The energy sector is one of the most regulated in the US, and at the same time, one of the most innovative industries in the world.

Amid a tidal wave of change wrought by IT, communications technology, engineering advances and huge economic shifts the energy business has not just managed to keep the lights on and transport moving – it has launched thousands upon thousands of megawatts of new energy generation technologies and changed the outlook for one of the world’s fundamental sources of development and growth.

But fostering innovation isn’t a job that ends, and to protect and promote the unique conditions by which energy professionals can continue to do their jobs a group of four Washington, DC-based professionals have launched a government relations, strategic communications and public policy advocacy shop focused on the intersection of energy and innovation.

Spinning off from famed K Street firm QGA Public Affairs (formerly Quinn Gillespie Associates), the new partnership of Patrick Von Bargen, Katherine Hamilton, Allyson Groff and Jeff Cramer constitutes the core of their newly launched firm 38 North Solutions. The new group will maintain a strategic partnership with QGA Chairman Jack Quinn and President John Feehery.

Hamilton, also a member of the Breaking Energy editorial advisory board, said the firm would build on its unique partnership approach. That partnership builds “on their innovative strengths, to tell their stories in a way that is understandable, comprehensible and compelling to decision-makers,” Hamilton said in announcing the new venture.

Hamilton, a former president of the GridWise Alliance, is joined at the helm of 38 North Solutions by colleagues with extensive Capitol Hill and industry experience. Von Bargen is a former chief of staff to Senator Jeff Bingaman, Groff worked as communications director for the House Natural Resources Committee and Cramer has experience as a political organizer as well as clean energy industry and innovation analysis experience.