Elizabeth (Liedel) Turnbull graduated from Duke’s 3-year MBA/Master of Environmental Management joint degree program in 2011. Since then, she has worked for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, California’s largest investor-owned utility. Passionate about environmental and social responsibility, Liz started with PG&E in their Corporate Sustainability department. Today, she works in the Office of the Vice President of Customer Energy Solutions, focused on strategic business operations initiatives for the team that manages PG&E’s customer energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation and electric vehicle offerings.
Like other utilities, PG&E is facing a complex set of industry dynamics right now—new technologies are shifting residential demand, resiliency risks abound, and the electric utility business model is evolving. Liz is among those who want to advance a safe, reliable and affordable electric power system that also proactively meets society’s sustainability goals. We asked her to share insights about working in this industry.
What part of sustainability sparked your interest in making it a career?
To me, corporate sustainability is the ultimate internal role advocating for change. It’s a great role for someone who is loyal to the company and is passionate about sharing successes, but also has an eye toward continuous improvement and toward asking how much more the company can do. It’s a role where you have to drink a little bit of the Kool-Aid so that you can be an advocate externally, but not so much that you stop pushing internally. A little well-placed discontent goes a long way in this field.
Doing this type of work in the energy industry is very exciting right now. This is an industry that was largely the same for the last 100 years. Now, new technologies and new external pressures, such as the enormous and urgent challenge of climate change, are pushing the industry to do more, faster, and better. Customers want to engage with and control their energy use in new ways, and the industry risks losing customers and revenue if it can’t adapt quickly. At the same time, the grid is the ultimate enabling platform for the low-carbon economy we need to develop, so utilities are more central to our shared success than ever before.
What do you think are the most critical skills needed as an MBA entering the energy industry and the sustainability field?
The energy industry is complex, and utilities are inherently risk-averse. I think that patience—to not get discouraged by slow processes and approvals—and curiosity—to continue learning about the complexities of the business—are critical skills. It’s also important to be creative. We need big solutions for the industry. Stakeholder engagement is also important. The current incentive structures within the industry aren’t always aligned, so it’s good to know how to work productively with stakeholders toward a common goal and find those win-win solutions.
In the sustainability functional field, it’s important to have strong communication and writing skills, as well as a bias toward quantitative analysis. Someone once told me (and I think it’s true!) that sustainability stories without numbers are fluff, and sustainability numbers without stories are boring. Engaging customers, investors, employees and other stakeholders in the sustainability journey requires a balance of both.
What are some of the most interesting challenges you are wrestling with in your current job?
How do we build and finance the grid of the future? What do our energy choices and costs look like in 20 years? How do we balance renewables on the grid? Who’s going to invent affordable energy storage options?
What is the ultimate impact you hope to make?
Ultimately, I hope to show others that we can collectively leverage the power of business to help build a world that is safe, equitable, prosperous and sustainable. In fact, we not only can do that—we must.
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