Energy transition · Renewable fuels · Strategic advisory
Kopius Energy Solutions provides strategic and execution advisory across the energy transition and renewable fuels economy — for developers, investors, and local governments committing capital and resources to clean-energy projects. Led by John Plaza, with two decades of frontline experience founding and leading clean-energy companies.
01 — Advisory services
Kopius Energy Solutions advises across the full lifecycle of clean energy and renewable fuels projects — from strategic assessment through execution. Engagements are scoped to the client's needs, not a fixed package.
An experienced operator's read on clean energy and renewable fuels projects — technology mix, project economics, capital planning, and partnership architecture — assessing whether a project pencils, permits, and meets market needs.
Site evaluation, regulatory pathway design, and permitting strategy — informed by two decades of walking major projects through siting, environmental review, and the frameworks that govern development.
The relationships that make or break projects start locally. Strategy and execution support for engaging host communities, tribal nations, governments, and labor — support that must be earned, not assumed.
Policy and incentive frameworks shape project economics — sometimes by orders of magnitude. We assess how federal, state, and local policy affects a project's business case, and how to structure for the policy environment that exists.
Feedstock viability, supply security, and the certification pathways that determine whether a given feedstock-and-technology pairing produces fuel that airlines and regulators accept — grounded in 22 years across HEFA, ATJ, Fischer-Tropsch, power-to-liquid, and emerging routes.
Every project must be evaluated early — and throughout development — to confirm the market will invest. Bankability is often overlooked in the initial phase: capital intensity, debt market access, and the realities of scaling to commercial operation.
02 — Who we serve
Developers advancing clean energy and renewable fuels projects can access senior operator perspective at key inflection points — technology selection, site decisions, permitting, community work, and capital formation.
Banks, infrastructure funds, family offices, and impact investors evaluating clean energy and renewable fuels deals get an operator-grade read that bankers and generalist consultants can't provide.
Industrial corporates, airlines, and local governments evaluating their own clean energy and renewable fuels strategies get operator-grounded advisory — without having to build internal expertise you don't have.
03 — Foundational principles
Over twenty years of building clean-energy companies has surfaced a small set of principles that consistently differentiate projects that reach commercial operation from those that stall or get derailed. These principles inform every Kopius Energy Solutions engagement.
The most expensive mistake in clean energy and fuels development is designing a project that later needs restructuring to attract capital. Bankability is a discipline applied from the earliest strategic decisions through construction — feedstock, technology, site, offtake, and capital plan must all line up before serious development begins.
Permitting timelines, litigation risk, and social license are determined almost entirely by how host communities, tribal nations, and local stakeholders are engaged from the outset. Projects that substitute legal strategy for genuine relationship-building pay for that decision for the rest of the development cycle.
Federal, state, and local policy frameworks change project economics by orders of magnitude. Successful developers structure projects for the regulatory environment that exists today, with realistic assumptions about how it will evolve — not for policy hopes that may never materialize.
Biomass-based diesel and sustainable aviation fuel projects live or die on feedstock — availability, price, carbon intensity, and certification pathway. Building Imperium Renewables' Grays Harbor facility and later developing SkyNRG Americas' Project Wigeon taught the same lesson at every scale: the right technology pathway is the one that closes the loop between feedstock, plant, and offtake — not the one with the best press cycle.
04 — Track record
Founder and CEO. Led corporate strategy, site selection, permitting, commercialization, financing, construction, start-up, and operations of the 100M-gallon-per-year Grays Harbor facility — one of the largest biodiesel plants in the world — guiding the company from its 2004 founding through its 2015 sale to Renewable Energy Group at the top of the valuation range. Grays Harbor remains operational today, having produced more than 1 billion gallons of biomass-based diesel since 2007.
Co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board. Co-founded Membrion to commercialize a proprietary ceramic membrane technology for water treatment via Electro-Ceramic Desalination, licensed from the University of Washington. Led the company through an NSF Phase II award and Series A financing, with primary responsibility for fundraising, team building, customer engagement, and market strategy — partnering closely with the co-founder to strengthen the company's IP position and define target markets. Membrion continues to thrive, gaining significant traction in hard-to-treat wastewater streams such as semiconductor manufacturing.
Co-founder and CEO. Led strategy, development, financing, and commercialization of Project Wigeon, a first-of-a-kind 50-million-gallon-per-year SAF facility in Washington state — directing feedstock selection, technology evaluation, site development, and permitting, and securing Washington State regulatory approval in 2025. Negotiated commercial offtake agreements with leading aviation partners and helped advance state and federal RNG-to-SAF policy supporting the project's viability and growth.
05 — The founder
John Plaza came to clean energy from the flight deck. A commercial airline pilot for more than 20 years with over 19,000 flight hours across more than 50 aircraft types — starting as a bush pilot in Northern Alaska and flying long-haul cargo for Northwest Airlines, World Airways, and MarkAir — John founded Imperium Renewables in 2004 after calculating that a single flight from Anchorage to Tokyo would burn enough fuel to power his car for forty-two years.
His focus on sustainable aviation fuel goes back to 2006, including production of the first volumes used in the industry's inaugural SAF demonstration flight with Boeing and Virgin Atlantic in 2008. Across his career, John has led or supported more than $1B in private capital deployed to clean energy projects, and has served on the Board of Directors of Agrisoma since 2014.
Kopius Energy Solutions is John's senior advisory practice — putting over two decades of operator experience to work for the developers, investors, and corporates building the next wave of clean energy and renewable fuels projects.
06 — Start a conversation
Kopius Energy Solutions engagements are shaped around the needs of the client, not the package. Tell us about your project — whether you're a developer at a critical inflection point, an investor evaluating a deal, or a corporate assessing your own clean-energy strategy — and we'll talk through how Kopius Energy Solutions can help and whether we're the right fit.