Stephen Honikman

Stephen’s interdisciplinary career has centered at the cross-roads of finance, sustainability, and technology innovation and commercialization. Raised in a “solar home”, Stephen has deep roots in sustainability.

Stephen’s initial career was spent in Silicon Valley during the heady days of the late 90’s, participating in early internet development and commercialization – experiencing first hand the transformative value of expansive networks and the opportunities created when established enterprises fail to see or address coming disruptions. The often competing interests of individual and societal needs and goals was a constant theme of his work as innovation and technology was differentially integrated into markets and communities.

In 2010 Stephen founded an underwriting and financing platform to accelerate capital flows into commercial solar projects. In 2018 Stephen founded Emergent Microgrid in response to several (climate change exacerbated) prolonged and community wide blackouts. Emergent simplified consumer understanding and access to microgrids; seeking to accelerate their adoption and economic viability by networking them together for participation in the emerging “grid-services” markets. In 2020 Emergent joined Electriq Power to scale-up deployment of these networked energy assets. Today Stephen, along with the whole Electriq Power team, is working to bring aggregated deployment of microgrids together to support the grid’s transition to a Distributed Energy Resource rich infrastructural network. And Stephen is especially proud to be involved in a program designed to deploy these resources directly into low-and-moderate income communities so that no one is left out of the clean energy transition.

Beyond sustainable energy technologies, Stephen’s interests include International Relations and Economics, which he studied while attending Boston University. Stephen also received a JD, and MS in Technology and Human Affairs, from Washington University in St. Louis.