Guido Bartels
General Manager Global Energy & Utilities Industry, IBM
Chairman, GridWise Alliance
Guido Bartels heads up all of IBM’s energy and utilities business, which includes electricity, gas, water and waste management industries. As part of that role he also leads IBM’s corporate Intelligent Utility Network initiative, IBM’s portfolio of solutions for the Smart Grid. Bartels is a member of IBM’s Integration & Values team, which includes the top 300 leaders from across the company. He joined IBM in 1988 from an entrepreneur career in the PC business and has since assumed roles of increasing responsibility.
In addition to his IBM responsibilities, Bartels is Chairman of the GridWise™ Alliance, a leading advocacy group of private and public companies that supports
a national imperative for modernizing the electric system of the United States. Under Bartels’ leadership since 2007, the Alliance has grown its membership six fold and he has been instrumental in setting up similar organizations in countries like Australia, Korea, Ireland, Japan and India. Bartels continues to be a tireless advocate for collaboration across the entire energy value chain to help make the promises of the Smart Grid a reality. Since 2007, he has co-chaired the GridWeek conference in Washington D.C., the largest annual smart grid event in the U.S.
He hosted the 2009 edition with the U.S. Under Secretary of Energy,
Dr. Kristina Johnson.
Bartels is also a member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee (EAC), a 30 member group representing some of the country’s top public and private sector electricity and energy policy leaders. He chaired the
EAC Smart Grid Subcommittee, which produced a report entitled, “Smart Grid: Enabler of the New Energy Economy” with practical policy recommendations to advance the national smart grid agenda.
Bartels serves as vice-chair of the New York State Smart Grid Consortium,
a key public-private partnership to promote broad statewide implementation of
the smart grid. In 2010 he joined the Board of Directors of Evergreen Energy Inc.,
a U.S. based publicly-traded, green energy technology company.
Earth2Tech ranked Bartels on its 2009 ‘Top 15 Smart Grid Influencers’ list and Greentech Media included him on The Networked Grid 100 list, a compiling of the top 100 “Movers and Shakers” of the Smart Grid. It stated “Guido is one of several people on this list who gets summoned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when
Obama needs to get schooled on the latest smart grid issues.”
Bartels is a frequent speaker at industry events around the world and is regularly quoted in major publications, including BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal,
The Economist, The European Energy Review, GreenMonk, Smart Grid Today, and Renewable Energy Update. He also appeared in numerous television programs around the world, including Fox Business, CNBC, TV Asahi Hodo Station, WOW TV Economy and Journal de Economia.
Bartels, a Dutch citizen, earned an MBA degree in business economics from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is married, has two young children
and currently lives with his family in Connecticut, U.S.
