The transcription of the video is below. 

Introduction to Catherine Hamilton: Clean Energy, Policy, and Climate Change Solutions

Nico: Hey, there’s a lawyer. Welcome back. If you are new here, I just want to welcome you in and thank you for giving us a chance to earn your attention by lending us your ears. The only non renewable resource you’ve got that of course is your time. Today’s entrepreneur. And clean energy champion is a well known and trusted voice.

That voice is one I’m sure many of you will have heard in our industry podcast, formerly known as the energy gang. That of course is Catherine Hamilton chair and co founder of 38 North. She is an international policy expert. As I mentioned, podcast host, and now a regular contributor to industry journals and other podcasts, as well as a mentor to the industry at large.

She was notably awarded top solar industry thought leader in the solar 100, the Steve Kerr of, uh, of the industry as a KWH analytics coined it. And she was the inaugural entrepreneur of the year for the Kleeney awards. I hope that you take as much value from this conversation as I have. I’ve been long looking forward to getting Catherine on the show.

Make sure that you’re subscribed to the podcast because that’ll ensure that you won’t miss out on our twice weekly content, just like this. You can also check out more than 600 clean energy founders, stories, and career advice at my suncast. com. For now, let’s get ready to tune up your skills. Solar warrior, as you tune in to another powerful conversation here on Sunkist.

Well, Catherine, there are loads of things that I could say about you and your tremendous career. Um, but I think that, that you truly are. A trailblazer you have in many ways set the pace and broken through the glass ceiling. So it is an honor to be able to finally host you here on Sunkast and get a taste of the story and the, and the trajectory that led you to where you are today.

Thanks for joining us.

Katherine: Thank you so much, Nico. I’m fangirling myself cause I’ve long admired Suncast and thought, gosh, how would I get on

Nico: that show? Oh, wow. I think I appreciate that so much. I remember very much, um, meeting you for the first time in Charlottesville. And it’s just so folks don’t think that it’s easy for us to like pull these things off.

It literally was March of 2019. When I first said to Catherine in person, I really want you to be on Suncast and it. It just takes time, like these things, uh, like fine wine, they, they take time to come to maturity, especially with someone like you who has such a busy schedule and we’re all traveling. And there was a little thing called the pandemic in the middle, but I’m honored that, um, that you are a listener and, uh, I’m really grateful for all the ways that you have had an impact on all of our industry and career, uh, through, uh, through your work directly, which we’ll talk about today.

Um, let’s start. At a little bit at a 30, 000 foot level, though, and present day, before we dig a bit into the history in the background, how do you describe, generally speaking, the problem that you’ve dedicated your career to solving? So what I

Katherine: want to do is make sure that we can solve for climate by using all of the, not just the technologies, the smart business models, and of course, what my specialty is, is public policy, all of those tools to create a desire and a will to move forward and mitigate for climate change.

Nico: I love what you just said. I don’t think I’ve heard it said in such a cogent and concise way. Thank you. Solve for climate change by using all the technologies, business models, and policy tools. Available to us to create and desire and a will to move forward and mitigate climate change. That’s really, that’s really powerful as a result and decades of a career that you’ve built to support it with skills that will unpack.

Would you give us. An introduction to 38 North. Why is 38 North the vehicle through which you are now solving, uh, the problems that you just enunciated?

Katherine: Yeah, 38 North is a public policy shop. So my business partner, Isaac Brown, who is like. We’re joined at the hip. He and I, uh, have worked together for a decade in this, uh, in this little venture.

And we originally started with four co founders. Isaac was brought in as our first employee, but we had four co founders, two of whom spun off to do other very successful ventures. And another one made some different life decisions, which was great. But along the way, we’ve had to figure out. why should people care about policy?

Why is it so important to think of it early on? And I’ve been able to do that because I came out of the technology world, not out of the, out of the political world. So for me, politics is a bit of a, of a mystery, even though I have to be politically savvy along the way. Um, so I’ve seen what we’ve done as sort of this unique.

Ability to bring the understanding of policy and the understanding of business into, and, and not just business to in the, in the sense of making money and being economically successful, but also having a mission. So, a lot of what we do is work on with nonprofits, so it could be a mission that you’re trying to drive forward, but understanding how policy impacts that and then.

What are the fewest levers that you have to push to get the outcome you want? What are the most influential, most effective, most effective and most impactful things you can do to get a certain outcome? And you have to do that when you have a, have a small shop, but we also think that it’s something we’re really good at is getting to really what is the nut of the problem and what do we have to do to solve it?

Nico: Catherine, before we get into the background of how and why you started down the path of both energy and policy, I’d love to pique folks interest with some of the underlying accolades and accomplishments. I mentioned before that back in the inaugural of the cleanings, you were nominated as entrepreneur of the year.

We’ll talk a bit in a minute about sort of the potential tendencies that led you down the path for entrepreneurship, but I’m curious. Um, could you illustrate a few of the ways that through 38 North and through the business and career that you’ve built, you’ve identified those few levers that can get the greatest certain outcome, uh, in particular, along the path to cleaning up our environment and affecting climate change.

Katherine: Yeah, you have to understand the problem, right? You have to understand what are you trying to solve? And then what is this technology? Bringing to the table that can, that is part of the solution. How are they going to make a go at it? And there we work with companies that are both global multinationals and just very early stage, you know, pre series a startup.

So we work with a lot of different types of, of companies. And you find folks that, that say I have this great invention. And it’s really cool. And it’s going to solve this incredible problem and everybody should be buying it. And, and yet they aren’t. So you say, all right, so what do we have to do to expand that business?

And this requires that we really dig in and understand the business or what the mission is really in a very. granular level. And we spent a lot of time with the founders of the leaders of the company to dig in with their decks with everything that we can to make sure that we can internalize what that is.

So that when we go and look at what are the policies that would really impact that, that we have a real understanding of what What those are, and then who can impact those policies. Who are the people who have, who are the decision makers? Who are the people who have influence on the decision makers? Um.

And then get at those and so it’s a, it’s a puzzle, which I find always fascinating because every single puzzle is different. So you have to think what’s, how do I solve this puzzle? And it’s a combination of having some understanding, or at least being able to learn about the technology and also having.

A pretty strong ability to communicate because you need to be able to distill whatever that is into something that a policymaker will understand.

Nico: So we talk often about the reality that, you know, both technology and sort of as, as a result of sort of advancement of the business world doesn’t move until dollars move and dollars more often than not move based on how policy and regulation.

Effect the economic environment, the work that, that you all do, um, around policy in particular for startups is looking at how helping entrepreneurs, like many who are listening to the show, figure out ways to align, either align their business with policies that exist or align policies around their business so that their business can flourish in a certain environment.

Um, sort of moving roadblocks or, uh, paving a road ahead of them. Is there kind of a canon of policies that in your line of work, folks reference or point to that say like, here, this is a good example of the kind of work we do and why it matters to the industry that you could eliminate for those who just are unclear how the work in policy dramatically and directly impacts the ability to succeed as an entrepreneur.

How Entrepreneurs and Policymakers Collaborate in the Energy Sector

Katherine: Yeah. And Nico, I would. Start actually with just a basic understanding that one of the biggest issues about policymakers is their lack of imagination, and it’s not their fault. It’s like they don’t know what they don’t know. So sometimes just talking to people about whatever this technology is that is disruptive.

That that solves issues that nobody else has figured out how to solve sometimes just education is enormously impactful because it puts the idea in someone’s head. They start internalizing it as a policymaker and they start thinking about how is it that what. I do can help this thing that I find super interesting.

So there’s a little bit of a chicken and egg here, right? One, uh, one side is how do we educate policymakers into areas that they may have never thought about before? And then how do we look at what the policies that are typically out there, for example, investment tax credit or production tax renewables.

How do we get them to see that in a bigger frame or in a slightly different frame? So you may have to think about it a little differently, but give them something to connect the dots of something new and different with something that’s familiar and that they can relate to in some way. So we do a lot of that.

So we’ll, you know, a lot of policies built on the backs of other policy, right? So a lot of the tax credits that just came out of the Inflation Reduction Act, a lot of those were built on the foundation of the original investment tax credit. The original production tax credit is familiar. Some of them had to be.

Adjusted some of them had to be created a little bit more out of whole cloth. Some of the manufacturing piece has not been, you know, these are, these are big manufacturing things. We haven’t done in a while. So, some of that is fairly new, but there are also ways you can go with standards and regulation that is.

People see that often as a stick and EPA just came out with the regulations, which a lot of people are saying are big sticks. Really what that is, it is a market signal, right? It does create a market signal, but it also allows you to work off of something that’s familiar. So I think about all those appliance standards and how much it’s changed what we go to whatever, you know, Best Buy or Home Depot to purchase.

Those, that equipment that you see there is all a result of appliance standards, of Energy Star labeling, you know, our purchasing, everything that we do in our normal life often is familiar because it comes from something that has a long history. And so you have to give a lot of credit to the folks who laid a lot of that groundwork and build off of that understanding where the success is.

And there’s some things you have to create like the National Green Bank. Of course, there were state green banks that did. Something similar, but coming up with that legislation, for example, in the Inflation Reduction Act was really interesting because it was something that had not been done on a federal level.

You could pull sort of strings from what’s happened in states, but you really also had to do a lot of initial kind of creativity with that.

Nico: I think that’s really, that’s really helpful. And I’m trying to help folks who perhaps feel That they are beholden to policies. They have no controller and no voice in recognize ways that they can be proactive, especially entrepreneurs.

I think if a lot of folks consider working on regulatory policy, the work of I’ll just use our industry in the solar industry, like the work of the big solar manufacturers, the in phase, and maybe the big national footprint installers, the sunruns of the world. You know, uh, we’re both good friends with folks.

Just start right in the d d C area. I’ll, I’ll talk, uh, you know, in, in Boston, I can think of Costa and the folks from Namp and the DC area. I can think of Mike Healy at New Columbia, you know, local regional players who are very active on Capitol Hill. How do entrepreneurs that you engage with most often come to a company like 38 North?

And what are the kinds of, uh, transactions that take place there? I’m trying to demystify the, this whole sector that you work in. I think for many entrepreneurs in the energy sector, it’s just like, it’s a

Katherine: black box. Yeah, definitely. And different firms look at it in different ways. So there’s some very traditional lobby shops that have a lot of staff and they go office to office on the hill to introduce the company.

And it’s very much, um, shoe leather lobbying. It’s like just getting in front of a lot of people. And, you know, that, that has a lot of use just in getting your name out there. But there’s, we don’t, we do some of that in that, of course, we’re going to meet with a lot of Hill staffers are going to meet with a lot of administration, um, executive branch officials.

But really what we need to know from any entrepreneur is what is keeping you from being incredibly successful? What is it? Is there something in the tax code that is preventing you from growing? What is that? And then let’s figure out like, well, is there something we can do to influence that, to change it, to enhance it?

What can we do to try to remove those friction points? And so that’s why we want to work with companies. We want to understand. Where are you having issues? Why are you not, why are you not on everybody’s shelf? Why are you not out there selling like gangbusters and then try to figure out what are the things that we can do to remove those barriers?

And there may be very different solutions for different companies. It’s really. Working very closely with that entrepreneur too. We can’t just go off and do this on our own. We want to make sure that we really understand them, that we’re really fully embedded and that we have the same mindset, although we bring different skills and different.

Knowledge to the table that we are there for their success. And so that’s how, that’s how we approach the, the issue. And I would just say a lot of people think that, um, that this is a very glamorous world. It’s not necessarily glamorous at all. There’s, you spend a lot of time on zoom. Um, it’s more, and I, I know a lot of people think of it as mysterious.

Um, These people are just normal people. Hill staffers are often 22 year olds who are fresh out of college, who majored in political science, maybe a minor in environmental science or something, but. Um, they just want to work on the Hill. They think it’s a really cool place to be. They’re vastly underpaid, I might add, um, but they want to learn.

And so you have to like understand these are mostly young people and the people who’ve been there for a long time. Luckily, they have a lot of experience on how things work and they’ve had exposure to a number of different technologies and might know a lot more, but they all are in a position of needing to be educated and learn so that they can understand like, what can I do in my job? To help these people out.

Nico: How have you seen the process of educating Hill staffers and the lawmakers they serve evolve over time? And specifically, I’m referring to any particular tools or maybe a need for as you kind of survey the rest of the landscape. Uh, an update or a refresh in tools to, to serve this need.

Katherine: Yeah. It used to be very different. So I was, um, and we can talk about my background at some point, but at one point I was the head of government relations for the national renewable energy lab and the, and I could take the head of the lab, the lab director who was an astronaut. Um, it’s pretty incredible, totally different skillset than mine, by the way.

But I could take him to meet with. Senators with, with the people in the highest positions of power on the Hill to have meetings. And then that person would turn to their staffer and say, okay, you talk to Catherine about how to work this whole thing out. Or I could go and testify before a committee. I was, that was really why I was initially in that position was because I could understand the technology and be able to speak to it.

Um, to people who made policy decisions, but it has become much more democratized now. And it evolved from being where you really had to get to the highest level to being a lot of meeting people office by office, having fundraisers, which is something I really don’t like to do at all is like be involved in this whole, you know, fundraising stuff.

And then. Now, and it’s very odd, it’s because of COVID, it’s become much more accessible. Hill staff, I mean, I spend, I’ll have 12 meetings a day and they’re all online. In fact, that’s how the entire Inflation Reduction Act was written, was online with staffers. And it was great because you could have 12 meetings that the bonus credit for a low middle income.

Communities that I was working on, which I think is one of the best things in, in the bill. Now, we probably had a dozen meetings with the people who were writing that to try to hash out. How are we going to write this? How much latitude do you want to give treasury? How is it going to really get to the people who need it?

Um, how do you really serve low income people? How do you give them access to solar? So being able to have so much more ability to connect, I think makes for a far better, more thoughtful result. It doesn’t mean people don’t still come to town and do the rounds and see people face to face, but a lot is done online these days.

And I think that’s incredible because it allows people all over and in all levels of the organization to participate.

Katherine’s Unique Journey into the Energy Industry

Nico: Yeah. And it improves access. It is itself a lever for greater equity and inclusion. Absolutely. You know, a thing or two about equity and inclusion just, uh, by nature of being raised as a, uh, a girl in the South, uh, from engineering.

I’d love to hear a little bit about where you grew up. You grew up in Virginia to a family that had ties to the power industry. What was it like for you around the dinner table as a child? Could you talk a bit about your family? Was it a close knit family? Was the nature of the. Discourse.

Katherine: Yes. I’m from Lynchburg, Virginia. I was born in Richmond. I raised in Lynchburg and my grandfather was the one who worked for the power company. He just called it the company. And, uh, he always had aspirations that all of us would be engineers. Uh, I actually. Ended up being an engineer, but only by training, not by education. Um, but my dinner table conversation was very different because my father is a professor of philosophy.

And so my brother and I would find ourselves before being excused from the table, uh, having to solve logic problems. Like he would put. Four pennies on the table and say, there are four trains, uh, moving along the same track. Two of them always lie. Two of them never lie. Who got there first? You know, the crazy things that my brother and I would have to solve these logic problems.

And my mother was at the time when I was in my sort of formative years, very much of a homemaker and she actually. was really the engineer in the family. She did everything. She could do anything. And she taught me how to do, you cannot even imagine all the stuff I know how to do because of my mother. I mean, it’s gardening, it’s cooking, it’s sewing.

I mean, I can make lined suits. I can make drapes with weights on them. I can do anything with my hands that I want to because of my mother. And she came from. The dad who was the engineer. And so I think all along I liked building things. I liked doing things that resulted in something that worked. Um, but the discourse was very much more philosophy and logic.

And that was kind of the, what I was raised in was in the, was in the world of a college professor. Yeah.

Nico: And for those who are, are wondering, uh, her father, John Heil is, uh, considered one of the, uh, one of the leading modern philosophers. I’ll link to his Wikipedia page so you guys can read up on him.

Those of you who love to study, uh, philosophy, uh, in general and are curious how it might have influenced the way Catherine sees the world. You know, your grandfather worked for the company. Your father worked for the university. Was there any early sign for you of an entrepreneurial tendency or particularly strong leadership qualities that would have led you to the path of, you know, creating your own firm?

Katherine: Well, I was the oldest, so I had in that immediate family, there were four of us. And then our, the families kind of split and grew and I, there are seven of. siblings now. Um, so I was the oldest, you know, there was a lot of focus on sports and at that time, sports for girls were just much less accessible.

And I, I loved running my dad and I ran all the time. I picked up my running then, um, I played some tennis, but really it was, I was spent a lot of time on my own and I spent a lot of time running. Um, Thinking about teaching. I wanted to be a teacher. I thought, uh, when I was very little, I remember setting up all my stuffed animals and dolls in front of a blackboard and just practicing for hours, teaching them all kinds of things.

I don’t remember what I taught them, but, but I would, I was a very small girl and I would do that. And I thought I want to do that. Um, and then when I went to college, I really wanted to write and illustrate children’s books. So I’ve always wanted to be. Very much teaching, uh, helping young people, helping children.

And I thought I would have like a hundred children. I had four, which feels like a hundred, but, um,

Nico: but three. So four to me feels like a hundred.

Katherine: Yeah. After once you get past two, you know, it’s just, you’re playing a zone rather than man to man anyway. So, so that’s kind of how. how it came, how, uh, kind of how my upbringing informed who I am.

I don’t know if it was so much entrepreneurial as, you know what, if I want to learn something, I should probably teach myself and I should probably just figure it out because my motto is how hard can it be?

Nico: It also reflecting on what we’ve learned in the last 20 minutes of the general nature of your work, which is focused on education, focused on breaking things down that are very complex into the simplest of format so that it is easily, easily digestible, easily communicated down the telephone line in the way that won’t break up. You don’t have the least amount of disillusion. Why’d you end up at Cornell as an English major? I know that you wanted to be a teacher, but why Cornell?

Katherine: It was really far from Lynchburg. That was the number one reason. Um, I also had spent a lot of time as a kid playing ice hockey, our, our college lake used to freeze. And so I loved ice hockey and Cornell has a really good ice hockey team. And my dad had done, uh, we had lived in Ithaca when I was in eighth grade. Um, my dad had done a sabbatic there and.

I just loved it. I loved Ithaca. I didn’t know that much about the school because I was in eighth grade. So I was a townie at that point, but I really loved being up there. And so I said, well, that’s and I applied to a bunch of different places. Um, you know, other schools that I thought might be interesting, but Cornell just seemed just seemed the best fit for me.

And Cornell is great because it has multiple schools within the university, right? And a lot of it is a state school, it’s a land grant school. So there are a lot of people who study agriculture or who study sheep husbandry. I mean, there are, my best friend’s father was a sheep husbandry professor and expert.

So. It, it was a school that had so many, such a richness of people and, um, and it was also founded co ed back in the 1870s. And so to me, that was a really important feature too, is that I’m a girl, I’m coming from the South. I may have been picked because of, uh, regional diversity issues, but, but I was really, uh, really excited to go somewhere different and kind of open my mind to really different ways of thinking and being.

Nico: Yeah. Um, I love that, uh, in, uh, in previous conversations you have unabashedly said also, and also ice hockey.

Katherine: Yes. Yes. I played a lot of intramural ice hockey. I will tell you that,

Nico: you know, in retrospect, we know a ton of folks, uh, the Cornell energy Club is now really well established and well respected, um, you know, mutual friends like Jeff Weiss and many others are alum as well of Cornell and, um, great entrepreneurs in, uh, you know, sort of in climate and energy broadly.

You left Cornell and went to France to study French civilization. So I, and many others are probably trying to We’ve the grid here and think, well, how did she get back to DC? How did she get back? How’d she get into, into energy at all? Could you walk me down the path of how you ended up, how you wound up working at a company very similar to the company that your grandfather did?

From Tech Writing to Energy Innovation

Katherine: Yeah, I had done a summer at Virginia power, which was it’s dominion now, but it was Virginia power then, and it had just. Kind of over the previous decade changed from Bepco, which was the original name of the company. I had worked for a summer in the headquarters in Richmond, almost after my grandfather had long retired.

But, um, I was in that building, I was writing a computer manual. It was like a technical writing project. Uh, I, Worked all summer by the time I, the moment I stopped writing the computer manual, it was outdated because you know, computers were moving that quickly, but I took the 800 that I made all summer and I went and I bought the best stereo system.

I could get my hands on that. I spent every nickel. I thought my grandfather was going to faint. He was like, you worked all summer. He made this money. I was like, that is the one thing I want is a really good stereo system. So there you go. Um, but so I had done that during the summer. So I had an idea that.

It would be a place I could work and I liked the people I enjoyed being there. Um, it was not anything like engineering or it really had nothing to do with energy at all. It was really just a technical manual. But when I graduated from college, I realized I do want to write and illustrate children’s books, but I don’t have any way to actualize that. So I’m going to put that off. Uh, a friend of my mom’s said, Oh, my sister lives in Paris. And I said, well, say no more. I’ll do whatever it takes. So I was, uh, I was an au pair and, and while I was an au pair. which was the way I could survive and buy Metro tickets is that I, uh, you know, got this extra degree, which was great.

It was really, really fun. And I had so many adventures and I became even more brave. I have felt that I’ve not, I don’t fear much at all. For some reason, I’ve just never scared, been scared of much of anything other than Heights. Um, but. When I, when I went to college, I was confronted with people who made relentless fun of my Southern accent.

So I immediately changed my accent and realized, well, I can do this. I can change my accent really easily. I can do any of that. Um, and so when I went to France, I loved it. And I had been a couple of times, um, in, when I was growing up, I went on a trip. I went to Quebec a couple of times with my grandmother.

I got to do a work study abroad in Paris before. So I just love. French and France. But I came back, I knew I didn’t want to live in Lynchburg anymore. I wanted to live in the DC area because I knew there would probably be jobs there. So my first job was not at the power company. I got a job, uh, working at a huge law firm for 6 an hour, which was not a living wage even then.

And I did things like serve subpoenas and just did like a lot of scut work, although I always had to dress like a lawyer. So that was when I learned how to make my own lined suits with shoulder pads and everything. And tailored them because I was like, you know, if I can buy a couple of yards of fabric, I might be able to make myself something that I look like a presentable in.

But I also just found that I just really did not want to be in that world at all. And then I applied to work at, uh, at the power company and they were desperate for people. They must have been because I’m not an engineer at all. And they brought me in.

Nico: And the job you applied for was as

Katherine: it was called a service representative. And what you had to do is design service to people who needed electricity. Now, for people who worked in the suburbs, all that meant was like, you figure out where the, where the transformer goes, the box, and then you run service. So it’s like, you measure, you measure the service. But where I was located was an old, my service territory was old town Alexandria.

And so it required. Designing vaults for switches and transformers and 16 way duck banks and French drains because it was below the water table. I was there when I did the project where they spliced the 1st 1000 MCM water impervious cables that came with instructions in Japanese. Like, there were all these things that I got to be involved in and I had to take a test every 6 months.

I had to take night classes in engineering. So no way. Oh, yeah. I took night classes at with labs with resistors and everything. And my lab partner would go to happy hour before the lab. So I never let him touch anything. And I said, you sit there and you take notes. I’ll do the experiment. I can do this. Um, and I loved it so much.

I found that it was like, just totally me. It just suited my interests. It suited my ability to like figure stuff out and do things. And I loved it. I love that job so much.

Nico: For frame of reference, Catherine, we’re talking about upgrading the then infrastructure of the grid in the eighties. Would you characterize.

What is now Dominion, then Virginia Power as a company that was innovative, and if so, in what ways?

Katherine: Yes, we had to be super innovative then because there was so much load growth. All of the high rises in Old Town Alexandria that exist today were just starting to be built. So there was not enough, you know, the substations just didn’t have enough juice. Like you had to build new substations. You had to, you know, there was, there was so much that had to happen to get these buildings service and to support them. And what we found is we had to get super creative. So they had a standby generation rate. We, that was a, that was all about diesel gen sets, but still it was a standby generation rate.

We had a, we had a thermal energy storage rate. We had to learn how to design a storage systems and try to sell them to people. So schools, hospitals, um, thermal energy stores like ice. Ice storage. Yep. Wow. Big basements full of ice. Baltimore Aircoil, uh, CalMac, they all had ice storage. So I had to learn all about that.

We had a, we had a thermal energy storage rate. We had TOU rates. It was so creative. And then when I moved from engineering to kind of commercial, the commercial service, I had like 100 assigned large commercial customers. For example, Marriott was one of my customers. So I would go to a Marriott, I would go down in the basement where the operations engineer was, and I would, I would talk to them about what they could do to try to reduce energy use.

And it was, uh, we had to be creative. It was out of necessity. Now, once They built out enough feeder lines, then they didn’t have to worry about that so much. And that was when I sort of said, you know what, that and the glass ceiling, which was quite low. Um, as I was, I was ambitious. I wanted to keep going.

I was like, I love this place. I want to keep moving up. And they’re like, yeah, no.

Nico: Yeah. What do you think slowed? The innovation at, um, at Dominion and by example, other utilities, uh, in the nineties and early two thousands that you witnessed and you just explained a little bit of it, but why did that innovation slow down?

Katherine: Yeah, I think that there was, you know, they built out enough generation. So Virginia power had some coal, but a lot of nuclear. Generation, they had the largest pump hydro facility in the world, but at Bath County, they had plenty of supply. It was really the demand side that they. That they were lacking and that was where, you know, they had to get super creative.

And I think once all that happened and everything was chugging along, it looked like demand was maybe flattening out a bit. I mean, you know, there are bumps in demand based on when everybody gets AC, you know, there was a, there was a point in time when everybody started getting air conditioning kind of before my time and that bumped up demand.

So then you had to, you had to account for that. I feel like they were innovative when they needed to be innovative, but they weren’t out there seeking. Innovation. They weren’t saying, all right, well, let’s see, are there new interesting things we can do there? We’re like, how do we adjust? How do we make sure that we innovate our way out of this situation?

And then I just think it leveled out.

Nico: I feel I’m seeing parallels to what we’re seeing now with energy transition, the load growth, uh, as well as the generation growth for that renewables represent. And, um. A lot of folks say, well, utilities just aren’t innovative or they resist change. What do you say to that?

And how does that mirror kind of what you experienced back in the eighties? So

Katherine: probably most of the people that had to be innovative back then are not worth the utility anymore. Probably long retired. Um, but I know they can do it. Like saying they’re not innovative. Um, that’s first of all, painting them all with a broad brush, but also I think they are.

I just think the muscle memory isn’t there. So part of it is helping them become more innovative. But also there are a whole host of new technologies now that we didn’t have. We did have demand response then. So we did have, and especially co ops have had demand response forever. Um, and that’s just like, you know, it’s all, you know, the on off switch for your water heater or air conditioning.

Really now there are during the time I would say when utilities were doing pretty well, they didn’t have to do a lot of innovation during that time. Innovation became very much more democratized just as public policy has become more democratized innovation. People could innovate. By using their phone in a basement, anybody could do it.

And so, and so people did that. They thought, well, I can do, we can do this better. So by the time something like when Obama was elected and you had the stimulus and you had to think about what are we going to do to spur innovation in this industry, there were a lot of technologies that were out there that simply had not been deployed.

And the stimulus bill bought down the cost of those a bit so that they could be deployed. Now, That said, in some ways that worked out, so synchro phasers, PMUs that are on the grid now would prevent what happened in 2003 with that enormous Northeast blackout that was caused by a branch in Cleveland. I don’t think that would happen again because we have more visibility on the grid, but think of all those smart meters that at the time were cutting edge.

And then nothing happened with the data. There was, there was a tool that was just not quite utilized the way it could have been. I think we’re in a really different place right now. There are just so many more tools, so many more technologies that are much more cost effective. And there are a lot more customers that are out there wanting to use them.

I think, I think utilities are. Being put in a very different place

Katherine’s career shift from power companies to public policy

Nico: using the smart meter example, what can that data have been better utilized to, um, to provide for consumers?

Katherine: Oh, 1st of all, just like letting consumers see their data, which most of them did not. So just letting them be aware because often when you’re aware of something, it will change your behavior.

So if you can see, oh. Look, this is when I use all this energy and look how expensive it is. Maybe that will help me figure out what I have to do to not use it. Maybe I shouldn’t do my laundry at this time. Maybe I should do it this other time, even without, and this is, you know, the example of Opower, right?

Where if you just give the customers information, often they will change their behavior. And I think that could have gone a long way. It could have gone a lot. Um, now we’re in a place we have to replace all those meters, but there are other technologies that we can use to, to get, uh, very granular information and data in and of itself, as you know, isn’t the be all end all, it’s only, it’s only the tool you then have to figure out what data is important and then what do you want to do with it?

And what do you want other people to do with it?

Nico: Yeah, I’m in a world where, um, we’re saving every. Every digital bit and byte, uh, so figuring out not only how to store it, but, um, how to parse it and make it actionable is increasingly important. You mentioned, um, reaching the glass ceiling. What spurred the move to NREL?

Katherine: Yeah, I went, I kept applying for promotions to do different things. One was even a job teaching. Uh, executives at the power company and I would have had to make a move, uh, and they weren’t offering me really enough to uproot my family. I had two kids at that point. They really were not offering me enough to move.

And I said, you know, I, I would need more of a salary. I would need more of a bump to do this. And they said, well, we can’t do that for you. So they gave it to a man at a much higher level. And I knew then, oh, it wasn’t me. I was their first choice, but. It really ended up going to this other guy and it would, thank goodness, because I’m really glad I didn’t end up doing that.

I probably would have been stuck educating, educating CEOs in a, you know, at a very low level for a long time, but. What I, I just found that I wasn’t ever going to move up and, and they also had this system where, you know, only one woman was going to get the promotion and that creates this horrible environment of dog eat dog, where you are competing against other women rather than like, wait, we should all get promoted.

We shouldn’t just have one. It’s not a zero sum game. We should all be able to have the same ability to, to move up. I was, I was also terrible at like. sucking up to my supervisors. I was like, probably a little bit sassy. Um, but before I left, I said, I want an exit interview with the vice president. And I got it.

And I went in and I said, you’re not giving me a chance. And I know why it’s because I’m a woman and I’ve had two kids. They told me when I got pregnant that I was going to prevent them from making their goals by having babies. Oh my God. Oh yeah. You can’t do that anymore. Um, But I eventually said, you know what, I want to do something more fun.

And for people who really care about the same kind of things I care about. So I was walking by the inbox of a real engineer, not a fake engineer like myself, but a real engineer. And I saw this memo in his in basket. From somebody at d o e and I was like, huh, that guy sounds really interesting. His name was Mark Ginsburg.

And I wrote him a letter and I said, mark, it sounds like what you’re doing is really interesting. Could we chat? And he said, sure. And he ended up really being such a mentor for me. He hired me through N R L because he didn’t have any ability to hire internally to D O E. So I was assigned to him and was effect effectively a program manager within that program.

But, um, yeah, but through the lab,

Nico: It wasn’t so easy to get that job at NREL though. What did you have to do to get that job?

Katherine: So at the time you had to present a paper before 12 scientists. Real scientists. Real scientists. And I thought, oh my goodness, what am I going to talk about that’s going to sound smart that they’re not going to know anything about?

And it turned out rate schedules was the perfect topic. And so You know, I had an overhead projector, right? That’s what you had to use. You didn’t have PowerPoint with these like little slides that you could write on. And so I had my little presentation, I would change each little overhead and I talked about rate schedules and they’re all kind of scratching their head like, well, we don’t know what she’s talking about.

It sounds like she knows what she’s talking about. We just don’t know what that is. Um, so they. They hired me and I think it was, it was probably more of my enthusiasm than

Nico: anything else. Can you think of work that, uh, or point to work that you affected, um, or worked on at NREL that had an indelible mark or impact on the way you currently show up as a professional?

Katherine: First of all, I loved it so much. The people at NREL who just. So mission driven. Those were the people who built the original solar homes and they lived in them themselves. I mean, they were so driven by the desire to, to create a whole new energy economy that was based on renewables. They really believed that they walked the talk.

I was inspired by them every single day and it made me want to be better too. And I’ll just continue to learn more. So, Thank you. So when I was there, I developed an energy audit program for the federal government. It was a, you know, I had to write the RFP. We had to sit down in a room and go through all the applications for people who wanted to be auditors.

And then we had to choose them. And it was a super interesting process to go through. At the time, I also thought, well, you know, why aren’t we talking about water too? Because water is all part of this equation. So we started a water efficiency program, which is now. at EPA. I also started thinking about data then too.

How do we view data? So I was always trying to figure out like, what’s kind of the next thing? And there are all these people who are so smart around me, who’s so much smarter than I am and more educated, and I’ve got to be able to learn from them and keep going. Um, and that’s when my, One of my girlfriends came to me and said, Hey, I’m, I knew that she was the manager of government relations.

I had no idea what she did. And she said, Hey, I’m leaving. Would you like, do you want my job? And I was like, I have just absolutely no idea what you do at all. So she

Nico: said, and that was your entree into government relations.

Katherine: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The invitation. Absolutely. Amazing. And one of the first things I did was I was sent to a meeting, my first day on the job as government relations, I was sent to a meeting at, at the Alliance to Save Energy and it was run by.

My husband wasn’t my husband at the time. It was just a really tall guy. And he said, okay, I’m setting up a subgroup on policy. And I said, could I be in your subgroup? And we’ve been married for 25 years now. So, uh, yeah, I learned a lot from him. He was, he really helped me understand, uh, politicians and what to look, he and a, and a staffer who was from a Colorado, uh, House of Representatives office.

Between the two of them, I learned everything about how to navigate politics. And

Nico: so you, uh, for the better part of your career of the 80s and 90s were at Dominion Power and NREL. And NREL helped launch you into public policy. And As a result, defining yourself as a credible counterparty, becoming an engineer, working at an incredible, uh, sort of globally recognized laboratory like NREL and the department of energy, you became a trusted voice.

Can you talk about the early days that ultimately led through the 2000s into forming 38 North and how you became aware that this was how you’re going to spend. your energy and time as a teacher in the industry.

Katherine: Yeah, that’s really interesting to think of it that way. Because some of the early things that I needed to do, which I was pretty comfortable with what was, um, taking information from the lab about all the programs and then presenting them before Congress.

I had testified before Congress and I was able to do that because I knew the technologies pretty well. My first. intersection with the White House in the Clinton White House was, um, they were trying to figure out about rooftop shingles and they, they reached out to NREL eventually got to me and I said, Oh yes, we will send you a rooftop shingle because you should see one of these rooftop shingles.

They’re very cool. A solar shingle. Yeah. Solar shingles, right? It was a solar shingle. I mailed it. I FedExed it to the White House. And the next day I got a call from the guy who was the head of OMB and he said, Hey, uh, Catherine, I got your shingle. And I said, awesome. What do you think? And he said, well, we’ve all been evacuated because it has leads on it and they thought it was a bomb.

And the shingle has thus been neutralized. And I said, did you like the shingle? Um, so that was my first interaction with the white house and I think I’ve been making up for it ever since, but it was also my first interaction with a solar shingle. Um, Oh

Nico: my God, that’s a great story. You can’t make that story up

Katherine: But. Uh, but I really liked that. So, so then Congress became another puzzle, right? It’s like, oh, they’re a puzzle and I just have to figure them out. I have to figure out how each of these people tick because they all have really different goals. They have different ways of thinking about things, but I’m sure that if I use the right words, the right messages, I’ll be able to explain.

Renewable energy in a way that they’ll understand. And so it was at that time also, it was a lot more bipartisan. I mean, the chair of the house science committee was a scientist. I mean, that was, it’s unusual to find. There are a few people who are energy geeks in Congress, but at the time it seemed more bipartisan.

So, so it was just as easy for me. And I would say. It’s actually not that hard for me to talk to Republicans or Democrats either way now. It’s just that there’s a lot more noise out there, probably because of Twitter and everything else that, that there’s a lot more heat and noise that you have to avoid to kind of get to the art.

How do I talk to this person in a way that they can. That they’ll understand and that they will find some, even if they don’t agree with you, just some understanding of, uh, some ability to relate to.

Learning from Career Hurdles and the Power of Mentorship

Nico: I appreciate that actually. And I was recently in Chicago. I had the opportunity to meet Sean Caston, someone who is doing.

Amazing work on the Hill. And I just want to point out that, um, there is, I’ll see if I can find a link for it, uh, for when we post the show notes here, but, but very recently I was having a conversation back and forth on LinkedIn. Sorry, I’m stumbling here. Cause I’m also looking for it in real time, uh, with.

Edmund Carleville and Christian Roseland, who are both sort of highlighting sort of good actors and bad actors on the Hill and who understands energy and who doesn’t, um, and it’s, it’s, I think it’s illustrative to, to hear as well. You talk about how at the time, uh, it was very bipartisan, the concept of.

Improving our energy grid, introducing, uh, new technology like renewables and, um, you had a scientist leading a committee on science, um, on a novel concept. I wonder on the path towards sort of finding the good fit. Because we have to admit that along the way, we, we, nobody rare, most people rarely figure it out perfectly all the way through, um, were there any bad fits in your career trajectory that you’re willing to talk about and, uh, and give insight into?

As, as sort of mentoring for others, if for nothing, if another reason then to let them know they’re not alone.

Katherine: Yeah, you always have bad days. Like when a foreman threw his hard hat at me at the utility because of a drawing that I did. So, you know, I had to duck. You have bad, I ducked behind his desk and I said, you missed, which may not have been the best response.

But, um, I think you always have bad days. You always have times when you think. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. What am I going to do there? I have had times I’ve lost jobs before. I’ve lost a couple of jobs where I, when I missed something, when I didn’t, when I didn’t understand what the other person or people feared.

So a lot of really bad decisions are made out of fear. And I would just say that’s just humanity across the board, that if you’re making a decision out of fear, it’s probably not going to be a good one. Uh, it’s a fight or flight decision. And when, what I didn’t realize in a couple of situations was I have somehow made this person fearful and I didn’t mean to, but there’s not much I can do about it and it’s just my way of being.

It wasn’t for anything I did right or wrong. It was more about some, something I was oblivious to. And, and so it’s made me be more. A little bit more cautious, not about necessarily how I am, because I’m not very cautious, but more cautious about where other people are coming from. I want to listen a little bit more.

I want to hear a little bit more about what you have to say before I blurt something out that may. step on something that you really care about. So I think you learn, and this is just part of aging too. You learn to listen more to people and, and kind of try to try to figure out a little bit better where they’re coming from before you do something.

Nico: That was very well honed.And, and even inside of that, I would say, like, recognizing bad decisions are often made out of fear, trying to understand what other, what other people around you fear and navigating with them around those fears and sometimes through them is difficult. I think that by and large, especially in a male dominated industry, women trigger fears when they are self judgmental Uh, taught when they are self assured when they point out obvious inconsistencies or incongruencies in the system.

And, uh, I want to encourage alongside you. Those who are in those situations to embrace that embrace that you see things differently embrace that you are willing to point out incongruencies, um, understand that it might result in you needing to find another team for which you can contribute and find joy and don’t be afraid.

Katherine: Don’t be afraid of that. Yes, and those decisions were indeed made by men and, um. And a lot of them felt gendered, although at the time I wasn’t kind of seeing that very clearly. But yeah, you’re right. And you know, my hope is that those of us who’ve gone through that things that are no longer legal to do in the workforce, I think, um.

You know, hopefully there are women who are coming up behind us who can benefit from that. I mean, that would, that would be the dream is that other people who are coming along will be much more accepted. The people of all types can be accepted. I, I learned a ton about that through my kids because when I was growing up in Lynchburg, there was a, an institution that they housed people, um, who had disabilities and differing abilities, I should say.

Um, And they would bring out people from that institution to the, you know, to the city fair. And, and I was terrified. I thought these people are so different. I can’t possibly and I, and I just, um, I’m ashamed of that now that I think that way. I have 4 kids and my 2 younger ones. are, are differently abled.

In fact, all four of my kids are differently abled because I think everybody’s differently abled now. But those two, my two younger kids, um, both of whom happen to have down syndrome are, you know, that is like a tiny part of who they are. But having those children opened up me up so much to To just understanding that everybody has something to contribute, no matter who you are, no matter what school you go to, no matter your background, you have something to contribute to society, and it’s going to make everybody else better if you’re willing to contribute it.

Nico: Thank you so much for sharing that.

How with, as a mother, as a co founder. As, uh, someone who’s relied on in our industry and more broadly, um, for expertise, uh, how do you think about or find time for mentorship at the, at the stage you’re at in your career now?

Katherine: Yeah. It’s, it’s tough. I actually think that. Work life balance is a mythology. You just, you never have work life balance.

You, you have different focuses at different times. I was lucky that during, uh, a number of years, my husband took time off to kind of manage the family stuff and I was able to grow my career. I took a couple of years off when the youngest was born for him to do that too. So. You know, there’s, uh, there’s always this give and take, given that they’re only 24 hours in a day.

And, and I think of mentorship as very involved and I will be honest, I don’t, I’m not super involved. Like, like I don’t consider myself a real mentor because to be a mentor, you have to really be there for the person all the time. I think of it a little bit more as coaching. So I spent a lot of time talking to young people.

Of all stripes, just helping them kind of think through things and not actually imparting any wisdom so much as saying, trust your gut, trust your instinct, listen to yourself, listen to what you want to do or not do, because you are the best gauge of that. Not me. I can only say, Hey, go for it. You know. Do what makes you happy.

I can help people think through, you know, game theory out. You’ve got three options, right? Here’s where one could go. Here’s another, here’s another, just help them think through it a little bit. But really trusting your own instincts is something people need to do because. You may think you want to go down a certain path and you may end up going down some, going down a totally different one, but it might be like the best thing in the world for you to do.

Nico: Well, I’d suggest that you’ve been a mentor in ways that have touched thousands of lives. Over hundreds and of engagements and years of conversation, a little vignette of culture in our industry known as energy gang. How’d that become a part of your life

Katherine’s Unplanned Journey into Podcasting and Its Impact on Personal Brand and Policy

Katherine: just like everything else? Completely accidentally. Um, well, I should say it just that it wasn’t my instigation. I had known jigger for a while. This was at Carbon War Room when I knew him. He called me one day and said, Hey, how would you like to do a podcast with Stephen Lacey and myself? And I said, I have no idea what that means. I don’t know what a podcast is.

I said, what do I have to wear? And he said, whatever you want. And I said, well, that sounds good as a start. Um, I was terrified just because I didn’t, I don’t like being wrong and failing because of my own. It. inability to step up. Okay. So that’s my fear would be, I don’t want to sound stupid because I didn’t do my homework.

And so as everybody who knows, whoever listened to that, I would always have, you may not know because of the, it being, uh, audio rather than visual. I had 40 pages of paper spread out all over my floor for every episode where I would have interviewed numerous people for each. Topic, because Steven would, would let us know on a Monday, he’d say, or here are the three topics.

And I would say, I don’t know anything about any of those topics. Like I’ve never even heard of that word before. And so I’d freak out. And then I would step back and say, all right, two things, one, I probably do know something. I just am not giving myself any credit. And the second thing is I absolutely know other people who know something.

And then I would go, all right, I can reach out to these people and I will talk to them and they will help me understand that something and try to bring, you know, what is the experience that I’ve had? What is the What are my strengths that I can use as the, you know, the foundation and the filter to what all these experts are telling me about that topic.

So what’s funny is that people meet me and they think I just know about those things. And I really don’t. Some episodes I would learn it. It’s like. Cramming for an exam. You would learn it for that episode and then it would immediately be gone from the brain. So, like, no, I actually don’t know anything about that.

I just had to learn it for the episode. Um, and that can be problematic

Nico: too. I’m so glad that you said that. I think about it all the time because I. I’m often like in real time, cramming for the interview, um, learning as much as I can about the technology and the guest. And I run into people and they’re like, Oh, I loved when you talked about this thing.

And I don’t even remember it. Like, I don’t remember that being a part of the interview.

Katherine: Yes, exactly. Yeah. You know exactly what that’s like. Like the

Nico: skill, the skill that I developed was a chameleon, like being able to, um, I mean, I, I. Believe that this also requires deep intelligence, but I’ve learned how to, uh, engage with people at their level.

And, um, and oftentimes that’s above my level, um, by thankfully not having a video camera in front of me so that I can look at 40 tabs of Chrome tabs that are open. I can totally identify with that. You know, that said, one of the things that I see as you’re telling me this is how instructive it was to, to your process.

Of professional development as well, because it forced you out of your comfort zone. And so few of us have a lever, have a force forcing function in our lives to insist on continuous

Katherine: improvement, right? Oh, my gosh. It was such an intellectual exercise every week. It kept me sharp, not just for the show, because I always wanted to make sure I brought.

To whomever was listening. And honestly, most of the time you only think that Jigar and Steven are listening. You don’t know that there are people out there at all. It’s very intimate. And in your case, many thousands of listeners. I had no idea. And so not only would I have to learn it for that, but it would.

It would help me so much in my regular job. So it would help me prepare for all the work I needed to do for clients as well. It just made me, made me smarter. I mean, I’m a, I’m a true believer in being a lifelong learner anyway. Like you can always learn more. Um, but it was such a good exercise and we stopped.

Uh, when we stopped doing it, um, for reasons that were pretty much out of our control. Um, we just, well, first I was like, whew, I get so much free time every week, but at the same time I have to now force myself to be, oh, wait a minute, I need to learn about this technology. I can’t just like sit back and assume I’m going to know it kind of from the ether.

Nico: What did it do for your personal brand? I know that you don’t think about that as a personal brand, but what do you just, as you reflect, honestly, with us, how did it. Benefit you being a guest on, or excuse me, a co-host on, uh, energy Gang?

Katherine: Well, first I, you’re right that I really didn’t understand that. Um, I, the first time I recognized that anybody ever listened to it, other than my parents, uh, was when I got on an elevator and I said something to someone and someone else, and it was at a solar conference.

I mean, honestly, it wasn’t like, it, it, it was in our microcosm. It was in our microcosm. But I said something to someone else and somebody. else on the elevator said, Oh, I recognize that voice. And I was like, what? I hate my voice. I hate the sound of my own voice. But, uh, that was the first time I thought, Oh, like, wow, there are people who know me by my voice.

And, and there’s so many people that I meet that I don’t realize. That’s how they know me and they, and they really feel like they know me really well because they’ve listened to me for so long and they’ve heard so much. I don’t know all the crap I said about everything that was going on in my life, but you know, like you could, there, there are people who knew me better who come to the table knowing me better than I know them.

Um, But it also gives me going and credibility if they, if, if they’ve heard me and they think they think that I knew what I was talking about there, uh, which I’m sure there are differences of opinion, but if people think that, therefore, I’m an expert, then you go in with a, with a level of credibility that is, that gives you an advantage for sure.

So I definitely believe that to be the case.

Nico: So a lot of folks come to me and they’re like, Oh, I think I should start a podcast. And I always ask a lot of questions around why, and what do you want to accomplish for you? And. Um, I think what everyone’s hoping is that they’ll have some breakout success, uh, like energy gang.

Um, candidly, given that I know having been friends with Steven over the years, what energy gangs, um, reach was, they sort of often put Suncast in the same, um, orbit. And the truth is that it’s like Pluto versus, you know, Mars or Earth or, or even Neptune or Saturn in comparison, but it does. Improve your ability to speak, it improves the visibility of who you are.

Did it materially impact, um, your entrepreneurial growth at 38

Katherine: North? Yes, it definitely did because it opened my mind to a bunch of technologies that I hadn’t really thought about. It gave me access to people that I hadn’t, you know, you get introduced to the CEO level right away. You don’t have to kind of work your way up, um, especially if that person was a guest on the show and they were generally a very nervous guest because people don’t know what they’re getting into with the podcast.

And so then you become kind of the teacher in a way. Um, and so, yeah, it definitely helped our, it’s helped our business enormously for that. That was a huge growth. It helped me also be able to get involved more with, uh, with entities like the World Economic Forum. Like they, they’ve had me run numerous councils, which have given me an ability to meet lots of people globally and learn.

To me, like, I don’t know anything about what happens in India, but I’ve gotten to learn something about it. Or Singapore, the cool stuff they’re doing is building technologies. And I’ve learned that from the people on the ground in those countries who I’ve been able to work with through the World Economic Forum.

So that was a huge piece too. And that’s given me not just the ability to meet people all over the world who are incredibly smart and have done so much and had so much impact, but also to bring Other perspectives, as I think about how we can help companies here in the U. S. Uh, you know, hey, this is how they’re doing it over there.

What do you think? Like, maybe that would work here. You know, these are new solutions you can kind of think of.

Nico: Yeah. One of the ways that the industry at large, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask for some thoughts on policy. Um, one of the ways the industry at large has evolved since your days in, uh, in Dominion or Virginia Power is around our ability.

To provide backup power with renewables through the economic improvement of battery storage as a technology that can couple with renewables. How’s the advent of energy storage broadly helping to shape policy at the grid level as well as solar and broader renewable policy?

Katherine: Oh, storage. Like I said, I worked on it way back in the day, right?

In the when, you know, in the way back days. Um, but store. So just for some perspective, I’ve worked on the energy storage tax credits since 2009. So that was at that point, there was the electricity.

Nico: As for those. Yeah. For those who are unfamiliar, Catherine was the policy chair, policy director for Energy Storage Association for four years, all the way back to the beginning.

Katherine: Yeah. So it was, we were originally called the Electricity Storage Association and they changed it to the Energy Storage Association. Um, and now it’s part of ACPA. So it’s like even gotten into much more of the, the mainstream. We were at that point. It was kind of like a science club, really. It was like a bunch of guys from labs, Sandia, who, who especially that had done a ton of work in battery technology that was really just like, we’ve got to do something.

We’ve got to create a market for this stuff, but it was still so expensive. And so, you know, over time, everything has become more. Um, efficient, the processes became more efficient, the technology got better so that when we passed this storage credit, uh, finally in the Inflation Reduction Act, and it almost got over the finish line many other times before then.

Um, and it finally did, it’s like, wow, and now we’re economic. I mean, it’s great. We know we have scale and you have kind of more of the tools at your disposal within the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, the one tool that fell out. That I thought we really needed was, was transmission a. Transmission I T C would’ve been pretty awesome, but so much else was included.

Like interconnection was another thing I worked on, which, you know, interconnection can make or break the penciling out of a project. And so, yeah, you know that, uh, we have all of these tools now microgrid controllers too. So all of these things are kind of part of that ecosystem that I think. Previously, you were able to do solar and storage completely linked, you know, if you had a project, but just now you don’t have to do that.

You can do, I mean, now the tax credits are definitely separate, so you have to apply separately, but you now can think about your distributed solutions, which I spend a ton of time on is thinking about DERs. You can think about DERs and in a way that’s much more creative and more. Peg two, what is the best solution for this issue and where it is on the grid?

Maybe the best solution is more electrification. Maybe it’s not solar and storage. Maybe it’s like, um, an electric heat pump and an electric hot water heater that are storing, you know, using a thermal storage. And maybe there are other things that you can do, but all of these are now part of the solution set that has market signals to bring down the price

Nico: and scale.

Keys to Entrepreneurship and Building Successful Teams

Nico: I love that. And it’s also. I mean, what I hear you saying is you can think of creative ways that, um, are more than just trying to attach the technology to another technology that is going to help bring down the overall adoption curve by pricing it well, because it’s got incentives attached to it. And I would love to spend 20, 30 minutes with you if we had them on, um, what a successful transmission ITC, uh, policy or legislation would look like.

Unfortunately, we don’t have. That kind of time, um, I do feel like I’m, I’m learning a ton before I let you go. I do have some questions around general, um, sort of practical advice that I feel we can glean more practical advice perhaps. And I will try to wrap it into as few questions as possible. Um, I’d love to hear.

Your advice to fellow entrepreneurs who are currently in the throes of startup life, uh, in particular around any key lessons or takeaways from your own mentors that you would offer as advice, as well as what you’ve learned or observed of the many companies with whom you’ve worked, that suggests, um, ways to build a team, what to look for, how to practically, uh, grow a culture that is going to achieve the lofty climate goals that we all set for ourselves.

Thank you very much.

Katherine: Yeah. So the first thing I would say to an entrepreneur, and this is, this is taken from my personal life. So when my, uh, I don’t know if it was my third or fourth kid, my third kid had to have open heart surgery. And I just remember feeling completely overwhelmed. And one of my neighbors said, my business, uh, delivers meals to families who are overwhelmed with life, who needs some help.

And I said, I don’t need that. I’ve got it covered. And he said, Let me tell you something. My kid has been recovering from cancer and you have to learn to accept help. You have to learn to ask for help and you have to learn to accept help. And I think that applies across the board. You have to be willing to consider that you are not the smartest person in the room.

You may have a really good idea, but you also need help to make it happen. And so that help can be in the form of looking for a mentor. That help can be in the form of, of reaching out to colleagues or friends to run ideas by them to say, does this sound completely wacky or does this sound like something that someone might want to buy?

But it also helps you understand what do you need on your team? Who do you need? Like who are the people who will be complimentary? You don’t need somebody who’s just like you, then you just get a bunch of clones and clones who are all going for the same thing in a company. You want people who are complimentary, who have skills that you don’t have, and you have to not be fearful to have them use those skills and understand that person is a lot smarter than I am on this thing.

And that’s what I need. It doesn’t matter what school you went to. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have. It mat your life experience matters. What you bring to the table matters, your attitude toward, let me help you get this done. Here’s what I can contribute. I mean, that is so important. And I’ve learned that more than almost anything over my life is that everybody can contribute and you should be willing to give them a chance to contribute that.

Nico: Is there anything in particular that you look for or do not look for on a resume?

Katherine: It was funny at one point, I thought that changing jobs every two years showed a vast amount of instability and that it was terrifying. And then somebody in the tech world said, no, no, no. That’s what people in the tech world do is they change jobs every two years and that helps them adjust and learn new technologies and try different skills.

So I realized, oh, maybe that’s. Maybe that’s not what I need to be terrified of, but I look for kind of a range of experience. I like to know that there are people who have lives outside of work. And I know you’re not, you know, you’re not supposed to ask people like, do you have a family? That’s not what I mean.

I mean, you know, are you open to other things? Do you have kind of a rich existence? from which you can draw to bring to what we’re doing and a different perspective. Like different perspectives are great. We have, um, one of our senior principals is, uh, is a Republican. He, and he has been, uh, you know, he was chief of staff to Paul Ryan and he was the chief to, uh, the Senate majority leader at one point, who is the only person who’s been the chief of staff for a leader on both.

Uh, in both chambers and he’s incredible and he and I have very different ideas about different policies, but we are, we’re close friends. We really respect each other and we realize that each of us has something different to contribute and we also have a lot in common. So I think that’s, that’s what you want.

To find from people. I do think we need to work harder to bring more diversity. And I think I do too. It’s like trying to figure out how do we, how do we bring in people from all different backgrounds, all different ethnic backgrounds to try to make sure that our culture is richer too.

Nico: What I find most often, and I accuse most leaders in solar of.

Is in the, in our effort to sprint, we are unwilling to slow down enough to teach people how to do the job that we need them to do. And so we create our own internal inflation in the industry by poaching from our peers. And instead of going slow enough to form the appropriate apprenticeships and trainings inside of organizations and culture of accepting that we don’t all have to be experts.

But we have to be willing to try new things and become experts. And I think that that is the thing keeping not just our industry, but in particular, our industry from having the level of diversity that we aspire to and pay lip service to, because there are disadvantaged communities. There are people who, um, don’t go to, uh, Ivy league schools who want to contribute to this sector and who, um, are intelligent enough to learn, but we don’t slow down long enough to admit it only takes two to six months to onboard someone who has zero knowledge and skill and get them to the point where they can functionally contribute if we’re willing.

To make that sacrifice as an organization.

Katherine: Yeah, definitely. It’s not even necessarily a sacrifice, but I completely agree with you that we need to do that and we actually have to have better platforms to do that too. We need better processes and platforms to be able to raise people of all types up. I think, um, only using your alumni, uh, page to do that is not the best way.

You know, you really, if you, we need better ways to get, uh, to get new talent into the mix, and I completely agree with you

Nico: on that. As we wrap here, I always like to ask, I believe readers are leaders, and leaders are readers, um, what books… Have expanded your horizons. I presume as a child of a philosopher, you’ve been, um, exposed to more reading than the average bear.

So, uh, I’m curious if there are any particular authors or books that really have a place in, uh, your worldview. Helped you understand your position in

Katherine: it. Yeah, I don’t have Descartes on my bedside table. Uh, so I, I remember at one point, one of my teachers telling me, you’ll never be a good writer unless you read good, good writing.

 And so I very much focus on literary fiction. I love reading. I love reading women authors. I read a lot of Isabel Allende. Terry McMillan, Louise Ardrick, uh, Anne Tyler, Toni Morrison, a whole bunch of women novelists. I love, um, one of my favorite books recent recently was called, uh, Freshwater for Flowers.

It was by Valerie Perrin. It’s a, it’s a French translation. It’s just a lovely book. I love the Underground Railroad, um, by Colson Whitehead. Um, All the Light We Cannot See. Uh, I, I just, that was such a good book. I, I love reading those books. I feel like they enrich me and kind of feed me. I always read before I go to bed at night.

Now, sometimes that only means I read like a page and a half before I fall asleep. But I, I always feel like that gives me like a little nourishment so that when I wake up in the morning and I go for a run almost every morning, like it gets my brain going and keeps me kind of. you know, beauty infused. I just feel like good writing is such beauty.

And, um, and if you can kind of feed your soul with that, then you, then you can turn pivot to, to all of the technical stuff you have to do during the regular day.

Nico: That is beautiful. Thank you for that. And do you, did I catch you right? That in your morning routine, you run nearly every day. 

Katherine: I do. I, if I don’t, I’m, I’m not a happy or pleasant human being.

Nico: How do you structure it? Such that, and is that always been true? Um, or just like you’ve recently be able to return to it. Um, ebbs and flows on the way that work life balance is a myth. Like running every day is, is, uh, is off. Like for me, it is, it is, uh, um, it is the, it’s the city on the hill that I, uh.

Katherine: Well, I’ve run since I was 12. So yeah, I haven’t stopped now. This doesn’t mean I’m running marathons. My sister has done that, but I don’t do that. And I don’t necessarily run for a long time, but I need something to get my heart rate up. So I wake up early, walk my dog, get coffee first, obviously, before I do anything else and walk my dog.

And I do the morning walk. My husband does the evening walk and, uh, and then generally go for a run before I, before I start my meetings. And I generally start my meetings a little bit later. I don’t, I don’t start my meetings. At eight or nine in the morning, I start them at like 10 or 11 so I can make sure that I have enough time to get myself centered and situated before

Nico: I dive in.

Exploring the Concept of Work-Life Balance and the Role of Electric Vehicles in Decarbonization

Nico: When I was in the Bay Area, one of the guys who fundamentally changed the way I think about work is the CEO of Timbuktu. I got a rare opportunity to meet him in person at the Berkeley REI. He was speaking on work life balance. And he said that as the CEO, it was prohibited. His calendar was blocked. No meetings before 10 a.

And it was in, it was because he cycled to work from Marin. He cycled to San Francisco, um, like 28 miles away, cycled. And, um. And he would get to work around nine, he would take a shower, he’d get his coffee, he’d walk around and meet people. Absolutely no meetings before 10. And so, uh, I realized in that moment, um, okay, this is, uh, the freedom I needed.

And I’ve, I like, my team knows it’s a rare day that I have meetings before 10.

Katherine: Yeah. It makes you more productive. I mean, that’s why I’m totally into this idea of the four day work week. I mean, I think during those four days you would be far more productive than you are during a Friday when you’re so pride. You can hardly see straight.

Nico: I, I really should embrace. I mean, I have in certain, in certain ways, I usually take Tuesdays off. Although right now I think there are sprints, as you said, the pendulum swings. Yeah, there are sprints as an entrepreneur that you just can’t take the four days off or you, you shouldn’t, or the one day off you shouldn’t, but I do generally take Tuesdays off.

Uh, I have friends who have adopted my Tuesday. Um, uh, like personal Tuesday, like no meetings Tuesday. Um, but Catherine, since. Since, uh, since we can’t get our weekly dose of Catherine on the energy gang, uh, where do you like to engage these days? How do you like to be found? Well,

Katherine: I’m on LinkedIn. Um, I’m on Twitter, although I don’t, I haven’t tweeted very recently, very often, just, uh, you know, like a little fatigue, I guess, at the platform.

Um, but so I guess. LinkedIn is probably the best one. No Mastodon though. You can. No, I’m not on Mastodon yet. I’m just, you know, it, it was always just a way to kind of get the news out to people and for me receiving news. Sure. Um, yeah, so I guess that would be it. And also just go on our website, 38 north solutions.com.

That’s a good way to find me. And right there you have all written out or the numbers? Three eight. The number three eight? Yes. It’s the, it’s the lateral parallel. 38 north is the lateral parallel that connects San Francisco to DC. Innovation to

Nico: policy. I’m glad that we made it there because that was a question I had abandoned in service of the other sort of line of questioning.

So I’m super glad that snuck its way in. Let’s end today as we usually do with a peer, um, through your lens into the future, given your vast experience looking out over the next three to five years, what do you think is going to be the most, um, is going to do the most to accelerate our path to a decarbonized grid?

Katherine: Okay. So I’ve thought a lot about this and I am. In the throes of over the next few years, transitioning from doing a lot of blocking and tackling, which I’ve done for all my career to doing more, you know, high level, senior advising, sitting on boards, which I’m starting to do much more of now. Um, and as I do that, I’m going to start.

Moving, relocating to the Shenandoah back to the Shenandoah where I’m originally from. And I spent a lot of time out there. We love it out there so much. So that will be where most of our focus is. And I’ve spent a lot of time with the people out there because our, our place is always needing somebody to rebuild the road that’s washed out during a storm or it’s on the top of a mountain.

So there’s a lot going on. And I’ve talked to a lot of the people out there who are. Those people, and a lot of people, so my brother lives in Appalachia, a lot of these people don’t see themselves as part of the future. If you don’t see yourself as part of the future, then you’re not for it. But I’ve noticed talking to the folks out in these rural communities that they’re very aware of electric vehicles.

They know what they are. And when I say to them, Hey, you’re looking for that F 150 lightning, that would be really cool. They’re like, no, I want the Mustang. And I know when someone responds to me in that way, it’s because we’ve reached a point where they’re not going to vote for the same people necessarily vote for.

They won’t, they’re not voting for climate change. They may be environmental stewards for very different reasons, for reasons that, you know, when deer season comes around, they want the green, they want the woods to go into, but you know what, they know there’s a product there that’s going to do a lot more for them and that’s going to be better.

So I think the electric vehicle industry is just, it’s taking off in a way and in a surprising way, more than I really, and faster than I ever thought it would.

Nico: I love it. So the path to decarbonization is a reawakening of our environmentalists, uh, inner self through the adoption of electric vehicles and all that follows.

It’s the gateway drug to a renewable future. Catherine Hamilton is a co founder and partner of 38. North solutions. She’s a past host of the energy gang, and she’s the current industry thought leader in so many other ways, including her work with world economic forum and other organizations is truly.

Leading thought and helping others see the light as she has here with us for the last 80 plus minutes, Catherine, it’s a joy and an honor to have you on the show. And I look forward to seeing you in person again sometime soon. Thanks

Katherine: so much, Nico. It’s such an honor. And it’s hard to believe I got, I got where I am, but it’s because of people like you. Thank you.

Nico: Well, I feel that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants among whom I include you. So thank you. And, uh, I think that’s enough of us, uh, complimenting one another. The listeners can all go home now and, uh, I’ll see you again soon. Wow. Whew. Well, that is, uh, quite an interview in many respects, one that I have, uh, I’ve dreamt of having, I’m super excited.

Uh, it’s funny to me that at the beginning, Catherine, you would say that you were fangirling cause I am, uh, an obvious fan boy as well as your work of what, uh, you’ve contributed to the industry and the ways that you have impacted many of us, myself included as a fellow podcaster who watched, uh, the work that you and Jigar and, uh, and Steven, you know, showed was possible with energy gang.

Thank you for that. Thanks for joining us today, uh, as a listener to hear in to the, to the inner workings of, uh, of the career that Catherine has, has molded for herself. I hope that you learned something. I certainly did have lots of takeaways. If you’d like to see our notes, uh, and read a little bit.

About our thinking on this episode and the impact that it, uh, can have for you and other entrepreneurs like you and other career seekers like you, then I’d encourage you to go over to my suncast. com and check out the episode notes. We also have recently started publishing these videos on our YouTube channel in their entirety edited finally for video format.

And, uh, I’d love to have you as a subscriber. To our YouTube, if you go look for SunCast Media on YouTube, it’s readily available and easy to find. Hope you’ll tune in each and every week on Tuesdays, we bring you subject matter experts designed to give you tips, tools, advice, practical direction for your career and your business.

And on Thursdays, these long. Career dives with thought leaders, industry, uh, mavens like Catherine, who are helping shape the future of our climate reality. If you’re eager to keep learning, as I mentioned, we’ve got show notes over at my suncast. com where you, my fellow philomath can find the resources and highlights from not only this, but every other of our more than 600 discussions.

Along with social media links, fabulous book recommendations that Katherine dropped here and more. I want to thank our sponsors who help make this content free to you each and every week. They are how I’m able to keep this thing going. If you’d like to learn more about them and their offers, you could find those at mysuncast.com/sponsor. That’s also where you can learn how to partner with us to reach thousands of solar warriors and clean tech champions twice a week, just. Like they do remember you are what you listen to thanks again for showing up solar warrior. It’s half the battle.