ClimateTech Talks: Exploring the pathways to net zero

We had the pleasure to chat with Helen Bertelli, she has a compelling story of transitioning her career to a more impactful path. She purposefully redirected her (marketing) skills to align her values and find a way to help in the cause against climate change. She’s the CEO of Benecomms, a PR and marketing firm, and also the co-founder of Women in Climate Tech (WiCT), an organization that empower women’s voices in the climate space, offering them a safe place to speak, grow their network and advance their careers.

Benecomms website: https://www.benecomms.io/

Women in Climate Tech website: https://womeninclimatetech.org/ 

Helen's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/helenbertelli

Daniel's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/danielarraiz

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

We had the chance to catch up with Katie Mehnert, the CEO of Ally Energy. She's an impressive Diversity, Inclusion and Equity advocate in the energy world. We touched on how the O&G community is preparing for the energy transition. We discussed the role of corporates, governments and in particular, the role of the individual and how soft skills may be the key to ensure relevance in an uncertain environment. Finally, we discussed how Houston is going through a major rebranding exercise to become the energy transition capital of the world. Green Town Labs, the Climate Tech accelerator is trying to capitalize on that. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Ally Energy website: https://allyenergy.com/

Katie's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiemehnert/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

Daniel y David tuvieron la oportunidad de ponerse al día con David Mazaira. Nuestro invitado exitosamente migró del O&G, donde fue parte de Repsol en la parte de Refinación, Procesos y Sostenibilidad, para llegar a trabajar actualmente en responsAbility. La compañía basada en Suiza es un gestor de activos con $3millardos bajo su mando e invierte en 3 pilares: inclusión financiera, comida sostenible y finanza climática, el último el tópico de nuestra discusión.

También discutimos sobre #ESG y su diferencia con Inversion de Impacto. Aprendimos cuales son los criterios que responsAbility utiliza para monitorear y elegir en que proyectos invertir. Brevemente discutimos sobre los riesgos percibidos a la hora de invertir en economías emergentes y como navegarlos. Por ultimo, tocamos el tema del rol de la Tecnologia a la hora de optimizar y crear nuevas maneras para contabilizar y monitorear las emisiones de efecto invernadero. Entre ellas destaca el rol de #Satelites, #drones, #blockchain, CCUS, entre otras. 

Espero disfruten de esta primera edicion del ClimateTech Talks en español. 

Si prefieres puedes escuchar este episodio tambien en ingles, publicado justo antes. 

responsAbility website: https://www.responsability.com/en

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

David Mazaira LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mazaira-3548b925/

Daniel Arraiz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielarraiz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

We had the chance to catch up with David Mazaira, a friend of mine (David) from childhood and that has successfully made the transition from a direct O&G job (he was a Process Engineer in Repsol) to a role as Carbon Impact Specialist in an asset management firm in Switzerland.

We discussed #ClimateFinance, #ESG, #ImpactInvesting and the main difference among those two. We learnt about responsAbility, its criteria to invest and three main thesis. We also discussed the main perceived risks in emerging countries and how to navigate them. Finally we touched on the role of technology and how it will be key in the accounting and monitoring of GHG emissions. #Satellites, #drones, #blockchain, all in the episode!

If you prefer, you could give it a listen in our first ever Spanish episode where Daniel and I dissected and deconstructed Impact Investment with the help of David

responsAbility website: https://www.responsability.com/en

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

David Mazaira LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mazaira-3548b925/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz.

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

We had the chance to discuss with Siobhan Clarke one of the leading VCs in the #ClimateTech space and an Operating Partner at Launchpad. Working semi-independently from BP (Launchpad’s investor), this “Scale-up Factory” has the vision to generate sustainable change by building and scaling a progressive portfolio of digitally-led businesses which re-imagine energy.

We had a wide-ranging conversation on finding and building the next #ClimateTech unicorns, the traits of successful investors; we geeked out into how #geophysics (and as geophysicists ourselves we definitely enjoyed the insights) is an essential component on how Stryde (a portfolio company) and their nodes could further unlock the potential and applications of/in #geothermal, #CCUS, civil engineering, archeology, among other industries. Finally, we touched on how important #Diversity is, both from the founders and investor perspective. Launchpad is not only chasing but creating the next unicorns, so watch this space.

Launchpad's website: https://www.itslaunchpad.com/

Check Siobhan's new book: The Founder's Handbook

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Daniel Arráiz. 

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

Lubomila is an exceptional leader. You can gather it from her huge list of awards: 

Atos Partner Startup, as part of Scaler, 2021

But despite all the great recognition, she is incredibly affable, personable, down to earth and clear in her mission to fight Climate Change. She and her team are doing so by creating a SaaS platform to help businesses calculate, monitor and reduce their carbon footprint monthly, while automatically building each month a tailored sustainability action plan and offsetting schemes, according to the footprint of the company. The technology behind the software uses insights from the Plan A algorithm which analyses over 300,000 data points to predict and prioritise the most critical environmental issues and the way industries and companies impact these environmental changes.

We had a great conversation around becoming a founder, leaving a comfortable FinTech and Investment background behind to dedicate fully to the Carbon accounting mission. In that sense Plan A is enabling companies of all sizes have a much better accounting and even offsetting of their carbon emissions and by doing so improving their ESG performance. We also discussed the recent news about Plan A recent $3m raise, their plans of growing in France, the US and elsewhere and what this milestone means to other Bulgarians and immigrant founders in the ClimateTech and wider ecosystem.

Plan A website: https://plana.earth/

Recent raise: https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/09/softbank-demeter-and-coparion-invest-3m-into-plan-as-b2b-carbon-monitoring-and-esg-platform/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio César Fernández / Instagram: @juliocfdez

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

Chryssa and Stelios are a power couple in every sense of the phrase. They have married (pun intended) their hyper-human-connection and business development skills (Chryssa) with Stelios previous tech expertise in banking and in the Tech sector in London to create IN-VR. The company is fully remote since its inception, giving it an edge when COVID hit. They serve a wide range of clients from governments around the globe, private companies, Tech giants, renewables developers, super-major, financiers, etc. They use high-tech marketing campaigns to identify partnerships and enable unlocking investment opportunities in the energy sector.

Thus IN-VR is a leading global Energy investment platform, that will have a major role moving forward by connecting the different players in the space, and increasingly in the renewables space. 

As explained succinctly by Chryssa, their mission is to democratise investment opportunities. 

We had a nuanced conversation about the whole Energy Transition, the renewable uptake (that is seeing great inroads in places like Colombia, Chile and many parts of Africa). We discussed how the transition and even net-zero will have different shades and in many geographies will be a challenged because of the ever-changing political landscape. However, there is hope, and it will come via better, cheaper and more accesible energy products, including electricity. 

They are proud promotion partners of ONHYM Morocco, ANP Brazil, Petroleum Authority of South Africa, ANPM Timor-Leste, ALNAFT Algeria, Perupetro Peru, Ministry of Energy Ghana, among others.

IN-VR have very exciting plans in the coming weeks, all around community and further unlocking the democratization of the energy world and investment. Stay tuned !

IN-VR website: https://www.in-vr.co/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/ 

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi 

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio César Fernández / Instagram: @juliocfdez

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.

They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

In this episode we learnt about Jack Macfarlane, CEO of DeepStream Technologies.

The company is completely modernizing communication and data exchange among parties within the RFX experience (any sort of procurement process). With a strong focus on reducing inefficiencies, and bringing auditability, transparency and flexibility to a bureaucratic tender process that was ripe for disruption and with an industry-agnostic SaaS solution.

Jack lived a very cosmopolitan life in his early years. He was born in Egypt and grew up in places like Peru, Tanzania, India and France before he went back to the UK at the tender age of 14.

With a strong investing banking and finance background, Jack invested early into DeepStream (just when they were just an idea), and wanting a new challenge, he approached the founding team and convinced them that he could take the company to its next level.

Jack also led the team into the Techstars journey. The energy program designed and managed by Equinor, Kongsberg and McKinsey brought many benefits, most importantly validation in “an incredibly risk-averse industry”, introductions and the “brand” that come with the industry partners managing the program.

Typical companies range from gigafactory battery providers, brokers like Braemar, O&G companies, and any other company that relies heavily on document-heavy-tender-processes.

2020 was a good year for DeepStream, catapulted by the digital-everywhere-migration, and 2021 might even bring profitability and further growth (with some money raising added to the mix). In terms of the #ClimateTech influence and impact of the DeepStream solution, they are enabling and further helping the startups in the Gigafactories battery space all around in Europe and the EV auto industry to become even more efficient. Therefore, helping the digital transformation of all these companies to move faster, reduce friction and increase transparency. Jacks sees even from a clean-accreditation point of view (in terms of carbon emissions, etc) lots of potential to use DeepStream as a mechanism to shed light into CO2 footprint within the supply chain. Very exciting area to explore. 

DeepStream Technologies website: https://www.deep.stream/

Techstars: https://www.techstars.com/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio César Fernández / Instagram: @juliocfdez

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.  They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

In this episode, we talked to Nada Ahmed, VP of Transformation at Aker Solutions. Nada has a quintessential cosmopolitan upbringing. She grew up and studied in Pakistan and finished her International Baccalaureate in Hong Kong.  She then continued her undergrad studies in the University of Richmond (US), a year in France and then back to Houston. Her first experiences exposed her also to an international journey, that got her an offer from DNV to join their offices in Norway.  Humanities and a multi-cultural curiosity helped her progress well in her career and fine-tune her understanding of her colleagues and ultimately enable her to be a better leader via empathy.  It's all about connection.

Adaptation was another key skill that she has mastered during her career to navigate the ups and downs of the energy industry.  Nada put a particular emphasis on “understanding people better”, to infuse enthusiasm and inspire her colleagues to get to the required change to achieve high performance in a rapidly changing energy landscape.

What kind of transformation is she trying to instill? It’s the shift necessary to drive our industries towards #netzero and match and accompany her clients into the #renewables energies.

Aker Solutions have set an ambitious goal of making two thirds of their revenues by 2030 coming from low carbon solutions or coming directly from renewable services like offshore wind.

What kind of skills are necessary? Adapting to a future that will be very different Nada relies on #agileleadership. She sums it up with the following 7 tenets: empowerment (leading with questions, being humble and to enable growth in others), clarity (clear objectives), adaptability, learning the culture, being collaborative, positivity and accountability, and focusing on outcomes vs. outputs.

Finally, we discussed the difficulties women face in the energy industry. Nada has learned from the biases towards women to become an outspoken and candid leader that challenges preconceptions. She recalls the research done by BCG and McKinsey that performed quantitative research showing that diverse groups provide better financial outcomes and make better decisions. She therefore makes diversity & inclusion as a guiding principle to lead her teams.

United World College: https://www.uwc.org/

Aker Solutions: https://www.akersolutions.com/

"Dare to Lead" by Brene Brown (recommended book): https://cutt.ly/tkX4kLS

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi 

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio César Fernández / Instagram: @juliocfdez 

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.  They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.

In this episode, our guest was Knut Vassbotn, CEO of Deep Wind Offshore. We discussed about Knut’s journey from offshore engineering teams in the O&G sector, developing high-performing teams both in Norway and in the UK, and his organic transition into the offshore wind industry. Knut worked in LNG development as a young engineer (a great first experience for any young engineer) and then, little by little, gathered more experience in London, setting up the Aker organisation. He is bringing the whole wealth of experience at Aker (where he’s spent most of his career) to the huge wave of offshore wind with the newly launched Deep Wind Offshore.

We discussed the clear transferable skills from one offshore environment to another: mechanical, electrical, materials engineering, naval & marine architecture, utility systems, procurement, etc.

Good lessons on how to increase the internal capabilities of Aker to be prepared for the rapidly changing offshore wind environment even 6 years ago. With current momentum from countries like the Netherlands, Ireland, UK, Norway, Knut is convinced that the market is huge.

We also touched upon the great momentum from a government stimulus both in Europe ($750B will be spent in renewables by the EU as part of the Green Recovery) and from the new US administration. And although there might be some regulatory challenges in certain countries, Knut recognises the major tailwinds in favour of offshore wind and that obviously led his move to lead a new organisation focusing on capturing this accelerating market.

Finally, we talked about how Norway faces a risk of being too exposed to O&G in particular with the pressure coming from neighbouring countries society and investors alike. In here, knowledge/capability/expertise/talent capture is crucial for Norway to develop a national supply chain that can create jobs and actually set them into a path to export technology to other countries.

We also explored the exciting question of what the role of the super-majors will be in this shifting landscape where NextEra or Iberdrola have similar valuations as their O&G counterparts.

Would Latin America/Africa/SE Asia be able to ride this wave? Knut believes that yes, believing that isolated energy systems, mini-grids, and the combinations of renewable production with energy storage. He gave the example of the Utsira Island where a new battery plant is being installed to depend less of the power cable coming from onshore. This could serve as a footprint for other regions.

Aker Solutions: https://www.akersolutions.com/

Deep Wind Offshore website: https://dwo.no/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcontrerasdiaz/

Art by: Maria Alexandra Monteverde / Instagram: @mariale.ilustra.asi

Editing, mixing and mastering by: Julio César Fernández / Instagram: @juliocfdez

Disclaimer: This podcast was prepared by myself in my personal capacity and the views and opinions expressed in the podcast are my own.  They do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of TGS and TGS does not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of the information provided herein.