Peter Bos attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he rowed on the Navy eight that represented the US at the 1960 Roma Olympics. Graduating in 1960, he served seven years in the Navy on nuclear submarines, serving as chief engineer and special test officer aboard the USS Nautilus and Polaris submarines. Bos then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, and entered the business world, serving as CEO of ARS Group, a company he founded in 1982 to develop and own independent power plants.