Converting CO2 To Energy – Bjork Kristjansdottir, Carbon Recycling International
Release Date: 11/19/2024
Microgrids Keep The Lights On, For Less – Jana Gerber, President of Microgrids, Schneider Electric
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“What is a microgrid?...There's a lot of challenges that folks are dealing with around the grid infrastructure, with weather related challenges and load growth and other elements. And so what a microgrid does is help those customers become not only consumers of energy, but also producers of energy. So we like to call that a prosumer….So a microgrid helps to create that bridge between the building and the big grid…So if the grid's no longer there (e.g., an outage), they can act independently of the grid. It also helps with deploying more renewables on their sites, as well as really...
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How To Talk About Climate In A Polarized Culture – Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist, Professor at Texas Tech University & Chief Scientist at The Nature Conservancy
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“We have to begin our conversations with what really matters to the person or people we're speaking with. And if we don't know what that is, we have to get to know them and build a relationship and then start the conversation where they're at…The second common misconception I see is that we have to load up our wheelbarrow with the biggest load of scary facts we can possibly find and just dump it on people because not enough people are worried about this.…But if we haven't connected the head to the heart, my life, the places I love, the people I love, the things I love my home, the price...
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Critical Minerals 101 – Abby Wulf, Critical Minerals Expert, Former Head of Critical Minerals at the Dept. Of Energy, & Center for Critical Minerals Strategy
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Critical minerals and materials…are essential for key economic and national security technologies that help to fuel great sectors in the United States and around the world…We're at a very interesting point in the United States for critical minerals and materials because the US Geological Survey… just released their draft version of their newly updated critical minerals list…(But) they're very difficult to come by. And for a lot of these materials, they are mined as byproducts and co-products. They're used in incredibly low volumes, and so it's very difficult for companies to sort of...
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Mobilizing Women’s Influence – Paula Noble Fellingham
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
"People care about the diversity because diversity makes teams stronger. And, and this is research based. And so they can say what they want, but those who know that there is strength in diversity, they'll continue on in spite of the, you know, the outcry on the other end….There's research that shows that when the lives of billions of women are improved, here's what happens. Number one, there's better female leadership. Number two, there's stronger education and more equality with women and girls. There's healthier national economies. There's research. …There's stronger families and my...
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A Creative Leverage For Good – Kate Williams, 1% For The Planet
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“1% for the planet…the way it works is that we have businesses who are our members, and they're actually supporting environmental partners at the level of 1% of revenues….You invest in the things that matter and the planet matters.…(to) drive impact at scale. And so, in terms of that scale, last year we certified US$100million of support going from these companies to environmental partners….When a company joins, they pay a dues fee to us, but then the rest of their 1%, they will give directly to environmental partners….And then at the end of each year, we certify that giving.” ...
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How Design & Tech Are Transforming Cities – Nikki Greenberg, Real Estate of the Future, from Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“(B)efore we're even thinking about AI, it's actually thinking about how are we using our technology effectively and is it part of our processes? Does it complicate things or does it simplify things? And the advice that I always give them is like, before you start bringing in new technology and new processes and having to train people and doing their job in a different way and adding complication first, look at what you're doing and…pair back the stuff that doesn't need to be there anymore. And then think about technology.” Nikki Greenberg on Electric Ladies Podcast Cities are in...
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What’s a ‘Tech Humanist’? – Kate O’Neill, CEO of KO Insights at Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“One of the other important things about tech humanism to me is that the three-way relationship between business humans and tech is primarily about the relationship between business objectives and human outcomes and using technological capability to amplify that alignment, as opposed to using technology to amplify only the business objective side of that relationship. So really trying to think about how does a business meet the humans that it serves, and then how can technology be part of making that more effective and more successful so the business can succeed and the humans can have a...
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Unique Practical Urban Climate Actions – Joan’s Panel of International City Innovators from Smart City Expo World Congress 2025
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
The World Bank reports that, “today, more than half of the world’s population – over 4 billion people – lives in cities.” It also estimates that this shift is going to continue, in fact to DOUBLE to nearly 70% – or 7 out of every 10 people will live in cities by 2050. That’s only 25 years away. At the same time, extreme weather events are increasingly devastating cities – we have all witnesses how Hurricane Melissa decimated Jamaica last week, for example, destroying home and businesses, schools, houses of worship, government buildings, everything. So what can, should...
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Career Advice For Difficult Times From 5 Women Leaders
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Your job isn’t to know the answer. Your job is to ask all the right questions of where the business is going and…Don’t be afraid…(Align) with people who could see the possibility of (your) experience…Take that stretch job and just remember you’re in the room to ask different questions, and that’s perfectly fine. So, take the stretch and then lean into your experience that allows you to have a different lens and a different perspective.” , Chief Sustainability Officer at Workiva on Electric Ladies Podcast When the economy feels tough or you feel like things are...
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How Climate Modeling Affects Everything – Maria Caffrey, Principal Scientist, UK’s National Physical Laboratory
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“(Climate modelling)…it's being used in things like insurance companies. It's being used by companies for their ESG assessments. So, when you get your insurance premium at the end of the year, there is some kind of climate model that has said something about the risk of your house to flood. It has said something about your risk to fire. And so that might be driving up your insurance premium…And so it's being involved in your lives in many different ways. The food you consume, those grocery bills, there's prices behind it that are being driven by people using climate models saying...
info_outline“Carbon Recycling International was founded around the idea of taking something which was waste, like CO2 and turning it into some valuable product…(Today they are) converting CO2 into sustainable methanol…(W)e have technology, which takes CO2 as a waste, and it takes hydrogen and turns it into methanol…and it is used today both like into chemicals. So, the chemical sector is a big consumer of methanol, which is a very large known product in the world today. …(and into) a sustainable fuel...playing a pretty big role in the energy transition.” Bjork Kristjansdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast
One of the creative technologies developed today to both address the climate crisis and accelerate the energy transition is carbon recycling. What is it? Essentially, it’s converting CO2 into energy or chemicals.
Listen to Bjork Kristjansdottir, COO/CFO of Carbon Recycling International in Iceland explain how it works and how it’s used in this fascinating discussion with Electric Ladies host Joan Michelson.
You’ll hear about:
- How they “recycle carbon” – from capture to converting it to how it’s used.
- How the chemicals made from carbon recycling are used.
- Why methanol is so important in the energy transition and how they make it
- How they are making sustainable aviation fuel from carbon recycling
- Plus, insightful career advice, such as…
“My advice is first, like it's around decisions. So, we need to make decisions. Postponing making decisions puts you at the risk things will just happen to you.…And remember that, when we do make those decision in our career, it is always based on the best information available at the time. Things may change, it doesn't make it a wrong decision.. (and) You don't need to learn and be the best at everything yourself. What you need to do is to learn how to listen and harvest all of the potential, all of the talent around you… get comfortable with asking the right questions.” Bjork Kristjansdottir on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes articles here too.
You'll also like:
- Inna Braverman, Founder/CEO of Eco Wave Power, on how wave power works and her powerful personal story that reflects today’s geopolitical dynamics.
- Lisa Jacobson (BCSE) & Tara Narayanan (BNEF), on their 2024 Energy Factbook, by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Bloomberg New Energy Finance
- Melissa Lott, Ph.D., Director of Research at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and the lead scientists in the PBS/NOVA documentary “Chasing Carbon Zero.”
- Vanessa Chan, Ph.D., Chief Commercialization Officer of the Department of Energy and Director of the Office of Technology Transitions, on the Inflation Reduction Act and the transition to clean energy.
- Paula Glover, President, The Alliance to Save Energy, focused on energy efficiency
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