. in political science and then graduated, cum laude, from Kansas State University with a Master of Public Administration degree with an emphasis in Public Budgeting & Finance. Dr. Greene earned her Doctor of Public Administration, specialization in Program Administration, at the University of Baltimore. Her research explored the role and impact of informal social networks in addressing food inequities. Dr. Greene was named a 2020 American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Founder’s Fellow.
Dr. Whitman is an Associate Director with OnLocation and has almost thirty years of experience in the energy analysis and policy fields. His primary focus has been in the development of large energy modeling systems and policy analysis in the power and petroleum markets. He has extensive experience in the development of EIA’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), including the electricity, coal, and biofuels sectors. While with the Department of Energy’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, he was instrumental in developing criteria that guided the Environmental Protection Agency’s issuance of waivers from the Renewable Portfolio Standards requirements granted to small refineries. At Potomac Economics, the market monitor for the Midcontinent ISO, he designed, wrote, and implemented their automated real-time market power mitigation software, along with numerous tools to screen and detect market power.
Prior to joining OnLocation in 2021, Dr. Whitman was an Operations Research analyst in the Office of Energy Policy and Innovation of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where he specialized in price formation issues. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park, a Master’s in Numerical Science from the Johns Hopkins University, and a Master’s in Finance from the George Washington University.
SHARON B. SHOWALTER
Ms. Showalter is an Associate Director at OnLocation with more than 30 years experience in data analysis, computer modeling, and project management focused on analyzing energy and environmental policies with a special emphasis on climate policies and the electric power sector in the United States. She currently manages projects and provides energy and environmental modeling and expertise to both government and non-government clients using the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) computer model. Her specialty areas include integrated energy modeling, climate change and other environmental emissions analysis, and electric generation technologies and policy initiatives. Client projects include analyzing the potential energy, environmental and economic impacts of a variety of climate-related legislative and regulatory policies including the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, technology-based standards, and tax-related incentives . She also works closely with the OnLocation NEMS development team to design and test model enhancements as needed in order to meet client needs.
Ms. Showalter has managed and performed numerous projects using the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) to analyze potential impacts of CO2 mitigation strategies, renewable portfolio standards, clean energy standards, renewable and clean electricity tax credits, 45Q sequestration tax credits, the adoption of new electric technologies, and environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS).
Before joining OnLocation in 2004, Ms. Showalter was a Senior Project Manager for the AES Corporation, a global power company, for 18 years, focused primarily on integrated energy modeling and corporate strategic planning. Ms. Showalter received an A.B. from Dartmouth College (cum laude) and a M.S. in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Sanders is a Senior Consultant with OnLocation and has over thirty five years of experience creating and exercising integrated energy and environmental models to help clients gain the knowledge necessary to confront the energy and environmental issues that continue to challenge our economic and environmental health. His last 25 years with the OnLocation team has allowed him to use his modeling and linear programming expertise to provide objective quantitative analysis to a wide variety of stakeholders in addressing energy, environmental and climate issues for the U.S.
Mr. Sanders began his career with a government agency that would become the Energy Information Administration (EIA), helping to create and utilize an integrated energy and environmental model, which helped the U.S. address the challenges of the 1973 oil embargo. He continued with EIA for nearly a decade, building, modifying and using models to inform policy makers in their efforts to address a series of energy and environmental issues that challenged the nation. Much of his current focus is on providing analysis of the impacts of proposed environmental legislation on the energy markets. Specifically, climate change policies are expected to press the power sector and refining sector into adopting new less carbon intensive asset choices. Model enhancements and analysis are needed to inform OnLocation’s clients of the economic consequences and physical limitations of investing in these new assets. Each policy choice influences the selection of new assets and results in different carbon migration efficiency and economic outcomes, such as higher direct costs to consumers.
Mr. Sanders has a M.S. degree in Management Science from the University of Miami and also received his B.S. from Miami where he majored in Mathematics with a minor in Physics.
TRACY DAMICO
Ms. Damico is a Senior Consultant with OnLocation and has over thirty years of experience in database design, software development, and modeling. She has a variety of experience with NEMS including work with NEMS architecture, Integrating Module, Industrial Demand Module (IDM), biofuel submodule of the Renewable Fuel Module (RFM), and NEMS setup, operation, and maintenance. Recent experience has included IDM redesign coding, integration and updating of an external biofuel submodule (Polysys) into the RFM, and updates to external RFM supply curves. She has assisted outside agencies in incorporating and trouble-shooting new NEMS model assumptions and installed and tested NEMS on commercial computer systems. Ms. Damico is very familiar with various NEMS modules, their operation, and the overall functionality of NEMS.
AMOGH PRABHU, Ph.D.
Dr. Prabhu is a Program Manager at OnLocation with expertise in optimization, data analysis & modeling, statistics, visualization, and systems integration. He has formulated and constructed models to solve large scale optimization problems and to continuously monitor the efficiency of production systems in an industrial environment. He has built complex mixed integer nonlinear programming models for industrial gas pipeline networks to enable decision making for real-time operations and for long term strategic simulations using AIMMS. Additionally, he has built asset efficiency monitoring tools based on unsupervised machine learning techniques such as k-means clustering and k-nearest neighbors, among others, to mine raw industrial data using R & RStudio. In the past, he also developed monitoring methodologies based on statistical process control (SPC) techniques for Advanced Process Control (APC) systems used in the chemical industry. In order to communicate these tools to a broad audience, Dr. Prabhu built complex visualizations using Tableau & Power BI connected to a variety of data sources. Moreover, he developed the vision to industrialize these tools in partnership with IT/OT teams and designed databases in Oracle & MySQL and front-end user interfaces in JavaScript to support their execution.
Dr. Prabhu has more than a decade of experience managing industrial projects and excels at communicating project milestones to stakeholders up and down the chain, while working with cross functional and international teams. He has also provided guidance to similar projects worldwide and served as technical community leader in the area of data analysis and optimization.
Prior to joining OnLocation in 2020, Dr. Prabhu was a Senior Modeling Scientist at Air Liquide (an industrial gas major) for over 12 years. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
SAMANEH BABAEE, Ph.D.
Dr. Babaee is a Senior Consultant at OnLocation with more than 12 years research background and expertise in techno-economic, environmental, and policy analysis of energy systems and clean energy technology assessment. The primary focus of her work has been on the application of energy-economic optimization models (e.g., TIMES, MARKAL) and a human-Earth system model (GCAM) to assess a range of critical issues including: energy consumption and fuel prices, technology innovation, air pollution and greenhouse gases (GHGs), energy policies and climate mitigation goals.
Dr. Babaee has employed the MARKAL energy system model along with the EPA U.S. nine-region database (EPAUS9r) to explore the potential role of natural gas combined-cycle with carbon capture and storage (NGCC-CCS) in decarbonization scenarios for the U.S. energy system at the national and regional levels through mid-century. Dr. Babaee has also developed and managed large databases (e.g., NUSTD) for U.S. energy systems containing cost, performance, and environmental characteristics of various energy technologies as well as policies, regulations, and decarbonization pathways for electric, transportation, buildings, and resource supply sectors. She utilized NUSTD dataset compatible with TIMES energy model to perform sensitivity analysis and examine the role of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the U.S. CO2 and air pollution emission changes through mid-century. She provided energy modeling analysis support for developing residential and commercial sectors of the Framework for Analysis of Climate-Energy-Technology Systems (FACETS) model.
Prior to joining OnLocation, Dr. Babaee was an ORISE Fellow in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. She holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University.
HAO DENG, Ph.D.
Dr. Deng is an Senior Consultant at OnLocation with experience in economic analysis at the intersection of energy, environment, and public health.
Before joining OnLocation, Dr. Deng was a postdoc associate at the Solutions for Energy, Air, Climate and Health (SEARCH) Center, funded by EPA and located at Yale University. His role included providing NEMS technical and modeling support across various projects, analyzing the effects of carbon taxes on air pollution and the natural gas market, and investigating the impacts from increased building electrification in the residential sector.
Dr. Deng is experienced with a wide array of empirical economic methodologies. He built a dynamic structural demand model for the residential solar PV market and investigated the role of financing in the market development in California. Using the marginal damage results from an integrated assessment model, he evaluated the effects of urbanization on the air pollution damages in the U.S. since 1970. Adopting a reduced form approach, he analyzed the pricing of residential and small commercial solar PV systems in the U.S. and examined the factors behind price variations across geographical locations.
Dr. Deng received a B. Eng. in Thermal Energy and Power Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University; and a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics from Yale University.
BANAFSHEH JABARIVELISDEH, Ph.D.
Dr. Jabarivelisdeh is a Senior Consultant at OnLocation with more than 10 years' research and expertise in energy systems modeling, analysis, and optimization.
Prior to joining OnLocation, Dr. Jabarivelisdeh was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The primary focus of her work was developing unit process systems models (MATLAB-based) to quantify process energy and greenhouse gas (GHS) emissions for producing primary chemicals in the chemical industry and to further estimate the reduction potentials for high-level retrofit purposes. Furthermore, Dr. Jabarivelisdeh has implemented bottom-up models with high technical and economic resolution (TIMES framework) to conduct decarbonization scenarios for a net-zero future for the U.S. chemical industry. Her work includes extensive evaluations on the role of technology evolutions for innovative low-carbon technologies and policy interventions (e.g., carbon pricing, tax credits), along with extended carbon borders including upstream emissions to induce optimal transition pathways.
Dr. Jabarivelisdeh is also experienced in model-based bioprocess optimization and control with applications in biotechnological processes. She has developed an adaptive control approach for improving the productivity of biochemicals using dynamic metabolic engineering strategies. Dr. Jabarivelisdeh has extensive experience in computer-aided simulation and energy integration modeling of various industrial processes for improved process energy and energy efficiency. From 2015-2020, Dr. Jabarivelisdeh was a member of the International Max Planck Research School Magdeburg for Advanced Methods in Process and Systems Engineering, one of the top programs in Germany for international researchers.
Dr. Jabarivelisdeh holds a dual PhD in Systems Theory and Automation Control from the University of Magdeburg (Germany) and Chemical Engineering from KU Leuven (Belgium).
JEFFERSON RIERA
Mr. Riera is a Consultant with OnLocation with expertise in optimization, data analysis, and integrated energy modeling. The primary focus of his work has been the development and refinement of energy system models, particularly those for the power, natural gas, and hydrogen sectors.
Prior to joining OnLocation, Mr. Riera was a Research Associate at Technische Universität Berlin and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. He has built energy modeling systems to explore the interdependence of the power and water sectors in the Middle East under high renewable energy penetration scenarios. His work has extended to examine the infrastructure requirements of developing a hydrogen-ammonia economy for Saudi Arabia and the development of a global hydrogen market. He has also independently consulted for the Environmental Defense Fund; he adapted the Global Gas Model (GGM) to assess the impact of methane tax policies on global trade flows and emission reductions.
Mr. Riera holds a B.A. in environmental science and an M.S. in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.S. in earth science and engineering from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.
DANIEL C. HATCHELL, Ph.D.
Dr. Hatchell is a Consultant at OnLocation with experience in subsurface modeling, CO2 capture and storage, and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). His work focuses on energy and climate modeling with a specialty in oil and gas, greenhouse gas emissions, and subsurface topics.
Before joining OnLocation, Dr. Hatchell worked as a graduate research assistant and NSF graduate research fellow at both Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin. He has experience with reservoir simulation, having used ECLIPSE and CMG to model subsurface deployment of CO2 for EOR and storage, as well as performing MATLAB-based streamline simulations to quickly screen and forecast large oilfield datasets. He further has conducted laboratory research in a variety of energy-related topics, including synthesizing and modeling nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions for EOR, generating temperature- and salt-resistant CO2 foams for EOR and storage, and developing amine solvents for CO2 capture systems.
Dr. Hatchell holds a BS in chemical engineering and a PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an MS in energy resources engineering from Stanford University.
