Accelerate Net Zero

How do you convince medium sized companies to convert their fossil-fueled industrial processes to renewable energy?  And how do you do that if the amount of emissions saved seems tiny compared to the overall problem of global warming? It requires listening deeply to them, and building partnerships to meet them where they are, even if that means less electricity use in the short-term.  It means understanding the fundamental economics behind their decisions,and working with them to develop solutions that address their fundamental concerns.

Sarah Williams of Simply Energy has taken a Design Thinking approach to help medium to large New Zealand companies have deeper conversations around how they source and use energy.  In her workshops, she helps these companies think about the long-term desirability, feasibility and economic sustainability of the choices they have. In the short term that might lead to increased energy efficiency in the office areas that reduce demand for electricity. In the long run, it means helping them replace gas and coal-fired systems with renewable energy to maintain their competitiveness in a world that demands action on climate change

The concept of circularity is an exceptionally challenging topic for many businesses.  Today, most companies push out products, and then it's up to the consumer to figure out what happens to them at the end of their useful lives. Circularity closes the loop, to look at how waste products can become feedstocks for other processes that continue to generate value.  It has the potential to completely change the role that a company plays in delivering customer value, the business model, and the product itself. 

How do you introduce such a difficult topic, and how do you even begin to generate the ideas you need to develop innovative products and services with circularity at their core? In this interview with Justina Turek of Next Agents, we will dive into the concept of circularity, some examples of industries that are beginning to develop new products and services that embody circularity, and how to begin conversations about this challenging concept inside a company.

In this episode, I share more about why I chose to launch this project at this time, and how it fits in with my own personal story. You'll hear about my time at HP, how Rapid Learning Cycles developed, and a visit to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm that proved to be transformative, showing me what work was mine to do, and why I am convinced we can accelerate net zero.

Together, we can eliminate the economic, usability and scalability issues that lie between us and a Net Zero world.  We can create the paths of least resistance that will make it easy for businesses and consumers to do the right thing to accelerate net zero.

If my story resonates with you, whether you're working in this area or not, I encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or Twitter, or via the links on this site.

When people think about innovations around climate change, they naturally go to the big projects: solar energy farms, offshore wind, and the electrification of everything that uses fossil fuels today.  But a lot of the technology we need doesn't generate the same kinds of headlines, or attract the same level of funding and government support.  In this episode, we're going to go into one of these small-but-important pieces: water management data collection.

Droughts and floods are both effects of global warming that are already increasing in both frequency and severity. And the impact hits low-income populations hardest and soonest. 

These countries also have the most challenges collecting the data that they need to make good decisions in dry and wet periods. They lack the resources and infrastructure for the automated solutions used to monitor places like the Columbia River watershed in the United States. Today most of that work is done by volunteers using pencil and paper,  if it is done at all. Yet without this basic information about this critical resource in real-time, it's hard to make good decisions that could reduce the impact of droughts and floods.

Louise Kroneborg-Jones, founder of Water Insight, is building a data pipeline that is resilient and robust enough to work in the remote corners of the world.  Louise and her team are using the simplest of tools to build a system for data collection and visualization that will make it easier for low-income countries to gather the data they need to make decisions, and for researchers to understand how climate change is affecting lakes, rivers and reservoirs.

She'll share the work she's doing in Malawi to demonstrate that this system can work, and that it can scale.  She'll describe the challenges she's had in finding funding and support, the unexpected ways that she's found the help she needed, and the process she's using to ensure that she's making the most of the resources she has to help countries like Malawi get more visibility into the state of their water systems.

Deborah Stine is a bridge between scientists, engineers and the policymakers, community leaders and other stakeholders whose choices can either accelerate an innovation team’s work or place obstacles in their way. In this interview, she shares how to identify and engage with these stakeholders so that you can integrate their needs and concerns into your solutions from the beginning.

The Last Responsible Moment is a powerful practice for improving decision-making in the fog of uncertainty. We are clearly past the Last Responsible Moment to address climate change. We needed these solutions yesterday. So how can we use this concept to accelerate these solutions?

This project brings distributed solar power to Puerto Rico through community-based networks. It's based on a unique partnership between community organizations that bring consumers together, with trained local support teams and a for-profit partnership to provide...

In this episode, Will Harrison of Synapse Product Development shares his thoughts around how to build sustainability into all types of products from the beginning stages of development. To achieve Net Zero, eventually every one of the products we use on a daily basis will need to be carbon neutral. But how do we get there?

In this episode, the host, Katherine Radeka shares why she decided to launch this podcast, and why you should listen if you are interested in accelerating the transition to a Net Zero world. In the race to mitigate climate change, we can't afford to waste time, energy or money on solutions that don't deliver.