For such a time as this

It has been a year and a half since Re:Energize launched as a newsletter. On this second Earth Day I went back to read all the prior posts and reflect on the context for each of the issues.

There was a lot of churn.

• The climate continued changing, sometimes at a faster pace than we predicted or hoped.
• The energy and utilities industry is feeling the pressure of the energy transition, but (it seems to me) has finally anchored itself so deeply in putting customer experience first, that they are more open than ever before to technology solutions that help them serve their customers better, faster, and more transparently. And they want to broadcast their goals and progress in goals like equity and decarbonization.
• Technology innovation accelerated. Specifically, GenAI graduated from being merely a consumer novelty to now commanding the attention of industries and enterprise - even cautious adopters like the energy and utilities sector.
• The workplace evolved. Many of us experienced the undertow of massive tech layoffs, and then a swelling wave of jobs in a growing clean energy economy.
• New connections and alliances are being made to create a different model for powering our lives. It's normal to see collaborations between regulated utilities, traditional auto makers, and start-ups with charging or battery solutions; not to mention new distributors like car dealers, appliance stores and even gas stations pivoting to EV charging hubs.
• Political will and policies are in continual dialectic. We saw a surge of global investment in clean energy infrastructure. With that came powerful (perhaps stubborn?) progress in the long game of regulation, and equally forceful intransigence and resistance.
• And personally, I spent two of the last 16 months in a kind of enforced sabbath as I withdrew and focused on accompanying a dear relative in hospice.

I confess that coming in to Earth Day this year, I was a little discouraged. I tend to spend a lot of time and energy ruing the consequences of bad past decisions, or resenting other people's decisions that I could not control. My current lassitude and inability to cope with brokenness had me stuck, and definitely not Re-Energized.

Even my dream job didn't give me joy. I was cynical about whether I was really able to make an impact in what matters to me, to the people I love, to our species, to vibrant wildlife, even to the stones on this planet - a world of relationships from which I felt estranged as I stared into the glow of my laptop, filling out more matrices (or prompting AI) to generate more corporate verbiage.

Sorry, that took a dark turn. But I did turn a corner!

I was journaling in a café about this dissociative funk when I caught up on old podcasts and heard this electrifying interview that Krista Tippett conducted with Christiana Figueres that aired last November 9, 2023. That month, I was grieving several losses and was barely getting through the days, so podcasts and books went unheard. Sometimes, you have to wait for the right time to receive a word. Six months later, being in that Denver café in the bright mountain sunshine was the right time.

The interview was as abundant and regenerative as advertised, and I'll put it in the Side Trails. Figueres ended with this thought, which is what ultimately has re-energized me. Regarding all the things that need to happen quickly for a just energy transition, she said:

We have most, if not all, of the technologies that we’re going to need for this transformation. We have the capital collectively... We know what the policies are. ... This is yes, about technology, capital, and policy, but that it is also about how we think about ourselves and our impact on the world. And we are at a moment in time in which electrification meets AI, meets digitalization, meets glocalization (both global and local)... if you put all of this in a pot and stir it around, this is the most magical potion you can possibly ever have dreamt of, and it is leading to change that is beyond anything that we could possibly, possibly imagine. So I am so excited about being alive right now.

- Christiana Figueres

Electrification, AI, digitalization and glocalization are all huge things that I am doing my tiny little bit to advance and pull together, as a product marketing manager promoting energy and utility enterprise software in a giant global technology company.

So, I reflected on all that was good and inspiring about the particulars of my work and life right now.

I get to bring a product to market that actually helps energy consumers and energy suppliers to work together better, and to create shared value as our business models for energy distribution evolve.

I get to work with brilliant, dedicated people on our Corporate Sustainability and Impact Investing teams on projects directly related to a just energy transition. It's slow, steady, patient work. Thankfully, our employer has continued to support this work through booms and busts. They aren't just making a change for our company, they are ultimately sending waves of possibilities to a whole global economy looking for signs that it's possible to thrive without burning fossil fuel.

I get to partner on climate solutions with people at global giants like AWS, Iberdrola, Google, Accenture, Shell and Siemens, who still struggle as I do with the profit-vs.-people dialectic but who live as if the arc of history bends toward goodness.

The season I experienced so much loss, I also received a beautiful grand-baby who is restoring joy and wonder in my life every day.

I've been long enough in this field to have a deeply nourishing network of friends who keep the lantern lit for me when I get cynical, and who can get me to laugh when faced with the impossible to-do lists of climate change work.

Technology can be scary and oppressive, because humans are so. But technology can also be miraculous and enlightened, when humans are so.

Figueres also said early in her interview that "that pain and that fear and that grief is what I would call an alarm bell. It’s an alarm bell to not sink into the bed covers again, but rather jump out of bed and generate the clarity of what needs to be done."

When I was journaling about all this over a scone and a steaming pot of tea in Denver, I looked up and saw this on the window where I was sitting: "Inspiration made possible by Salesforce."

I laughed out loud at how God and the universe see and care for me. Yes, my vocation and my calling are all coming together, not "in spite of" but rather "because of" a big corporation. The minutiae of my projects - electrification, AI, technology, policy - are woven with my values. And it's my choice as to whether I see myself as an impotent corporate drone, or have the clarity to jump out of complacency and use the gift of my circumstances to do good and beautiful work.

Here I usually have a disclaimer that the views are mine and not those of my employer, Salesforce. And in fact that is still true of this post, but this post does owe its existence to my employer, Salesforce!

Side trails

One outcome of my little epiphany is that I'm going to take the next few issues to deeply explain some of the stuff behind my marketing output - like to explain how AI is being designed to be trustworthy and low-carbon, or to narrate real energy industry use cases we're seeing in the field. While you wait -

• Check out posts from my worthy colleagues Megan Lorenzen, Boris Gamazaychikov, Jamila Yamani and Esther Nai, who are using their platform on Salesforce's Sustainability and Impact Investing teams to do things like make our corporate energy consumption truly net-zero; think about how to minimize AI's carbon footprint; incubate sustainable aviation solutions; and invest in the next generation of leaders and problem-solvers.
• See the Salesforce products I work on and how our AI CRM is accelerating and scaling Clean Energy Program Management and decarbonizing Field Service
• Listen to the whole On Being podcast with Christina Figuere