Interesting Engineering – The Case for Building Cleaner and More Resilient Energy Systems

John Plack is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Ameresco, leading multi-disciplinary teams to deliver innovative, performance-based energy solutions that support decarbonization, energy security, and long-term operational resilience.

With over 25 years of experience, John has led the technical execution of more than $2 billion in energy infrastructure projects. He specializes in geothermal, combined heat and power (CHP), HVAC modernization, and distributed energy systems, all tailored to meet the unique needs of complex client portfolios.

He is driven by a passion for transforming how energy infrastructure serves people, missions, and the planet.

Interesting Engineering: With energy security, decarbonization, and grid resilience suddenly becoming boardroom priorities rather than niche engineering concerns, what changes are you seeing in how organizations think about energy infrastructure today compared to even five years ago?

John Plack: Five years ago, most conversations started with cost. Now they start with: what happens if the grid goes down? Organizations are starting to treat energy infrastructure the way they treat any system that can stop operations if it fails, because it can.

Storms, grid stress, and fuel supply disruptions aren’t theoretical anymore. Further, they carry the risk of mission failure, whether at a VA hospital or a Department of Defense (DoD) facility.

What that’s done is open the door for projects that were always technically sound but hard to fund. I couldn’t get traction on conversations around geothermal, microgrids, self-generation, and storage five years ago the way I can today. The business case is the same, but the risk tolerance has changed.

IE: Was there a particular project, challenge, or moment early in your career that convinced you that engineering could fundamentally reshape how organizations use and think about energy?

When I was starting, I worked on a GSA ESPC project in which one building had a gas-fired chiller that wasn’t performing well, and the facility team was frustrated. After looking into the installation and how it was controlled, we realized the system wasn’t being used the way it should have been.

Instead of just swapping out equipment, we changed the control sequences, added an electric chiller, and set up a plan to use the gas-fired chiller to lower peak electric demand and the electric chiller when electricity rates were more favorable.

That project was an early example for me of how energy engineering is more than just making equipment efficient. It is about understanding how a facility operates, how utilities bill for energy, and how to align controls, rates, and infrastructure to meet operational goals while saving money.

Working with federal clients reinforced that lesson. Many of the sites we encountered, like military bases, VA facilities, and other government buildings, had not seen major modernization in decades. The deferred maintenance challenge in federal buildings is enormous.

The DoD backlog alone has more than doubled over the past decade and is now over $370 billion. The facility needs have not gone away, but funding has always been a challenge.

The ESPC structure answered that. The project funds itself on the savings it generates. When you walk away from a project knowing the facility is paying for it through materialized savings, it changes how you think about what’s possible.

We have the technology resources and funding opportunities to make these projects happen, but we need visibility into the benefits of infrastructure modernization in these buildings.

IE: From your perspective, what are we still getting wrong about the transition to resilient, low-carbon energy systems, and what practical engineering changes could make the biggest difference?

The technology isn’t what’s slowing us down. Geothermal, storage, and microgrid solutions are proven. What slows projects down is everything around the technology: permitting, workforce capacity, procurement timelines, financing structures.

At Fort Polk, we were drilling wells in the backyard of 3,600 homes and running new piping through occupied buildings, but the biggest challenge was coordination.

The other thing I’d push back on is treating resilience and decarbonization as two separate goals. When you remove fossil fuel heating from a military installation, you’ve cut emissions and eliminated a supply chain dependency at the same time. Those aren’t competing priorities.

IE: How are technologies like AI-driven energy management, advanced controls, geothermal systems, and distributed generation changing the way engineers design and operate modern energy infrastructure?

The biggest change is optionality. We no longer design static systems. Now we’re designing infrastructure that can shift in real time, drawing from different sources, responding to grid signals, or isolating from the grid entirely if it needs to.

Data centers are a good example of where this is heading. The compute loads for AI are enormous, and the utility queue to serve those customers can run for seven years. The answer is co-located generation with controls that manage load and supply in real-time. That’s what we’re building at Ameresco right now.

The other shift is that we’re more technology-agnostic than we used to be. The right answer depends on the site, the load, and the risk profile. Engineers have to be comfortable working across a wider set of tools and making the call based on what they’re seeing on that site.

IE: When engineers are designing systems that directly affect energy reliability, emissions, and even national resilience, where do you think their responsibility begins and ends?

It doesn’t end at commissioning. When you’re working on a military installation, a hospital, or a government facility, the consequences of getting it wrong are significant. People live in those buildings.

Operations depend on that power. Engineers have to document, verify, and commission thoroughly, and the schedule doesn’t change that.

I’d push back a little on the framing of responsibility, though. The engineers I work with aren’t motivated by obligation. They want to build systems that actually perform. The projects that come out well are almost always the ones where the team cares whether it still works after they leave.

IE: Over more than two decades and billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure projects, what lessons or habits have mattered most to you as an engineering leader?

You need to be able to stay flexible. Projects stall when someone decides early what the answer is and stops asking questions. We’ve built geothermal systems, microgrids, and storage projects across North America and Europe, and none of them started with a predetermined solution.

You have to understand what the facility actually needs, figure out what constraints exist, and then match the technology to those realities.

IE: Looking ahead, what kind of energy future are you hoping to help build, and what role do you believe engineers will play in getting us there?

I’m hoping for a less fragile energy future. The grid we have now was built around assumptions that don’t hold anymore: centralized generation, predictable load, stable fuel supply. All three are under pressure right now, at the same time.

What I’m working toward is infrastructure that can absorb disruption, reduce the dependencies that create vulnerability, and stay efficient enough that costs stay manageable for the people actually living and working in these buildings.

Engineers are the ones who physically build these systems and make sure they perform long after construction ends. The future gets built by the people willing to figure out what actually works on a specific site, for a specific customer, and then go build it.

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