What 25 Years in Energy Has Taught Me About Resilience

Since then, several factors have forced the industry to rethink what resilience really means. Severe weather occurrences, aging infrastructure built 50 to 70 years ago, global volatility, and the rapid advancement of technologies like AI have all played a role in reshaping the concept. Now, resilience is more than just a buzzword, but a practical framework for planning around major, and often unknown, disruptions.

Most importantly, these factors have made it increasingly clear that resilience is about people. The energy leaders making challenging decisions, the teams designing our infrastructure, and the communities who depend on it every day are just as critical in resilience planning as the technical components. Understanding resilience from both a technical and human lens is how we best navigate uncertainty. That dual approach is key to a resilient energy future, and the difference between enduring and simply recovering. 

Designing for Adaptability

Throughout the course of my career, the most successful projects I’ve been a part of have all shared one common trait: they were built to perform and adapt. 

Take Ameresco’s work with the Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos, for example. The facility is home to a microgrid that is designed to be resilient, built on a combination of solar power, battery storage, and backup generator capacity. During a particular outage caused by a foil balloon, the microgrid detected the loss of grid power instantly and went into ‘islanded mode’ in seconds. When grid power was restored, it smoothly reconnected without any interruption to operations. This example shows how energy systems can be designed to respond to the environment around them in real time, rather than simply waiting to be fixed. 

Generally speaking, that design philosophy is more important now than ever. The rapid expansion of AI and data centers is driving electricity demand at a scale our existing grid infrastructure was not built to handle. According to the International Energy Agency, global demand is already outpacing grid upgrades, with investments needing to increase by 50% by 2030 to keep pace. 

At the same time, that pressure is surfacing real opportunities to modernize infrastructure. AI-optimized facilities require dedicated, behind-the-meter generation deployed on accelerated timelines, infrastructure that performs without adding strain to a grid already under stress. Getting that right is fundamental to both near-term growth and long-term resilience.

But the technical solution alone is not enough. It also requires a human foundation, one backed by leadership, coordination, and the ability to make sound decisions when the environment is anything but simple.

Understanding the Human Impact of Resilience

It’s easy to focus just on the technical terms when considering resilience: redundancy, switching times, and system recovery. And while these concepts are important, reliance ultimately ladders back to the human impact. For critical facilities, power disruptions can have real human consequences. 

At a hospital, a few seconds matter when it comes to patients getting the care they need. At a water treatment facility or military installation, a few minutes can compromise an entire system and the people depending on it. The margin for error at these facilities is not measured in hours, and the communities they serve cannot afford to treat resilience as an aspiration. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a number of different projects with a variety of different organizations, from federal agencies to utilities to large institutions. Those who plan for resiliency are protecting more than just infrastructure; they are protecting people and the systems they depend on every single day. And throughout the process, they’re building something a little harder to measure, but no less important: trust.

These Systems Also Require Resilient Leadership

Today’s energy leaders face a unique set of challenges. Innovation cycles are tightening, policies continue to shift, and sustainability has become less operational and more aspirational. And, as we’ve seen, electricity demand keeps climbing. Balancing near-term performance against decisions that will impact future outcomes in this kind of environment is particularly challenging.  

This is why investing in collaboration is so important. Ensuring the right people have a seat at the table, including engineers, operators, policymakers, finance teams, and more, helps ensure perspectives are aligned and that we fully understand how each decision will impact the system as a whole. 

Consistency matters just as much as collaboration. When teams are under pressure, they look for steadiness, especially in an industry constantly inundated by change. Leaders who provide that steadiness in both their words and daily commitments, actions, and values tend to earn a different kind of trust. And that trust has a ripple effect, all the way to the organization’s impact on its community.

Looking Ahead  

The energy landscape will keep evolving. New technologies will emerge and demand adaptation. Infrastructure challenges will continue to shift. What should stay constant is the commitment to planning resilience from the outset, across the systems being built and the people responsible for leading and operating them. 

The organizations that tend to navigate this best made an intentional choice early on. They recognized that technical resilience and human resilience are connected, and they built specifically around that understanding. The bar will keep rising. But the knowledge, tools, and talent to meet it have never been more within reach.