NES Person of the Year
2025
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By: The Editorial Team at NES
Mary Barra
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors
General Motors
Scaling Vehicles-to-Grid (V2G) EV Platforms
The Significance of Being Named NES Person of the Year
Being named NES Person of the Year is not a popularity contest. It is a recognition of consequence.
In a world where energy security, industrial competitiveness and the materials that power modern life have become inseparable, NES exists to identify the people who are actually shaping outcomes, not merely commenting on them. The Person of the Year is the individual whose decisions, leadership and results over the preceding twelve months have most clearly advanced the reliable supply of energy and strategic minerals, strengthened the businesses that produce them, or altered the geopolitical and capital-market landscape in which those industries operate.
Selection signals that this person has moved the needle: unlocking production, securing supply chains, allocating capital with discipline, navigating complex jurisdictions, or forcing a clearer public and policy understanding of what is at stake. It is awarded to those who operate at the intersection of geology, engineering, finance and statecraft, the domain NES was created to cover with seriousness and depth.
For the recipient, the acknowledgement carries weight precisely because it is earned inside an industry that measures itself by tonnes, megawatts, contracts and long-term returns rather than by volume of coverage. It places the individual in a permanent record of the people who mattered when the energy transition, the AI power demand surge, and the contest for critical minerals moved from aspiration to hard constraint.
In short, NES Person of the Year marks the leader whose work in the past year most clearly helped determine whether the world will have the energy and the materials it needs. That is the standard. That is the honour.
Why This Person, Why This Year
In 2025, as electric-vehicle demand moderated under shifting incentives and regulation, and as electricity demand from data centres and electrification continued to climb, Mary Barra advanced the most substantive industrial effort yet to turn a mass-market EV fleet into a distributed energy resource. Through the expansion of GM Energy, the embedding of bidirectional capability across the Ultium platform, and structured utility collaborations that explicitly pave the way for vehicle-to-grid services, she positioned General Motors at the junction of mobility and grid resilience. For NES, this year’s defining contribution is the practical scaling of the hardware, software and commercial foundations required for EVs to support the energy system rather than merely draw from it.
By the final months of 2025, the conversation around electric vehicles had grown more complex. Adoption curves had softened in key markets. Manufacturing capacity decisions were being revisited. At the same time, power demand linked to artificial intelligence, data centres and broader electrification was placing visible strain on grids that were never designed for the new load profile.
Against that backdrop, Mary Barra’s General Motors spent the year treating the batteries already rolling off its lines as more than propulsion systems. Compatible Ultium-based vehicles—Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac models—were equipped for bidirectional power flow. GM Energy expanded its vehicle-to-home systems nationwide, offering customers the ability to power their houses during outages. Utility partnerships, including incentivised pilots with Pacific Gas and Electric in California, began testing the commercial and technical pathways that lead from home backup to grid services. Company executives spoke openly of vehicle-to-grid as the logical next stage: a future in which EV owners could supply power back to the system and, in doing so, improve both personal economics and collective resilience.
The move was not flashy. It was infrastructural. While others debated the pace of the energy transition, Barra was building the customer-facing and utility-facing architecture that would allow a growing fleet of electric vehicles to function as flexible storage assets. In a year defined by hard constraints on both the vehicle side and the grid side, that dual-use ambition stood out.
Against that backdrop, Mary Barra’s General Motors spent the year treating the batteries already rolling off its lines as more than propulsion systems. Compatible Ultium-based vehicles—Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac models—were equipped for bidirectional power flow. GM Energy expanded its vehicle-to-home systems nationwide, offering customers the ability to power their houses during outages. Utility partnerships, including incentivised pilots with Pacific Gas and Electric in California, began testing the commercial and technical pathways that lead from home backup to grid services. Company executives spoke openly of vehicle-to-grid as the logical next stage: a future in which EV owners could supply power back to the system and, in doing so, improve both personal economics and collective resilience.
The move was not flashy. It was infrastructural. While others debated the pace of the energy transition, Barra was building the customer-facing and utility-facing architecture that would allow a growing fleet of electric vehicles to function as flexible storage assets. In a year defined by hard constraints on both the vehicle side and the grid side, that dual-use ambition stood out.
Mary Barra is NES Person of the Year for 2025 because she has driven the clearest large-scale progress toward making electric vehicles active participants in the energy system. Under her leadership, GM has standardised bidirectional capability on its core EV platform, scaled a dedicated energy business that puts vehicle-to-home technology into customers’ hands, and established utility collaborations designed to unlock vehicle-to-grid value.
In the domains NES covers—energy, business and strategic minerals—this matters for three interlocking reasons. First, it multiplies the economic and societal return on the copper, lithium, nickel and other materials already committed to EV batteries. Second, it creates a potential new revenue and resilience stream for owners at a moment when pure vehicle-sale economics face headwinds. Third, it offers utilities and policymakers a practical, customer-owned source of flexibility precisely when grid investment needs are rising fastest.
In the domains NES covers—energy, business and strategic minerals—this matters for three interlocking reasons. First, it multiplies the economic and societal return on the copper, lithium, nickel and other materials already committed to EV batteries. Second, it creates a potential new revenue and resilience stream for owners at a moment when pure vehicle-sale economics face headwinds. Third, it offers utilities and policymakers a practical, customer-owned source of flexibility precisely when grid investment needs are rising fastest.
Key Facts
Age
63
Current Title
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, General Motors
Company HQ
Detroit, Michigan
Signature Focus
Scaling bidirectional Ultium EV platforms and GM Energy systems toward vehicle-to-grid capability; expanding vehicle-to-home access and utility collaborations that enable grid services
