John Pimentel

John Pimentel  is co-founder and president of Foundation Windpower LLC which builds, owns and operates wind projects in distributed “behind-the-meter” generation formats.  The company has 16 distributed wind turbines totaling 22 megawatts of generating capacity with ~50 MW of additional projects under development.  John founded White Hat Renewables LLC a holding company which invests in and operates project development companies in utility scale solar, on-site commercial wastewater treatment, energy efficiency/lighting, and waste oil recovery.  

John was as a co-founder and Director of Pacific Ethanol, an ethanol production and marketing business which built four corn ethanol plants in the Western U.S.,  had >$700 million revenue run rate, went public and reached a nearly $2 billion market capitalization.  John spent 4 years as a Board Member of Vertex Energy (VTNR) a used oil collection and recycling company with >$130 million revenues and >$5 million EBITDA.

In the late 1990’s through 2001 John worked in Bain & Company’s private equity group and its general consulting practice.  In the early-to-mid 1990’s John served the State of California as Deputy Secretary for Transportation where he oversaw Caltrans, Highway Patrol/State Police, California Transportation Commission, and parts of the Department of Motor Vehicles (in total a $4.5 billion annual budget, 38,000 employees).  In that role he also sat on the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and ran the Governor’s Executive Fellows Program.  He graduated from Harvard Business School (MBA), and UC Berkeley (BA).