Welcome to the era of the clean electron

By: Kiran Bhatraju, CEO + Founder of Arcadia

We all know that climate change is the most significant problem that humanity has ever faced. What we don’t say enough is that we know what to do about it.

One thing all the experts agree on is that we need to get carbon out of the system to keep rising temperatures in check. And to remove carbon emissions from our energy system, we must electrify everything possible.

The solution starts with transforming the greatest engineering marvel in history — the power grid.

Today, we have a power grid built for hydrocarbons. It’s old, stodgy, dirty, and not very smart or transparent. It’s focused on the system, not on the customers it serves.

The grid of the future, and the millions of devices on that grid, will need a new data platform to enable all the new technologies that can speed up decarbonization—and it is technology that will ultimately support a smarter grid that can help usher in the era of the clean electron.

I started Arcadia, a climate-crisis-fighting-tech company, to break down these barriers, democratize access, and build the next generation of energy experiences.

This Medium page, The Arcadia Source, will serve as an open-source connection point and resource for like-minded energy innovators eager to learn and find new solutions to curb the climate crisis. After running cleantech companies for over a decade, my team and I want to share our perspectives on the industry that will transform the way we power our lives and, hopefully, save our planet.

I am a climate optimist. I believe that humanity will meet the challenge of climate change just as we have met great challenges in the past. However, there is no denying that we are running out of time. Removing every barrier to the adoption of clean energy is absolutely vital.

The Arcadia team and I look forward to sharing more of our insights, analysis, and optimism to inspire like-minded innovators interested in collaborating to remove these technological and policy barriers. We are on the cusp of a revolution that will transform the nature of how we power our world, and I hope you’ll find this to be the beginning of a conversation we can have together about the transition ahead.