In rereading a post of mine from a trip to Kenya in 2008, I was blown away by how prescient it turned out to be, and how full circle my career has come since then! Consider the following excerpt:
The problem with such a plan is two-fold. First, these renewable energy technologies are expensive and the political climate in Africa is somewhat volatile. Investing in such projects is therefore risky.
Furthermore, to export power—or even to distribute it around such a huge continent—would require major advances in transmission technology. Current power lines are very lossy, losing a significant percentage of the power transmitted over them over long distances. This is especially important for centralized solar and wind, which A. are usually located far away from power consumers (in areas with the least obstruction of their power sources) and B. are bursty—we can’t control when the sun will shine or the wind will blow.
More efficient transmission (and storage, for that matter) technology would allow areas that need power, regardless of weather conditions there, to draw energy from areas where the sun is shining or wind is blowing around the world. This problem of energy transmission and storage is the main theme addressed by the vision of Nobel laureate (and Rice professor!) Dr. Richard Smalley. His proposed solution naturally uses nanotechnology, his principal area of research.
As I am no great nanotechnologist, this leads me to the fundamental question that drove me to IMD and that still drives me today: what can business leaders do to address this energy/environment challenge? We can certainly enforce responsible energy usage within our companies but that won’t be enough. It will barely make a dent in consumption and won’t address any other social issues.
To effect more profound change, business leaders will need to invest (either by starting up new ventures or by launching initiatives within their own companies) in R&D of renewable technologies (reducing renewable production costs and increasing efficiency), R&D of energy transmission and storage technologies, and development of renewable operations in places like Africa.
It was one of Rick Smalley’s lectures that set me on the path of working on the energy transition in the first place. Here I am, 16 years later, and not only am I working on the energy transition, but I am leading a company that is commercializng one of Rick Smalley‘s nanotechnology inventions to do so! Moreover, one of the killer app’s for DexMat‘s product, Galvorn, is advanced power transmission lines, for which we recently won a grant from the US Department Of Energy.
Like the proverbial frog slowly boiling in a pot of increasingly hot water, it hasn’t been obvious to me how full circle my career path has taken me, but re-reading this blog from early in my journey really crystallized it for me. As a young computer science major, I never would have imagined running a nanomaterials company in pursuit of solving energy and climate, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way!