Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change How To Build Quickly In An Era of Fossil Fuel Shocks | Ep247: Hilde Tonne
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Mar 4, 2026 Hilde Tonne, Chair of Arup and former Statnett CEO, brings decades of infrastructure and energy leadership. She discusses why grid upgrades often lag generation, the pressure from AI and data centres, and how ‘total design’ can cut carbon early. They also tackle permitting, who should pay for grid expansion, and how systems thinking boosts resilience and competitiveness.
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Embed Total Design In Governance And Incentives
- Institutionalize total design by embedding cross-discipline strategy, governance and incentives from the board down to release empowered teams.
- Professionalize what must be standardized and free engineers to solve complex problems collaboratively.
Transmission Not Generation Is Europe's Constraint
- Europe leads on renewable generation but the real bottleneck is transmission and balancing, not private capital for generation.
- Regulatory frameworks from the 1960s and nationalized approaches block transmission investment and pace despite available capital.
Assess Energy Costs With Whole System Thinking
- Comparing costs must include system-level benefits: offshore wind or nuclear costs are only one part of competitiveness when accounting for energy security and electrification gains.
- Local renewables reduce import dependency and can lower overall industry costs when seen holistically.