Building Communities & Decarbonizing Enterprises with Software

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Decarbonization is today’s challenge for everyone, and that includes corporations of all sizes and types. When it comes to making serious inroads into reducing emissions, there are leaders, there are laggards, and there’s everyone in between. If you’re interested in being a leader, you need good tools to help you achieve strong targets. In this episode of CleanTech Talk embedded below, I spoke with Ian Lawrence, Zeigo Network Manager, about these topics in more detail. We discussed the need for corporate leaders to build connections and learn about decarbonization tactics in order to make real progress cutting climate-disrupting emissions. Zeigo, a Schneider Electric brand, offers software for corporations to empower action through education, connections, and actionable opportunities. Learn more in this discussion. Below the embedded Spotify podcast player, I will include a few highlights, but listen to the full podcast for much more.

I asked Ian what challenges corporate leaders who are trying to decarbonize their companies, including their supply chains, face. “There are a number of challenges. A few at the top of the list: One would be the breadth of both the knowledge and connections that are required for the role. To decarbonize a company requires you to understand a facility and real estate, finance and accounting, legal; it requires you to have connections up through the C-suite. Now, you don’t need to be an expert in all those areas, but your work will touch on them, and you need to have some understanding, some connections with the people involved — and that’s different from a lot of other roles at a company; it can be challenging.

“The second thing I’d mention is the fast-changing landscape of renewables, whether it’s policy, technology, available structures for purchasing — these things that are changing quickly because it’s such an exciting and important topic. you know, policy comes through regularly on a state level, a national level that really impacts what you can do, and it can be hard to stay on top of that.

“And maybe one more thing I’ll mention is the need for confidence. You know, when you’re in an industry that’s somewhat new, and the rules are still being written, it can be challenging to have the confidence you need to take the steps you have to take. And where to go to get that confidence and to validate it is something that can be hard.”

We then talked a bit about how software from Zeigo helps companies to deal with these challenges and thus decarbonize effectively, efficiently, and quickly. Surprisingly (for me at least) is how much community is an aspect of this. I guess that shouldn’t be a big surprise to me — that’s been a core part of CleanTechnica’s work for 15 years! Still, it’s not what I think about when I think about corporate decarbonization or a corporate decarbonization software suite.

Ian gave some examples to explain how this and education from Zeigo help clients make decisions. We then talked about how Zeigo helps companies focus on where to implement different decarbonization solutions, narrowing in a bit on the Sunshine State, Florida, and how it actually isn’t a solar leader. “It’s counterintuitive which states are the better ones and which are not, so we pulled together a lot of data on, for example, what is the average cost of power state by state, what is the net capacity factor, how much power of the sun can I harness in a particular geography, what are the policies around whether I can sell excess power back to the grid and how much I’m gonna get paid for it, what are the tax incentives. So, this is all data, it’s all data streams — whether on a state level or some other geographic level — and you roll it up to begin to then paint a picture of, alright, Tennessee — the data doesn’t look so good; Florida — kind of improving, but not a leader, right; and then some of the places you mentioned, like California — yeah, maybe kind of an obvious one; last few years, Illinois — not obvious at all, has been a big hot spot for solar and renewables, and the data helps us see that.”

There’s much more in the podcast. Give it a listen!

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