Google’s former head of utility origination and partnership has joined US energy giant NRG Energy as its SVP of growth and partnerships.Briana Kobor spent six years at the search giant, where she also held the roles of head of energy market innovation and regional energy regulatory lead in North America West.In a LinkedIn post reflecting on the move, Kobor stated: “I am immensely proud of the systemic solutions we built to move the energy transition forward and protect ratepayers as we invest and build for AI demand. We created the Clean Transition Tariff to help accelerate the commercial deployment of critical next-generation clean tech like enhanced geothermal and long-duration energy storage. Alongside that, we developed and scaled the Capacity Commitment Framework to provide the sound regulatory structures needed to ensure new large loads offer the financial assurances that enable utilities to build for them at scale.”Based in Houston, Texas, NRG has an operational footprint of approximately 25GW of electrical generation capacity, supplying power to more than eight million retail customers across 24 states and Canada.The company has made several deals within the data center space, most recently signing a 295MW supply agreement to power two data centers in Texas.The company also partnered with Renew Home and Google Cloud to create a 1GW virtual power plant in Texas in late 2024.