Jim Davis

Jim Davis became CEO of Smart Wires Inc in 2014. Smart Wires produces innovative products that increase the efficiency and reliability of global power grids. Jim explains, “Smart Wires touches everything [related to] moving power around the world. The industrial transmission grid is the largest manmade machine in the world. So when you think about earth’s challenges with climate change and needing to convert from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy, there are some significant changes [in energy transmission] that need to take place to accommodate that.”

From 2000 to 2010, Jim Davis founded and developed Chevron Energy Solutions into a leading renewable energy and energy efficiency company that helped numerous institutions and businesses save over $1 billion in energy costs. Under Jim’s leadership on those projects, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by over three metric tons.

Jim Davis grew up hunting, fishing and playing sports in Connecticut and Ohio, giving him a deep appreciation for the natural environment. As a young boy in 1969, he became aware how delicate our relationship with the environment is when the Cuyahoga River caught fire due to extreme pollution in Cleveland, Ohio. Jim refers to that event combined with the region’s heavy reliance on coal fueled power plants as major influences on his career choice to be a leader in clean tech and energy efficiency businesses.

Jim believed that “the government plays a key role in helping to advance the development of new clean energy technologies thru incentives and subsidies, just as in any industry, to get them thru the early years…so that may survive and go on to solve the large scale energy challenges we face”.

Jim Davis passed away in early 2017 after a hard-fought battle with cancer, and is survived by his wife Joan and their two sons.