Philip John La Rocco

Phil LaRocco has over thirty years of experience at the intersection of the public and private sectors, leveraging public purposes and private sector initiative, blending financial, economic, social and environmental returns. From 1970-1990, he served as the Director of Trade and Economic Development for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey where he managed the NY World Trade Center, developed inner city industrial parks in the South Bronx, Yonkers and Elizabeth, and developed the Essex County (Newark) 2,250 ton-per day waste to energy facility. In 1990 he moved on to create a project management firm that led to his 1994 founding of a pioneering not-for-profit energy investment company E+Co, operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia. He served as E+Co’s CEO until 2009, directing investment in over 150 energy enterprises in more than twenty companies, building relationships between big institutions (e.g. Rockefeller Foundation, UN Environmental Programme, European Development Finance and Development organizations, U.S. AID, World Bank Group and International Finance Corporation), and more than 150 small and medium sized energy enterprises (e.g. SELCO-India, Toyola-Ghana and La Esperanza-Honduras).

LaRocco is committed to making training, education and capacity building materials readily available to energy entrepreneurs, and other sector professionals. Some of his work includes creating a step-by-step guide titled Money Management for Energy Enterprises, preparing a Toolkit for Energy Entrepreneurs for UNEP and the UN Foundation, authoring an on-line training and coaching program for energy entrepreneurs, and together with Maria Salinas, authoring a UNFCCC technology transfer financing guidebook titled Guidebook on Preparing and Presenting Proposals. Some of his recent clients include the Secretariat of the UNFCCC, NREL’s Clean Energy Solutions Center, Caribbean Community Climate Change Center, SIDSDock.org, Energy for Sustainable Development in the Caribbean (ESD) Project, Miller Center at the University of Santa Clara, Embark Energy, and Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP).