On our renewable stories

Energy biographies, invisible doctrines, rate of return confusion, windmills and shadows

One of the side-effects of writing this newsletter is contact with people I might not otherwise have met (in the same way).

Contact varies: some see a post on that professional social networking site and follow me, some do that and send a message, some follow the stratnergy page, some take a non-committal casual subscription. Some decide to subscribe fully, and again there are variations: some subscriptions are monthly, some yearly, some subscriptions are anonymous, some come with a note.

I’m curious when people connect and I like to read their (LinkedIn) ‘biographies.’ Sometimes a biography makes you wonder about alternative lives, path-dependence, the paths not taken.

A particular profile re-entered my thoughts while thinking about energy trading and weather, which has been our focus subject over the previous weeks. And then, in the wonderful way that the mind has of making connections, I thought of Janet Malcolm and a phrase fragment of hers quoted in the introduction to Forty-One False Starts…

…the rapture of a first-hand encounter with another’s lived experience.

I’d like to try a new format, which I will call Energy Biographies. The idea is to present a first-hand encounter with a professional profile that connected with me in some way. I’ll attempt to tell its story, anonymised, of course, to the point where no-one, save perhaps the owner of the profile, would recognise it.

Energy Biography Nr. 1

An outline

This profile traces traces a path from atmospheric science into commodities and energy trading and then into climate-linked financial innovation.