By Justine M. Crowling

Many may know Dan Revers T’89 as a longtime supporter of Tuck whose generosity helped launch Tuck’s Revers Center for Energy Sustainability, and Innovation in 2016 (then the Revers Center for Energy). But some may not know Revers’s journey and what drew him to found ArcLight Capital, one of America’s leading sustainable infrastructure investment firms.

“Well, I didn’t mean to,” laughs Revers, who, prior to starting ArcLight was a managing director in the Corporate Finance Group at John Hancock Financial Services. “I was planning on joining a startup generalist firm but during the process of leaving my boss asked me if I was interested in forming an energy focused private investment firm backed by Hancock. It literally happened overnight.” 

Today, nearly 25 years later, ArcLight has invested over $27 billion dollars in energy infrastructure of which over $4 billion has been invested in renewable energy projects. The firm is focused on delivering fundamentals-driven, real asset investments in support of decarbonization and energy security. Revers says the current energy landscape is ripe with opportunity.

“There’s never been a better time to be in energy,” he says. “After 30 years in this field, I can say this is one of the most interesting times to be involved in energy and it’s generating a wide variety of career opportunities.”

We caught up with Revers to learn more about his journey to energy, how ArcLight’s mission has evolved, and what today’s leaders need to know about balancing environmental impact with
your bottom line.

When did you first become interested in energy?

When I was at Tuck, there was very little in the way of energy covered in the curriculum so it wasn’t until I left Tuck that I got immersed in the world of energy and started to see why it is a fascinating industry.

I interviewed for a summer internship with a company called Henley Group which owned many businesses, including an energy business. After graduating from Tuck, I took a full-time position with one of Henley’s businesses, Wheelabrator Technologies, that developed, built, owned, and operated energy projects. I got everything I was looking for and more in my first post-Tuck job. 

To me, it’s why you go to a school like Tuck with a general management focus: energy is multi-disciplined and sits at the crossroads of finance, accounting, public policy, macroeconomics, and technology. All these things come together in the energy world, and particularly in energy infrastructure investing.

What were some early challenges you faced at ArcLight, and how did you overcome them?

When I formed ArcLight, I became the leader of a small private investment firm instead of a leading investment professional in a large financial institution. Running a private investment firm required a different kind of leadership and it was something I had never done. I had mentors that I looked up to who were not necessarily leadership coaches but people whose leadership skills I admired and tried to emulate. So, my strategy was to borrow from these role models and try to incorporate their policies and practices into my firm. And I did all this without a net! I had no board of directors or partners to say whether what I was doing was right or wrong and I didn’t know if what I was doing was good or best practice. It was quite a challenge. 

You founded ArcLight in 2001. How has the firm’s mission evolved over time?

Our primary mission has and continues to be delivering strong investment returns to our investors utilizing a hands-on, value-added approach. Factoring in safety, reliability, sustainability, and the environment were always part of our approach because we work in an industry where those issues are important. 

Around 2012, sustainability started to become very important to many of our investors. We were always involved in renewable power including building one of the largest wind farms in the world in the mid-2000s in Tehachapi, California. We were also early frontiers in geothermal and solar power.

Today the interest in renewable power and related infrastructure is front of mind with almost every investor we talk to. At the same time, the investment opportunity in renewable energy is getting more attractive than it has been for decades. The next wave of energy transition—battery energy storage, hydrogen, carbon capture, and vehicle charging—will be built on the back of our existing energy infrastructure complex. So, we are seeing an opportunity where we can have our cake and eat it too—meaning getting the returns our investors demand while being at the forefront of sustainability and decarbonization.

You talk about this balance of having good returns and keeping investors happy while also balancing environmental impact. Can you say more on that? 

If you’re in this business, you realize it is impossible to build a new, sustainable energy infrastructure complex from scratch. We believe the road to sustainability and a decarbonized energy world begins with leveraging our existing energy infrastructure.  There are hundreds of thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines and thousands of low carbon gas-fired power plants that are needed to help electrify transportation and home heating and cooking among other things.  We will rely on and utilize these assets for decades to come so we start the decarbonization process by retiring our least sustainable assets including old and inefficient coal, oil, and gas fired power plants while we build new sustainable infrastructure.

This includes integrating renewable energy sources like offshore wind and battery energy storage directly into existing sites which significantly cuts down the lead time from project conception to operation—from potentially a decade to just a few years. We also emphasize transparency and accountability in meeting our decarbonization goals through annual performance reports against relevant KPIs so we can measure our progress.

What advice do you have for students and alumni interested in entering the energy and sustainability space?

Get smart about the energy industry that exists today. A lot of people want to focus exclusively on the future but knowing how the industry works today will provide valuable insights to what is achievable tomorrow.

As I talk to colleagues at Tuck, I always encourage them to incorporate the new and the old because I think they need a balanced view of things to understand the market. Once you understand the market, you can determine the specific areas of energy that you are passionate about and have the best opportunities to advance your career. Is it in new energy technologically? Do you want to get involved in proving out nuclear fusion or developing new small modular nuclear reactors? How do you commercialize battery energy storage and electric vehicle charging?  There are so many paths to interesting and rewarding careers in energy that didn’t exist even five years ago.

This story originally appeared in print in the Summer 2024 issue of Tuck Today magazine.