Patrick Knight

Patrick Knight performs consulting, conducts research and modeling, and writes reports for Synapse. Much of his work focuses on analysis and modeling of the New England electric system in light of new and existing laws and regulations, including carbon policies, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and strategic electrification. Mr. Knight also specializes in the analysis of U.S. coal unit economics and resources to displace coal units’ capacity, generation, and emissions. 

Mr. Knight’s recent work at Synapse includes analyzing the dispatch, economic, and emissions impacts of a decarbonizing electricity system, including analysis of electric grids in Tennessee, New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. He has also performed analyses of strategic electrification initiatives on behalf of state agencies, advocates, and utilities in New England, Pennsylvania, and New York. In particular, Mr. Knight led a project team of dozens of analysts across five organizations to assess avoided costs of demand-side resources in the 2021 and 2018 editions of the Avoided Energy Supply Cost (AESC) study. Mr. Knight worked with a team of stakeholders which included representatives from each of the energy efficiency program administrators in all six New England states to explore the avoided costs, including energy, capacity, renewable compliance, and GHGs, using hourly production cost modeling. Mr. Knight has also analyzed the implications of expanding the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative under different scenarios In the past, he led an analysis examining the need for, and the cost of, the Access Northeast (ANE) natural gas pipeline—with a particular focus on how state clean energy policies would impact natural gas demand going forward. 

Mr. Knight has also led development of the Electric Vehicle Regional Emissions and Demand Impacts (EV-REDI) model, a stock-flow model that analyzes the multiple impacts of transportation electrification for specific states, as well as leading the development of the Multi-Sector Emissions Model (M-SEM), a spreadsheet-based tool used for evaluating historical and future energy use. Mr. Knight has authored numerous reports focused on the New England electricity system, including analyses that examine the avoided cost of energy efficiency, the emissions and economic impacts of increased renewable portfolio standard policies, and the cost impacts of expanding natural gas pipeline infrastructure. He led the construction of an energy efficiency costing tool for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support the EPA’s development of the draft Clean Power Plan rule for limiting CO2 emissions from existing power plants. He also built Synapse’s Coal Asset Valuation Tool (CAVT), a spreadsheet-based database and model that forecasts the costs for individual coal units to comply with environmental regulations and compares these forecasts to electricity market prices. 

Prior to joining Synapse in 2010, Mr. Knight worked for New Ecology, Inc., where he helped develop a utility tracking and management software program. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Geophysics from Boston College and a master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy from Tufts University.