Insider to Outsider & Gas's Place in The Energy Transition - Alex Hillman Has Been On Both Sides of The Debate

Alex Hillman joins the show today. With the approval of the Woodside North West Shelf approval in recent weeks and the metaphorical fires that’s flamed, Alex’s visit to Sydney was serendipitous to say the least. He’s got 15 years working in the oil and gas sector, including nine in Woodside as their climate change advisor. Now though he the lead oil and gas analyst for the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility having made the jump from insider to outsider. His work now is focussed on helping institutional investors demand better climate performance from their portfolio companies, all from understanding how financial performance converges with carbon.

Alex has a unique and valuable perspective on all things energy transition. Often the work of the sustainability professional is fixated on growing renewables and shifting the electricity system that way. At the other end of the market are the incumbents - oil, gas and coal producers. We chat about how the work of ACCR is focussed on detailed analysis of financial performance, business plans, economic trends and the supply and demand of fossil fuels. It’s easy to get caught up in the desire to protest a fossil fuel expansion or new project approval, to launch legal challenges - they are critical actions. What Alex shares in this chat is how chronic underperformance in a sector most likely with a relatively short future offers a new perspective on reducing emissions and opportunities to speed up the transition.

What originally drew me to chatting with Alex a few years back was when he shared his experience of switching from the internal change maker - the attempting internal change maker may be more appropriate - and how leaving a big corporate and taking his knowledge and skills and being able to combine those with his strengths in a new context released him from a set of professional shackles. Like many, Alex wants to make a difference, and he explains his own rationale for his time at Woodside which was both noble and necessary. His delight and enthusiasm for what he is doing now is clear, and offers a lesson for all of us in our own journeys professionally and personally as we try to seek out where and how to make the difference we hope to see in the world.

I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for Alex, and getting under the hood and exploring the x’s and o’s of a sector in major transition was illuminating. I hope you come away similarly hopeful in how board rooms and the desks of financial analysts offers a new platform of change in radically reducing emissions.

Til next time, thanks for listening. 

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