Our Team

Ocean Exchange Team

Ben Taube

Senior Vice President at Banc of America Public Capital Corp – Energy Services at Bank of America

Ben Taube is a Managing Director of National Policy and Legislative Affairs for Ygrene Energy Fund.

Under this role he focuses on furthering PACE policies and program development across the U.S. and much work with the federal government in D.C.  He helped scale a company to over $1.5B in origination and worked with over 500 local governments for program development.   He is co-founder and previous Senior Vice President of Corporate and Strategic Development for Evaporcool Solutions. Ben is an experienced leader in developing cleantech companies with an extensive expertise in shaping environmental partnerships, policy and education.  He was successful in winning a 72MW contract under an energy efficiency PPA with SCE and prior that a 1MW contract with SCE.   In addition, he has successful raised millions of dollars for cleantech companies in addition to advising many private equity and venture funds on strategic growth opportunities in the Cleantech space. 

Prior to joining Ygrene, Ben served as the founding executive director of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA), an Atlanta nonprofit aimed at implementing energy efficiency across 11 Southeast states from 2007 to 2011.  Under his leadership, SEEA grew from a budget of $200,000 to over $20,000,000 with a staff of 15 employees.  He focused on driving the formation of strategy for clients that were seeking key partnerships with utilities, funding channels, and market adoption for clean technologies that serve the energy efficiency market.  One such client was Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE), headquartered in northern Georgia.  ACE is a SBA Microloan Intermediary, a USDA Intermediary Relender, and a Certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI).  Ben provided guidance and start up to the CDFI on the creation of its energy loan programs. 

Since 2010, Ben has been the driving force in the creation of a property assessed clean energy lending program in Atlanta, GA as well as across the country for the private building sector.

Ben is a co-founder and serves on the Executive Board of the Global Cleantech Cluster Association, a collaboration of cleantech clusters from around the world. He has held posts as the Environmental Officer for the City of Atlanta; as Director of Government Affairs for EcoSMART Technologies and as Public Affairs Manager for the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute.

Ben was awarded the 2011 Atlanta Business Chronicle Environmental Emerging Leader Award.  He is the immediate Past Chair of the Local Energy Alliance Program in Charlottesville, VA; a recipient of the Atlanta Business Chronicle 40 Under 40 leaders award; a member of the Atlanta Regional Commission 50 Forward Initiative; and serves on the Executive Board of Directors of the American Israel Chamber of Commerce.

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Ocean Exchange invites you to learn more about Awards Program, our ecosystem and success of our award winners and participants. Together, we can chart a powerful course to help ensure the future of our oceans and the Blue Economy.

“Ocean Exchange has a platform to enable people with information that they need to know about the ocean and then to showcase new technologies that are on the forefront of really helping the ocean and the planet.”

“The quality of the content and the people who are involved with Ocean Exchange is all high end.”

“Besides funding, Ocean Exchange provides access to a wide area network of incredibly talented people in organizations that really do just want to help people.”

“Ocean Exchange is really about helping the little guys grow and in so doing, helping the big guys be better ocean citizens.”

“Ocean Exchange seems to be much more focused on bringing to light under-capitalized, wonderful new technology ideas. And it’s all about two-way access to this new technology and to the people who can help with the experience to grow that technology.”

“Ocean Exchange is a force multiplier to enable sustainable innovation.”

“Ocean Exchange is a global, novel innovation forum that has a greater ability to attract a broader range of impactful stakeholders than any other event that’s out there.”

“Unquestionably, one of Ocean Exchange’s primary strengths is how it brings together people from different paths. That makes its event a delegator experience as well as experience for an innovator or awards nominee.”

“Ocean Exchange is entirely different from any of the other organizations that I’m involved in. It is about sustainable innovation. I think it’s also very different in the extremely broad range of stakeholders that it involves.”

“There’s nothing better than going to an event or engaging with people so you walk away and say, ‘Wow!’”