Jonathan Koch (MBA/MS ’96): ‘You Felt Like School Was on Your Side’

This story is part of Erb’s 30th Anniversary series, celebrating three decades of impact at the intersection of business and sustainability.

Jonathan Koch (MBA/MS ’96) was at the Erb Institute in the very beginning, when the dual-degree program was called the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP). He has remained connected to Erb over the years—through hiring several Erb alumni, returning to teach a seminar for Professor Greg Keoleian and a sustainable finance course at Ross School of Business, and his unwavering enthusiasm for the University of Michigan.

Now, he serves as vice president of development at NextEra Energy Resources, the largest renewable energy player in the world. Koch talked with us about his career path, from environmental consulting to entrepreneurial ventures to NextEra, and how the sustainability landscape has changed over the past three decades.

How did you find your way to CEMP? 

My passion was in the environment, and I was doing environmental consulting in a big firm in DC. There was a group being set up to advise large corporations on how to think strategically about business and the environment. This was before we used words like “sustainability.” It was very early days in all this thought, and Stuart Hart [U-M professor and Erb’s founding director] was a leader. When I went to the School of Natural Resources, I got to know Stuart my first year. That’s when he was putting CEMP together, and that’s when this joint degree was created. In my first semester at Michigan, I was able to create this relationship and then carry it forward, and by my second year, I was in CEMP. 

How did you benefit from being part of the program? 

We were creating CEMP in real time with Stuart, and we had all this great coursework. The university made available scholarship money for the initial group, and I was able to become a teaching assistant with Greg Keoleian in industrial ecology. It was a great place to go to school, but it was also that you felt like the school was on your side. I don’t think you always feel that way when you’re at these institutions. I felt like Michigan was there to do everything it could to help you through your graduate years, and I felt very fortunate. With Michigan, you have professors who light a fire under you. 

Would you say your time at CEMP shaped your career? 

I think the dual-degree program gave me a great platform on which to get hired. I continued working at Booz Allen after graduation and moved to GE from there. Then I decided to do a couple of entrepreneurial things: One was starting a software company to sell utilities over the internet, and the other was to create one of the first infrastructure funds investing in renewables. We were able to grow the funds over time, and I did that for 15 years or so. When I left the fund, I was able to take all that experience and move to the operating side, and I ran a renewable IPP. From there, I joined NextEra, which is the largest renewables player in the world and one of the largest investors in energy infrastructure in the U.S.  

How do renewables fit into your current work at NextEra? 

NextEra does all forms of renewables, and I’ve been involved in that mostly in the M&A capacity for renewables. In my role in development, I now touch on all major forms of generation, including renewables and gas. One of the biggest drivers of what we’re doing today is coming up with generation to satisfy the demand that’s created by hyperscalers for artificial intelligence. So everything you’re reading about in the press today: How are we going to build all these data centers? How are we going to also build for other load growth, as more things in our industrial system are electrified? All of this is creating tremendous demand growth for electricity that we haven’t seen in the last 50 years. 

What is something that you really enjoy about this work? 

The people I work with. You’re working really hard with people day in and day out, and you have to be working with good people to get any satisfaction out of it. That’s always been a huge priority, and there’s wonderful people here. 

The other piece that’s really gratifying about being in the energy business is that we build things. We create large power plants that, when they are built and operating, you can go touch and see these enormous pieces of equipment that you have been part of creating, installing, and operating. You may not be the person turning the wrench at the site, but you’re part of seeing something go from a piece of land to this plant generating electricity. There’s a satisfaction that you’ve built something. 

The landscape of sustainability in business has changed a lot since your time at Michigan—when no one called it “sustainability.” What has that evolution looked like from your perspective? 

When I left, I was really passionate about global warming, or what we refer to now as climate change. It was at the formative stages of all the science becoming very clear. It became clear to me that this was the issue in the environmental movement that would galvanize us for generations to come. It was that important. So I thought, Where am I going to make the biggest impact? For me, it was working inside of the biggest companies to effect the biggest change. That’s why I found the consulting route really appealing, because we were working with the biggest companies on improving their environmental performance—that’s how we used to talk about it. 

That led me squarely into the energy industry, and, being this enormous contributor of greenhouse gas, it was like: OK, let’s get into renewables. Our private equity fund set up shop to pursue landfill methane and biomass and geothermal—technologies that we knew could succeed because they’d been around for a long time. And then solar and wind became the dominant technologies, but that evolved over time. I got into the business in the formative years of renewable energy, and then I followed that wave. For people today, there are different waves that are occurring, and sustainability has so many other doors to open.

How else has your time at Michigan stuck with you? 

Michigan is the kind of institution that you want to stay in touch with throughout your life. When people ask me about Michigan, I just say it’s the greatest school. I had tickets in the Big House for three years straight, I went to all the basketball games at Crisler—I love sports—and that was so much fun. It’s just such a great place to be.