Why I do what I do

I was asked recently, “What makes you go to work?”. In the first chapter of the novel: The Ministry for the Future, an aid worker is traumatized by the deadly heatwave he survived in India where millions of people perished.

The most concerning aspect of this story is that it’s not just happening in science fiction books. The effects of climate change are being felt around the world. From devastating wildfires in Hawaii and Greece to droughts in East Africa and the Mediterranean, it's clear that we're in the midst of a climate crisis. Unless we all come together to find the right solutions, these catastrophic events will continue to worsen and increase in frequency.?

?In large areas of the world, climate conditions are such that air conditioning (A/C) is not just a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. It’s no longer a luxury and life would be nearly unbearable without it. There are larger areas still where whole populations would have far easier and happier lives if they too could feel the benefits of A/C. According to the Harvard School of Engineering, only 8% of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest and often poorest parts of the world have access to A/C in their homes.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen unprecedented weather conditions that are not isolated to one country, or even one continent. Death Valley recorded its highest-ever temperature of 48.9 (degrees) C. At the same time, Spain was experiencing simultaneous disastrous flooding and temperatures above 40 degrees. Tokyo, Japan saw temperatures nearly 9 degrees C above seasonal averages, surpassing a 150-year trend. It has often been noted that we can no longer say that some events are ‘once in a generation’, or ‘a fifty-year event’ because the frequency and predictability have moved so far from what we should expect. Being able to regulate our microclimate with A/C is becoming more and more appealing and necessary.

But here’s the conundrum; at present we are making the planet hotter by installing A/C, which in turn requires us to install yet more A/C. It’s a vicious circle. The answer to this is renewable energy – wind turbine blades will be the way the cycle is broken. If countries go all-in and commit to wind power on a massive scale, we will be able to decarbonize energy. From there we will be able to decarbonize industries and reduce the effects of climate change caused by the release of carbon emissions.

We’ll also be able to provide households with clean energy for whatever they want or need, whether it’s for lighting, refrigeration, or A/C. But the impacts will go way beyond what we can power. Since renewable energy can produce reliable energy that’s not subject to the same price volatility that as fossil fuels have, it will ensure that prices are transparent so that households around the world can benefit from affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy. We’ll be able to positively influence climate-induced migration – the places where people currently live won’t become uninhabitable, and they won’t have to risk their lives moving to places with more tolerable climate conditions. And that’s all because of renewable energy solutions like wind turbines.

Going back to the topic of A/C, the founding father of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, once said “Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.” Civilization or not, life or death, heat management will be a core task of the coming decades. To achieve this in any sustainable way, there is no alternative to huge, colossal growth in renewables. It’s no longer possible to make the world livable without wind energy.

My job is simply to make this happen.

So why do I come to work? Because it matters so, so much.

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