Category: Innovation Stories

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. 

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. 

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…