Catalyze Impact Podcast Ep. 16 with Harsh Patel

Energy is easy to take for granted until you’ve lived through a place where it flickers on and off. Harsh Patel joins us to explain how childhood trips to his family’s ancestral farm in India, plus the reality of rolling blackouts and brutal heat, shaped a lifelong focus on energy access, sustainability, and the idea that energy is the operating system of the economy.

We dig into what Harsh actually does as a sustainability data analyst at Schneider Electric, from delivering timely, accurate energy data to helping teams decarbonize Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions across North America facilities. We talk about why energy efficiency is a daily operating practice, not a slide deck, and why metering and measurement are the foundation for any serious carbon reduction plan. If you can’t see loads in real time, you can’t manage them, and you definitely can’t decarbonize them.

Then we go bigger: Electricity 4.0. Harsh breaks down the convergence of electrification, digital transformation, and AI, and what it means for buildings, factories, data centers, and resilient infrastructure. We also unpack the “circularity highway” project that earned a U.S. Department of Energy Better Buildings Better Plants award, including how standardized circular economy practices can cut waste, protect the supply chain, and save money. With copper demand rising fast and new mines taking 15 to 18 years to come online, circularity stops being a nice-to-have and starts looking like risk management.

We wrap with Harsh’s board work at Equal Right, connecting climate change to climate justice and the hidden human costs behind our systems, plus one clear piece of advice for the next decade: stop treating energy and digital as two separate strategies. If this conversation sharpens how you think about the energy transition, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to Idea Gen TV. I'm Patricia McGee, your host for today's episode. Today I'm excited to introduce Harsh Patel, sustainability data analyst at Schneider Electric. Harsh holds a master's in environment and sustainability management from Georgetown University and a background in finance and supply chain management from the University of South Carolina. In his role, he's driving change by finding new pathways in the circular economy, making energy more accessible and more sustainable for all. Outside this work, he also serves on the Board of Equal Right, a global nonprofit organization working to advance human rights, equity, and climate justice. Harsh, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Thank you for having me today. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Great.

From Blackouts To Energy Careers

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Can you start by telling us more about your role at Schneider Electric and the path that brought you to the energy space?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Absolutely. Let me start off with what got me interested in the energy space, and then I can tell you more about my role. So if I had to look back into what got me interested and fascinated with energy, it would have to be my parents taking me to India to visit our ancestral farm, where I grew to have a deep respect for the land and how it sustained my family, and more importantly, for air conditioning and a hot, hot Indian summer. When we were there, we actually experienced quite a few rolling blackouts. And that was the first time I realized how lucky we were to have consistent and at the touch of our fingertips, access to energy in the United States. And that got me curious. It got me curious in where energy came from, how it got to our homes, and how we used it in our day-to-day lives. That curiosity led me to wanting to look into the science behind it. So when I was in high school, I really drove to learn more about renewable energy sources like biodiesel and solar, wind, algae-based biogas production, so on and so forth. And what I really came to realize was it wasn't the science that was lacking, it was the business case and how to get them to scale and affordable for everyone to use. So I decided to pivot my career temporarily to more focus on the business side of things. So I decided to go get my bachelor's degree in supply chain and finance at the University of South Carolina. And that led me to becoming a consultant at IBM for the first part of my career. There, I really was able to hone my business acumen, but I really wasn't scratching that itch for energy and for sustainability. My passion and my work were two separate things, and I decided to combine them. So I decided to pursue a master's at Georgetown University in Environment and Sustainability Management, where I focused on energy efficiency and energy production, with also a focus on sustainable business um models. And while I was there, I started working for the Department of Energy. As I worked for the Department of Energy's Better Buildings Better Plants initiative, consulting to how consulting them on how to improve the programming, I learned about Schneider Electric. And so during my first summit almost three years ago, I met my current uh boss Andrew Halla, who introduced me to Schneider Electric. And there I was able to find out more about what Schneider Electric stood for and what it meant. And what I realized was that Schneider Electric wasn't only driving internal energy efficiency, but also was an energy technology partner for all of its customers. They were striving to electrify, automate, and digitize every industry, business, and home, driving energy efficiency and sustainability for all. And so that got me really invigorated and wanted me, had me wanting to learn more and kind of get a job there. And so after the conference, I reached out to my current manager. And a couple months later, I got my current role as a sustainability data analyst. What I do in that role is essentially help our North America team decarbonize our scope one and two emissions by providing them timely and uh accurate energy data for all of our facilities. I also help lead our CSRB energy audits, where I help uh us stay accountable to our shareholders and making sure that we're doing everything as we promised in terms of our energy commitments. Um and I also help drive different sustainability topics such as circularity, like though for the for the award we won, and then also for different things like climate adaptability planning for our different facilities in North America. And I kind of want to end with energy for me isn't a sector, it's the operating system of the economy. And that's why I really want to spend my career here. There's a proven correlation between access to energy and economic prosperity. And I really want to be part of that driving force that pushes for the next generation of economic prosperity through energy access.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

That's a really great foundation. And it sounds like you've had a front row seat to how much the energy landscape has shifted. Schneider Electric talks a lot about being at the intersection of electric electrification and digital transformation. What excites you most about where the industry, or as you were saying, economy, is headed right now?

Electricity 4.0 And AI Platforms

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. We are exactly at that intersection. But I also see that there are three mega, three broader mega trends that are emerging in the economy right now. That's the new energy transition, the digital and AI, and the multipolar world. Shadow Electric is positioned right at where all those, all three of those meet. And to answer your question, what excites me the most, I would have to go with energy uh 4.0. Or actually, we like to call it electricity 4.0, which is a convergence of digital and electric. And in my opinion, it's gonna be one of the most consequential technology shifts in our lifetime. You may be wondering what electricity 4.0 actually looks like. Well, what that means is buildings and homes are gonna be producing more energy than they consume. Data centers will be everywhere, but they're gonna be sustainable. Industrial facilities are gonna be intelligent and autonomous, and infrastructure is gonna be resilient and interconnected. And the best part about it is that electricity 4.0 is already here. It's not theoretical. Through our open AI-powered platform ecostructure, we are connecting millions of assets and taking raw data and feeding it through what we call the data cube. And that's where the magic happens. We're turning that raw data into intelligence that drives efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability every day.

The Circularity Highway Waste Breakthrough

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It's certainly a challenge that a lot of organizations are wrestling with. You've rec you've been recognized recently for turning that challenge into action. You were recently in the DC area to accept a 2026 Better Practice Award from the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Building and Better Plants initiative. Can you tell us a little bit more about that project and how it achieved significant value and waste reduction for Schneider Electric?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Absolutely. I'd like to first start off with saying that being back in DC was a special moment for me, is because I found out about Schneider Electric and landed my role there three years ago at the same exact conference. And so, just like the circularity champions we are, it was a full circle moment for me. And before I start off explaining what we did, I would like to thank my main collaborator on the project, Bruno Collins, without whom it would not have been possible. And what we did was we took a handful of local circularity practices across our sites and then we standardized them, creating them into what we call the circularity highway. And what we did is we took products that were being scrapped for non-quality reasons, and they had no issues with them, and we found how to utilize them more efficiently. And what does that look like, you may be asking? Well, imagine you have a made product on the shelves and there's a certain component that you have a shortage of. Rather than waiting for a supplier to bring it in with a long lead time, we would just take products off the shelf, disassemble them, and then re-inject them into the forward supply chain to make new products. Or something even more simple. What we would do is we would take products that had certain accessories, we would swap them for the accessories that the customer would want, and then put them into orders to fulfill our customer demand. And what that allowed us to do was to save about $1.2 million and about 2.7 metric tons of copper in about nine months. And kind of to answer the second part of your question, why does this matter? What is this helping us at Shannon Electric to shape the future? And that's because minerals around the world are becoming more and more in demand, right? As we're going into the green future, as AI data centers are growing up, popping up everywhere, global copper demand is going to grow by about 50% by 2040, right? That being said, it takes anywhere from 15 to 18 years to get a copper mine up and producing, which is a drastic time difference in what when we need it and how much is being needed now. And so that's caused a drastic increase in prices, not only for copper, but all metals. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to lay the foundation today to strengthen our supply chain and reduce the risk by implementing circular practices and being early leaders to help not only bulletproof our supply chain, but help our partners and customers as well. And this commitment is clearly shown in our new sustainability impact 30 goals, where we have four KPIs that address different facets of circularity. And what this is gonna do is gonna help us address not only our scope-reemissions, but help us provide ourselves and our partners short-term and long-term business advantages. Ultimately, driving for more efficiency isn't an everyday.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

What an amazing project. That's a powerful example of what's possible when sustainability is thoughtfully built into operations.

Climate Justice Work With Equal Right

SPEAKER_00 10:27

And it sounds like that that same mindset carries over into your work beyond Nitroelectric. You also serve on the board of Equal Right, an international nonprofit. Could you talk a little bit more about what you're working on there, especially around sustainability, social justice, and other UBI-based projects in places like India and Africa?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, absolutely. So my day-to-day job deals with sustainability in a way that's not as tangible. I deal with energy efficiency and carbon reporting, which is critical work. But my work with Equal Right is how I take my passion for helping both the planet and its people and bring them together. My primary focus as our first North America board member is to expand our footprint in the US by further growing our funding pools and building strategic partners for the long term. What Equal Rights focuses on is taking new economic models and trying to use them to address the hidden human cost of the climate crisis, like medical debt from unsafe mining or the devastating impact on farming and fishing caused by temperature change. You know, this is going to be one of the hottest years on record. And so what I want to do is in my day-to-day job, I focus on efficiency and driving electrification, which is amazing. But I want to make sure that my work with Equal Right ensures that we can all move forward together and that no one is left behind.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Wow. That's really impressive and an eye-opening perspective on the global scope and scale. Thinking about the broader picture, if you could give just one piece of advice to organizations getting ready for the next decade of energy transformation, what would it be?

One Strategy For Energy Transformation

SPEAKER_01 12:16

That's an easy one. Stop treating digital and energy as two separate strategies. Period. They're one strategy. We don't have an innovation gap. What we have is a deployment gap. The technology to cut consumption, electrify operations, and integrate renewables is already proven and scalable. Practically, my advice would be start with the demand side. Buildings, factories, data centers, they account for the majority of the consumption. We need to first optimize them and then bring in renewables. We also need to treat data as the infrastructure to build on and then use AI to optimize it. Additionally, to get that data, you need metering. If you can't measure your loads in real time, you can't decarbonize them. We need to focus on building partner ecosystems early. The next decade won't be won by a single vendor. It'll be won by coalitions, like the one we started with the Bloomberg New Economies, New Energy Technology Coalition, which aligns technology, capital, and policy.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So I was saying that at Idea Gen, we believe that the best way to overcome today's challenges is to create partnerships that build a better future together.

Why People And AI Bring Hope

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Last question, and maybe the simplest one. What gives you optimism about the future?

SPEAKER_01 13:41

People. So people are our biggest challenge, but they're also our biggest opportunity. The next generation of young leaders are showing up with sustainability already embedded into how they think and how they work. Every quarter, we're seeing more and more customers from stadiums in Nashville to Formula One teams trying to hit double-digit efficiency gains using technology that's already been on shelves today. AI is now the most powerful tool we have anticipating and optimizing energy consumption in real time, which is a game changer because it's going to change the speed at which we can transform the grid and transform into the future we need to go towards. And personally, I don't think AI is going to replace us. What it'll do is it'll enable us to focus on what matters the most. We'll be able to use it to address humanity's most pressing and challenging issues in coming years, including climate change. And we won't be able to achieve that ideal future without believing the conviction that energy and digital can be a force for human good. And that's what inspires me to keep innovating and pushing boundaries.

Final Thanks And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 15:03

We can't wait to see what you do next, and we'd love to have you back soon. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Thank you, Patricia. It has been great.