As Director of Strategy, Maria Martinez leads CleanEcon’s long-term thinking, focusing on how policy, markets, and infrastructure must evolve to support a cleaner and more abundant energy system.

In this Leadership Spotlight, Maria shares where today’s energy systems are falling short, why tradeoffs deserve more honest conversation, and how her own story shapes the way she leads.

What’s the biggest structural barrier standing between clean energy innovation and real-world scale, and how do we break it?

Electricity markets today are optimized for short-term efficiency, not long-term system needs, and that mismatch has become a core constraint for scaling clean energy. Markets are essentially dispatching what’s available today in the most efficient way possible, but they’re not planning for what we’ll need 10, 20, 30 years from now.

The current system worked reasonably well for decades when demand was mostly flat, generation was largely uniform, and infrastructure evolved slowly. But we are no longer in that world. Demand is rising rapidly, the generation mix is more diverse,and we’re asking the system to support entirely new technologies and uses. Without updating the underlying market rules that provide investors signals to build, we risk failing to meet our energy needs affordably and locking avoidable pollution.

Breaking through this barrier requires collective action across government, industry, and civil society. I think of moments like the moon race or the COVID response, when collaboration became essential. This is another one of those moments. We’re talking about reforming systems that have operated largely unchanged for generations, which is incredibly hard. But the alternative of falling behind technologically and economically is far more costly. 

What assumption about clean energy or climate policy most needs to be challenged right now?

We need to be more honest about tradeoffs.

There’s a persistent tendency to imply that we can decarbonize, grow the economy, and build new infrastructure without meaningful tension or disruption. That framing sets unrealistic expectations and ultimately undermines progress. If we want shared prosperity and global leadership in technology, we have to be clear about what it takes to power and build that future and how we manage the tradeoffs along the way.

The current debate around AI and data centers is a good example. Treating demand as the problem and trying to stop it sidesteps deeper failures in how we plan, price, and build energy infrastructure in this country. Today its data centers, tomorrow the problem will be a different industry or technology.

The role of our community should be to confront tradeoffs directly, bring affected stakeholders into the conversation, and build solutions rather than pretending the choices are painless.

Where do you see the greatest opportunity to align policy, capital, and deployment to move faster?

The race to lead emerging industries like advanced manufacturing and AI creates a powerful opportunity. 

The reality is that our electricity system is the physical backbone of the American economy. Reliable electricity requires generation, transmission, distribution, and regulatory systems that can support scale.

If we can harness the desire to win these tech races and connect it to the unglamorous work of building and reforming our energy infrastructure, we can align policy, capital, and deployment in a powerful way. The challenge is translating momentum into coordinated action that strengthens both the physical and regulatory landscape.

What experience most shaped how you lead and make decisions today?

I immigrated to the U.S. when I was seven. I didn’t speak English and my parents and I were navigating entirely unfamiliar systems without a roadmap. We rebuilt our lives incrementally. First language, then cultural norms, then institutions, then we made friends and found our community. We built our new life layer by layer and, over time, the unfamiliar became navigable.

That experience still shapes how I approach complex systems today: focus on what’s in front of you, build capability step by step, and don’t confuse scale with impossibility. Progress comes from persistence, humility, and a belief that systems can be changed through sustained collective effort.

What should the next generation of environmental advocates focus on now to drive durable impact later?

The center of gravity in climate work needs to shift decisively toward building. When I entered the field nearly 15 years ago much of the focus was on stopping harmful projects. That work mattered and it still does – A LOT. But a newer generation – like my sister, who’s recently started in the energy space – is asking a compelling set of questions: What is getting in the way of building faster if we agree we need more clean energy? Why aren’t we building the transmission we obviously need? What’s standing in the way of otherwise reasonable choices?

If you care about sustainability and a livable future our work now is primarily that of clearing pathways and helping deliver clean projects at scale, not just preventing fossil projects from happening, because we need to ensure there are clean alternatives lined up as the old technologies get phased out.  

We need a generation of advocates who see themselves as builders. Based on what I’ve seen from my sister, I’m hopeful that we’re on the right track.

How do you balance long-term vision with near-term policy wins to drive real-world impact?

Strategy starts with a clear long-term destination, a North Star. Without that, near-term wins become activity rather than progress.

At the same time, the path is never linear. Political conditions shift, economic realities change, and unexpected challenges arise. The balance comes from holding the destination constant while adapting the path.