Veterans in Advanced Energy Profile: George Bonner

GEORGE BONNER, 2021-2022 Veterans advanced energy fellow. click the button below to learn more about the fellowship.

George Bonner, a 2021-2022 Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow, spent the last half of his Coast Guard career repairing coastal infrastructure damaged by rising seas and hurricanes. After retirement, he wanted to continue making a difference and now works in research and testing of marine energy — such as waves, tides, and currents — to help combat climate change. As told to Jordan Bekenstein

Why did you join the military and what was your role?

I grew up on the Outer Banks in North Carolina and heard a lot of stories of people who had been in the US Coast Guard, most of whom were World War II veterans. In particular, my next-door neighbor was a World War II veteran. I remember hearing those stories and liking their experience traveling all over the world, and I got excited — I thought, “Wow, that sounds like a pretty cool organization.” When it came time to figure out what I was going to do after high school, the Coast Guard seemed like a natural fit. I liked working on the water; I grew up on the water. I went to work on a boat when I was 13 — shrimping, crabbing, and my father did some commercial fishing. 

I spent my first two years on a Coast Guard cutter, mostly in the Caribbean, doing law enforcement and chasing drug smugglers, and then I went to grad school. Aside from the Coast Guard, I had also wanted to be an engineer, so I studied civil engineering. I spent the next twenty-eight years managing the Coast Guard’s infrastructure — multi-mission stations all over the US and US territories. I maintained and managed that portfolio. I was stationed in Puerto Rico, Alaska, and on the West Coast in different assignments as I moved up, but towards the end I was in more senior leadership roles in the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area. 

As active duty, you have to understand the mission and support the mission. We had a term that “every Coast Guard mission begins and ends in a shore facility.” You need to understand how important this is to executing the mission. Housing for the families, where people worked, the docks where the cutters moor at, and the air stations where the helicopters take off from — we fill an important role. Though it’s not as sexy as the guy that’s whipping out the gun and arresting somebody, it’s all important.

How did the military influence your career trajectory into energy?

In the last half of my career, we spent a lot of our efforts dealing with the damages from a changing climate. A lot of our shore infrastructure is in coastal regions, so whether it was Superstorm Sandy or Hurricane Katrina, our infrastructure was getting damaged. We’re seeing increasing storms, the impacts of rising seas, wildfires on the West Coast, and I thought “we have to do something about this.” I got really interested in what was going on with sea level rise and how that was impacting the mission, so I got more interested in sustainability, and I understood we have to do something about what’s going on with our climate.

When I was going to retire, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I started looking around. I had worked closely with Old Dominion University while trying to tackle the sea level rise challenges, and I saw the value that universities have as a convener bringing people together. When I started looking at university jobs, there was this job back in my hometown that was focused on how can we harness energy from the ocean. I said “wow, it looks cool, because I can see where we can make a difference.” I had dealt with energy in my job in the Coast Guard, and we had a lot of initiatives to promote renewable energy and design LEED facilities. This job is focused on energy which I find really rewarding and exciting, and hopefully we’re going to make a difference.

What are you most excited about in advanced energy developments, and what are you most concerned about?

There’s a lot of really cool technologies being developed in marine energy — how we can harness the power of the waves, currents, and tides — and we’re doing things to drive down the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and make them so they can be efficient uses to support a clean energy portfolio. It all has to come together, though. When you look at electrification of vehicles, for example, you have to have the infrastructure to support them. If you’re going to use marine energy to power marine transportation, there are a lot of stakeholders and a lot of things that have to happen to make it all come together, especially if we’re going to meet these decarbonization goals. 

Those are all challenges — bringing everybody to the table, communicating, trying to work together as much as possible. We have offshore wind activity and there’s a lot going on with solar, but it’s going to take a whole team effort for the grid, electrification of different transportation modes, and how it all fits together so that we do it smartly, gain public trust, and do it a safe way. 

Why is energy important to US national security?

A lot of areas on the coast are very vulnerable. I grew up losing power, and I always say that on the coast we’re the first ones to lose power and the last ones to get it back on. Things shut down when you don’t have power — and it’s not just your personal life but commerce too. If we don’t have reliable, affordable, accessible power, then things can go haywire really quick — just like we’re seeing now with the impacts of COVID-19 on the supply chain. We’re pretty fortunate that we do have a reliable grid, but I’ve lived in places like Puerto Rico in the late ‘90s where we didn’t have a reliable grid. They’re seeing those impacts now after the last few rounds of hurricanes, and it can go to chaos pretty quickly. We didn’t have reliable power to parts of the island when I was there during Hurricane George in ’98, and there were common people pulling guns on each other. There is also competition for the metals that we need for storage and resources that fuel our electricity needs. I think this aspect for sure is important for national security.

Do you have advice you would like to share with other veterans?

I spent thirty-four years in the Coast Guard including the Coast Guard Academy — that was my life. I was really nervous coming to the end of my time in the military, wondering what I was going to do after it, especially the last year or so. I never looked at my time in the Coast Guard as work. I found it rewarding and satisfying knowing that I was supporting a mission, knowing I was making a positive difference in the country and the world. I thought, what am I going to do next that I’m going to have that same kind of satisfaction. I find that the work I do today, whether it’s research or testing in marine energy, is rewarding but for different reasons. I know the work is making a difference and it’s going to make a difference, that’s the number one thing. Making a difference, and working with passionate people just like in the military, is what matters. 

What are you most looking forward to about the Veterans Advanced Energy Fellowship?

Like I mentioned earlier, this takes a team effort. All of us are working in different segments of the energy transition, but what I’m seeing more and more every day is that we have to work across those segments, come together, and coordinate. To do it effectively is really going to take making these connections. Making the connections with other people is something I’m looking forward to. I met another one of the cohort members in Raleigh a couple weeks ago, and I learned so much just from spending an hour together. Getting out of my little corner of the world and talking to other people that are working in different sectors is important. 

I’m also really excited about how I can open up opportunities for other veterans to be a part of this as well. There’s a role for you no matter what skills you bring to the table, whether it’s the technical skills or the leadership skills. Just in marine energy, a lot of the folks I work with are electrical engineers or mechanical engineers, but you need to have people from all backgrounds. There’s no cookie-cutter definition and unlimited opportunity on the business side, from lawyers to technicians. The training and the leadership development that we get in the military provides an opportunity for any veteran to contribute and directly apply those skills they got trained in and the skills they developed in the military to the energy transition.