GG Pique

1947–
President and CEO, ERI

Grew ERI into the top energy recovery company from a garage start-up – after a CV that would already cover most people's whole careers.

GG Pique – Tom Pankratz
GG Pique – Tom Pankratz

GG was no stranger to UF and other membranes when he entered the desal membranes business of Fluid Systems in 1983 (following earlier experience with Dorr-Oliver and Fluor, amongst others). Good thing, too, as the global desalination industry promptly entered a period of contraction, and research showed that two-thirds of RO plants in the area he was responsible for weren't working properly. GG, with Bob Riley and John Perlman, 'carved out a living' retrofitting plants with more suitable Fluid Systems membranes and doing operator training to revive the reliability, reputation and sustainability of RO technology.

The Membrane Wars saw company closures chase GG from Fluid Systems, to Hydranautics, to Ionics in Europe. He next went to US Filter, with some $80million of investments in desal ops to manage. Only after that comes GG's best-known work: the foundation of ERI as a garage pressure-exchange supplier, and its startling growth to top of the energy recovery field and stock market flotation. In 2011, GG retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of ERI, a post he held since 2002.

 
On a trip back from the Canary Islands, GG Pique and Jim Medanich, a former ERI director and the current president of Piedmont Pacific, considered ways to differentiate their PX energy recovery devices from the cylindrical, blue-grey Dupont permeators.

At the airport, they decided to look for a distinctive colour at the perfume counter and noticed one product in bright yellow packaging. Medanich told WDR the yellow was so bright that it seemed optically heightened. They took the colour sample back home with them, found a match and begin applying it to every PX device.
Water Desalination Report

Editor of the Practical Reverse Osmosis Manual and author of Seawater Desalination using Reverse Osmosis, both in Spanish.

Landmark plants:

  • Maspalomas upgrade, Spain (to 8,700m3/d, RO)
  • Santa Barbara, CA, USA (trailer-mounted RO)