Insights from the inaugural cleantech, culture, science and policy event amplifying innovation and impact in South
Andy is Executive Director of the Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub, driving climate tech innovation in Georgia and the Southeast. With over a decade of experience spanning battery storage, solar, smart grid and refrigerants, he connects entrepreneurs with resources to accelerate sustainable solutions. Andy’s work combines expertise in growth strategy and alliance building to support the region’s transition to a sustainable future.
Hey there,
The inaugural Super South is in the books. The ambitious event that put tech, policy, science and culture in a blender has helped to lift the work, impact and voice of a community that has been creating positive change just under the radar for decades.
We could tell this event would hit differently right from its start on Tuesday night. The showing of Beyond Zero, the story of Ray C Anderson’s audacious mission to prove that industry can lead the fight for our planet, set a tone that Super South was not a just an industry event where networking and deals got done, but one that challenged leaders to think bigger, bolder and to focus on collective action as competitive advantage. The rest of show followed suit as leaders across each generation and from all sectors (academia, corporate, public sector, nonprofits) shared stages and (politely) pushed each other and the audience to take action to change the status quo.
Today, we’re going to share our perspective on the conference and what it means for Georgia and the South in the coming year highlighting:
- 4 resources that you should explore
- 5 quotes that sum up Super South
- 5 issues that defined Super South and will motivate the next year
Rise of the Super South: Insights from the Floor
From a show brimming with content, viewpoints, and conversations, we provide our synthesis of the show for those that attended and could not see everything and for those that could not attend this year.
5 Soundbites that Sum Up Super South
- “When times get the toughest is when innovators get ahead” — Tonya Hicks, Power Solutions. Tonya is an entrepreneur par excellence. Her businesses have weathered the Dot-com Bust, the Great Recession, Cleantech 1.0 Bust, and the Pandemic Recession coming out stronger out of each one because she innovates her product, service, approach and tactics to position her business to succeed through cycle. The whole cleantech industry needs to take a page out of Tonya’s book.
- “This is a labor of love…” — paraphrased from Bill Nussey regarding the work of Jon Hutson and team to launch Super South. Super South has been ambitious from the start. It was aimed to build upon the successful of the Georgia Climate Conference and fill a gap by creating regional gathering capable of breaking traditional silos between professionals in corporate, academic, policy and creative fields. In its first year, Super South exceeded expectations — in attendance, in the depth and breath of of the content and in its ability to energize a spirit of collaboration.
- “Talent cares about it, and they vote with their feet” — Kyle Stapleton referring to sustainability and corporate responsibility with regard to the environment. What is encouraging about this statement is that values still matter and that there are still options for people looking to align how they apply their talents toward earning a living and their values despite all of the uncertainty.
- “Oh my god, if my dad, a 70-year old farmer from north Florida, is using this [AI], it’s going to change the world” — Katie Ottenweller on her “ah ha” moment regarding the broad impact that AI is going to have on the world. AI’s utility and long-term potential is undeniable; but the cost to scale this technology is significant in today’s dollars, and the knock on effects that will undoubtedly come because suboptimal choices will have to be made today that limit optionality going forward. More on this below.
- “We are all in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat” — It has been said before and phrased in myriad different ways, but Dr. Patricia Yager reiterated the fundamental challenge around inequity and the vulnerability in the face of climate change. Many cleantech solutions have both mitigative (long-term) and adaptive (near-term) impact on the effects of the weather events and natural disasters that are occur with greater frequency, duration, and intensity than our infrastructure, cities and economy were built for. Innovative solutions need to be implemented, so that these technologies get into the hands of those that need them the most.
5 Issues that Defined Super South, and that Will Motivate the Next Year
Super South 2025 will be remembered because it gave local climate and sustainability leaders a forum to debate, educate on and process through the myriad issues facing the region when it comes continuing (and even accelerating) its progress on sustainability. There was a clear mix of emotions amongst participants brought about in large part by the rapid, unpredictable changes that policy shifts have created that impacted all attendees. What was also clear was that despite the current headwinds, the community is not giving up on its view for a better future, nor was it satisfied with standing still. Here are 5 issues that we thought permeated the discussion and that we think will motivate the next year for those in the super South.
1. Where is the influx of sustainability-focused talent going to have its impact?
A significant surge in sustainability-focused talent is occurring across industries, with experts noting clear patterns in career choices. Kyle Stapleton observes that “talent cares about it, and they vote with their feet,” highlighting how workforce priorities are shifting toward environmental concerns. This trend is further validated by Georgia Tech Professor Michael Oxman, who reported increasing percentages of his students expressing interest in sustainability careers each year.
This movement appears driven by generational perspectives. Serenbe’s founder, Steve Nygren noted, “younger generations aren’t just going to sit around. They grew up learning about this issue, and it threatens their very existence.” This urgency translates to career choices, with sustainability becoming a non-negotiable factor for many entering the workforce.
However, this talent surge faces market constraints. Current sustainability job opportunities are not expected to match the growing candidate pool, creating an imbalance. Furthermore, the current political climate presents additional challenges for cross-disciplinary sustainability-focused education, academic research, and long-term careers in government.
So where and how does someone with passion and training have an impact? UGA’s Dr. Marshall Shepherd advocates for building “durable skills”, so that job-seekers are prepared to succeed in the workforce, but can also leverage their interest and passion to have impact in sustainability regardless of their role. Similarly, Michael Oxman guides toward “lighting up your corner” – finding ways to implement sustainability principles in various roles even when dedicated positions aren’t available. Nonprofits can also provide bite-sized, but impactful project-based work for people can dedicate even a few hours a month to mission-driven work.
More than ever, sustainability professionals that have worked their ways into stable careers in sustainability need to invest in coaching and mentorship, and be actively creating opportunities (not just full time roles) that allow the demand for meaningful sustainability work to be satisfied. The silver lining is that many of these professionals know that this supply-demand problem is not new. Many started their careers when there were few sustainability-focused jobs, and they know what it takes persevere and develop careers in this line of work.
2. How Can We Satisfy New Power Demand Without Deflecting the Trajectory of Progress on Pollution?
The collision between AI-driven data center expansion, manufacturing expansion and continuing progress toward decreased emissions from the power generation and distribution presents an unprecedented challenge. By 2028, Georgia alone could see 16.8GW of new data center load—double the renewable-battery hybrid capacity deployed nationwide in whole calendar year of 2023.
This surge creates a palpable tension between delivering reliable, safe and cost-effective energy with a lower reliance resource intensive fossil fuels and economic growth. Throughout Super South, the consensus was that tension can be used to push new innovation, but the pace of change in demand threatens to deflect the trajectory of progress on the energy transition.
Many agreed that maxing out low hanging fruit through energy efficiency across the residential and commercial sectors should be implemented. Technology that makes power demand from the built environment more flexible so as to better match intermittent renewable generation and base load demand is of primary importance. Furthermore, optimizing AI to reduce computational intensity and establishing transparent coordination between data centers and utilities during development will be needed.
Looking further ahead, scaling other 24/7 carbon-free technologies will supplement intermittent renewables, and AI itself can help optimize grid operations and energy management. Performance-based rate-making frameworks that incentivize both reliability and emissions reductions can add appropriate carrots and sticks as well.
While some new fossil generation may be unavoidable in the immediate term, viewing this challenge as an innovation catalyst has the potential to accelerate deployment of certain technologies. The urgency is driving investments in previously overlooked technologies (like geothermal technologies) and creating the right economic incentives for breakthrough solutions.
3. How Can We Help the Energy Burdened Manage Higher Energy Prices?
When energy demand grows at a pace that outstrips its supply, prices for energy should be expected to rise. There are many nuances that complicate that simple statement (e.g. current capacity utilization, pace of change, amount of change by customer type, etc) in our system of public-serving electric utilities, but the massive power and energy requirements for the manufacturing and AI-led expansion in the South will more than likely increase the electric utility rates ($/kWh) the people pay.
Residents in the South for many reasons, including its climate, require more power (kW) and energy (kWh) to thrive in the region. Even though our utilities are able to deliver service at rates that are low relative to the national average (~$0.16/kWh, from EIA), it is the high usage that make energy such a large share of a resident’s or family’s wallet. It also makes even small increases in rates difficult for those with lower income to manage.
Like many issues addressed at Super South, the only consensus was that there is no silver bullet solution. However, advocacy, technology, creative financing and holistic policy were agreed to be the critical elements to an “all of the above” strategy. All of these are underpinned by a broad awareness of the acute nature of the issue in the South (see image below). With the pause of structured programatic support to address energy burden at the federal level, like Justice40, even more grassroots awareness is needed to drive progress. The attendees at Super South ensured that this issue properly shared the spot light with the emissions issue that the rapid capacity buildout also impinges upon.
Image Source: RMI, 1 in 7 Families Live in Energy Poverty
4. No Miracles are Needed, So How Do We Create Change at Massive Scale?
To complement Mark Jacob’s keynote, “Still No Miracles Needed”, the Super South content highlighted the incredible breadth of actions being taken in the region to reduce pollution, increase resiliency and decrease the waste that hold us back from thriving sustainably. Interface engaged in radical corporate stewardship during its decades-long quest for eliminate waste and pollution from its processes, Steve Nygren bucked convention (and numerous building / planning) in the development of Serenbe, and Walt Harris’ chose a radically conventional (and sustainable) approach to growing his sixth generation family farm. And these were just three of the change-maker stories highlighted during the two day show.
What all these examples have in common is that the success of each innovation was more about grit and managing change that it was about the development of a novel technical solution. There were definitely enabling technical solutions that were developed or adopted by each change-maker, but key to their success was their ability to manage change at both small and large scale, and maybe more importantly, how to graduate change from the small scale to a larger scale.
Startups do this all the time. While many look at startups as primarily idea- and innovation-driven organizations, the ones that succeed are the ones that can manage change the best from the small scale eventually to large scale. This kind of change takes time; Interface’s step changes were accompanied by incremental change over 20+ years to achieve their goal. Even for fast-moving cleantech startups is takes 8-10 years. Bill Nussey, a startup guy himself, highlighted during the show how the way to big change in the energy industry was through evolving solutions from small systems to larger ones.
So what does this all mean related to the above issue? Well, because of the time it takes to for change management at large scale (read: impact), climate innovators should approach of their efforts as a “startup” (whether the effort is actually startup or just neighborhood project, it does not matter) and align themselves with great change-managers (or learn the art themselves) that can help them to take change from small systems to larger ones in a systematic way. Second, because there is no quick fix with change management, there needs to be a vast number of “startups” going on in parallel, much akin to the “lighting up your corner” approach mentioned earlier. The value of Super South was bringing broad awareness to all of the “startup” efforts; now we need to attract the change managers to help with scaling.
5. How Do We Create Space for the Next Generations of Regional Climate Leaders?
One of most ambitious components of Super South was the intergenerational thread that tied the issues and content together. The conference felt different because it amplified the voices and issues of the four generations striving to make careers and change in today’s workplace. With panel conversations that centered on questions like, “Whose problem is it?” and “How do we forge the future we imagine?“, and that were answered from the vantage point of multigenerational panelists, the conference brought refreshing insights to the challenges the region is facing with regard to climate leadership.
What became clear through these conversations is that there is still plenty of space for new leadership in climate. On Tuesday evening, John Lanier, Executive Director of the Ray C Anderson Foundation, explained that a part of the rationale for planning the foundation’s sunset was to provide the time and space for organization to activate and grow the next set of climate philanthropists. The next day, Tim Echols, Georgia Public Service Commissioner, and Iesha Baldwin, Head of Sustainability at Spelman College, conversed candidly on stage about how today’s leaders in sustainability can and should support the field’s next leaders. Today’s leaders do not intend to step aside because they realize that there is so much more to do, and instead they aim to help recruit and position new leaders to support because there is so much more ground that needs to be covered.
So, perhaps the issue is less about creating space, and more about today’s leaders highlighting where the gaps are (and aren’t) and setting up next generation leaders to step into climate’s white spaces. Many of today’s leaders in climate know exactly what this feels like because when they entered the field/industry there was even more white space that there are today. Today’s leaders are also well-versed in navigating careers that have not always been linear because they ran into difficult to see barriers common in white space endeavors. Super South created a unique platform to highlight this important issue and spark new connections to continue the conversation.
Here are a few resources for those looking to get deeper on some of the stories and issues that were on display during Super South.
Fresh Links, Tools and Resources:
Super South opened eyes to some of the latest thinking and best stories from the sectors that make up cleantech and sustainability. While, we could not have possibly created an exhaustive list, we wanted to highlight a few that warrant you investing some meaningful time digesting. Here are few links to those resources:
Weekly Resource List:
Beyond Zero (Film) – Great movements require and create moving stories. The the story of Interface’s bold moves, decades ahead of the curve, to change how industry impacts the world led by Ray C Anderson’s vision is one of the South’s preeminent sustainability stories to rally around.
Still No Miracles Needed (Book, releasing in 2025) – The second edition of Prof. Mark Jacobson’s book, No Miracles Needed, that uses science and economics to show that reducing waste and pollution does not require a silver bullet that is in development and will be ready 20-years down the road, it exists today and needs deployment and change management to create positive and lasting impact.
The Second Half of the Decisive Decade (Report) – When this report was written in August 2024, there was still much to be decided politically in America. The study and report highlights the potential impact the health, wellbeing, and pocketbooks for Americans under the highly divergent climate and energy policy pathways offered by the country’s two parties. While this article is dated, the question it raises now is how can the gap between the projected results of the two policy pathways be mitigated by non governmental actors in the public and private sectors. That was a key discussion at Super South.
Passion or Pragmatism (Article, 5 mins) — Marshall Shepherd, President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and Director of the UGA’s Atmospheric Sciences Program, penned an article the speaks to the internal struggle that many are facing today, especially those in academia, namely how does one follow their scientific passion when there are significant challenges to the viability of scientific careers. Dr. Shepherd’s advice is beneficial to anyone having this struggle or advising those dealing with it.
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