In this episode Russell Reading speaks with Stuart Lemmon, Head of Global Practices for Sustainability at Schneider Electric, about the shift from sustainability as a moral imperative to a strategic business driver. They discuss valuing climate risk, supply-chain emissions, long-term asset resilience (with data-center examples), and how organizations can turn sustainability into measurable financial and operational value.

Stuart shares practical advice on starting the journey, building cross-functional capability, and prioritizing actions that mitigate risk and unlock opportunity for lasting business success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The financial case for sustainability
• The repricing of compute

Russell Reading interviews Esther Finidori, Schneider Electric’s Chief Sustainability Officer, about how sustainability is embedded into company strategy and operations. They cover long-term planning, the AirSet innovation replacing SF6, packaging and fleet changes, supplier engagement, and the Impact 2030 framework.

Takeaways: sustainability creates resilience and purpose, digital tools are essential to scale progress, and collaboration across the value chain is key to achieving net-zero and circular economy goals.

Russell Reading and Rain Bliss dive into part 2 of their Mexico series, explaining the self-consumption model for systems between 700 kW and 20 MW. They cover how these projects differ from distributed generation, the importance of on-site storage for reliability, and the distinctions between interconnected and non-interconnected systems.

The episode also discusses commercial and strategic benefits—cost savings, resiliency, and high-quality certificates—plus practical considerations like roof space, supply contracts, permitting timelines, and next steps for evaluating candidate sites.