Our last episodes of Conversations on Climate, with academics and industry leaders alike, have taken place in London. For a podcast from the London Business School, that’s hardly a surprise! For this episode, we wanted to zoom out and get a more global perspective. Luckily for us, LBS alumni are working hard on the climate problem across all corners of the world.

Introducing Kritika Kumar

Kritika Kumar is one such example. After an exciting early career in finance - including stints at Moody’s, PwC and Citi across India, Myanmar and Hong Kong – Kumar realised her heart belonged to the environmental space. She took her MBA at the University of Hong Kong in partnership with LBS in 2016.

It was there she took on a fascinating challenge – how to future-proof the 4th most densely populated city in the world where there’s barely space for a solar panel on your rooftop, let alone large-scale renewables? You have to work with what you’ve got – and for Kumar, that means retrofitting an entire metropolis of ageing, energy-hungry buildings. First at Schneider Electric, and then as employee number one of CLP’s Smart Energy Connect, she became a leading advocate of eco tech. Today she works on next-generation digital innovation for decarbonisation, across automation and Internet-of-Things.

What’s in the show?

We packed a huge amount into this half-hour conversation. It was fascinating to hear Kritika’s perspective as someone taking the climate fight to an East Asian megacity, and I’m sure there will be something new for each and every listener here:

-     Why Hong Kong is so far behind in the race to net-zero
-     The challenges of decarbonising a island of 7.5m people – and finding somewhere to charge your electric car
-     Why government targets are necessary, but not sufficient, in driving change
-     The role of decarbonising the built environment in a city-state (and why a subtropical climate doesn’t help)
-     The technologies that make Kumar believe that net-zero is ‘not as hard as it looks’
-     How even the most hard-nosed MBAs can’t ignore decarbonisation any more

Broaden your climate horizons

The next episode of Conversations on Climate will be released at the end of the month.

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