Roger Martella

There has arguably never been a more critical time for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) than right now. Amid global challenges like climate change and the energy transition, resource scarcity and social inequality — not to mention geopolitical unrest — CSOs help lead their businesses through times of uncertainty amid complex regulatory landscapes.

As well as playing a key role in an organisation’s efforts to become more sustainable and responsible, CSOs bridge the gap between their operations and the outside world to ensure sustainability is not just a compliance measure, but a core component of their strategy. 

One such advocate of CSOs and their significance is GE Vernova’s Roger Martella.

Joining GE in 2017 after working within the US government, Roger saw how the private sector could do public good when it comes to environmental and climate change issues. When GE Vernova spun out of GE in April, he became Group VP, CSO and Head of Engagement, Government Affairs & Policy.

“I feel really privileged that we have the opportunity to have more impact in the energy transition than any other company in the world,” he says.

Speaking to Energy Digital, Roger talks all things CSO — from how he has seen the role adapt as the world changes, to how those in this important position can influence strategies for achieving net zero, as well as the urgency of reaching energy security along with the importance of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Q. How have you seen the role of a CSO evolve in recent years? What do you think will be the next major shifts in responsibilities and expectations for CSOs?

There has been a huge evolution that's happened really quickly. Historically — if we were to go back a decade, or even five years — people think a CSO is someone who's here to improve the impacts of the company, to help it have less impact or to improve its impacts on the environment or people. That's still a critically-important role and something we focus on day to day, but the role has evolved much more beyond that. 

Three things have changed in recent years. One is that the CSO is increasingly really integrated in the strategic direction and leadership of the company. They're in the boardroom. For example, I've been in every single board session this year, not in one or two. Now, in addition, we have a sustainability committee. There's been this integration of the CSO into the strategy and strategic direction of the company. 

Secondly, CSOs are frequently one of the company’s leading ambassadors. They take the good work that a company's doing and their understanding of it, their appreciation of it and communicate that externally. They become an outward ambassador of both the good and their opportunities to improve. Engagement is a core part of their job.

The third thing is that CSOs are a catalyst for success and create partnerships externally. A CSO can connect dots and form relationships with a diverse number of stakeholders — whether public sector, private sector, NGOs, think tanks — to accelerate action.

Q. How pivotal are CSOs and those in similar roles to driving net-zero strategies?

One of the ways to think about where a CSO comes in is, if you take a company like GE Vernova, we're going to run our company in a way that's good for our business, our shareholders, our customers and our investors. That includes deploying more power, more renewable energy, electrifying the grid. That's all good for climate change and net zero, but the question then becomes, ‘how do you really align that to a net zero goal?; how are we tracking making progress toward goals?; how are we tracking toward milestones?; how are we making sure that we're fully maximising our impact?’. These are the kinds of metrics we need to set. 

That's where the CSOs come in. We want our business to succeed, first and foremost – I want to be unapologetic about that. My role is to translate their success towards net-zero goals, sustainability goals and say, ‘here's how we're mapping out our progress towards net zero and here's where we may need to bring in some experts to help accelerate action’.

CSOs bring a spirit of continuous improvement. It's highly complimentary, but it brings in a different lens, a different set of filters into how we're running as a business.

Q. Why is energy strategy critical for achieving wider sustainability and climate goals?

Energy is core to everything. But as all sectors look to decarbonise, we're increasingly looking to energy as the pathway to do so. If you look at transportation and EVs, for example, you're seeing analogies of that in almost every sector. Big industrial sectors are looking to decarbonise by joining the grid — that's helping their emissions, but putting more pressures on the grid. This is where energy strategy comes in. 

We have to not only succeed for the energy sector but for layers of sustainability, helping other sectors decarbonise by making sure they can join the grid and be successful in their own efforts to decarbonise.

One of the ways we see this play out today is with data centres and AI. There's a lot of growth in data centres and that's leading towards thirstier needs on the power grid. We want to be able to meet those needs while helping companies realise their decarbonisation and climate change goals. Energy strategy becomes core through an entire other sector — across the data centre, cloud and AI industries, which also has national security ramifications. 

Energy strategy is key to promoting really good policies like onshoring and industrialisation policy, but also enabling companies to realise their decarbonisation goals at the same time.

Q. What advice would you give to CSOs looking to develop their energy strategy?

As you might imagine, I spend a lot of time talking to leaders and aspiring leaders, and we talk about these three principles a lot: impact, pragmatism and credibility. That's how we have to judge our actions. 

I always want to be thinking that what I'm doing is having an impact and moving the needle towards the right outcomes. Having impact doesn't have to mean changing the world at any one moment, but being able to tie how I'm spending my time to something that's making the impact better. 

Pragmatism: as sustainability leaders, we're very passionate about what we do but we have to realise that what matters is getting to the right outcome. We have to be creative in how we get there. We have to find ways of aligning our business success to the outcome for our sustainability outcomes. 

Credibility is being beyond reproach in the way we communicate about sustainability, trying to avoid emotional language and sticking to the facts — making sure we're avoiding greenwashing. It’s fun to say really snazzy things, but at the end of the day, what we have to focus on is credibility. 

These are the north stars: your impact, your pragmatism and your credibility. Try to find ways to make sure you're able to do all of those. This will lead you towards really great outcomes in terms of how you succeed in your career and for energy and climate change goals.

Q. Recent geopolitical events have highlighted the urgent need for energy security. How do such events influence global energy strategies and what measures are crucial for enhancing energy resilience and security?

The stakes here are very high. We're solving problems not only for us but for future generations and we know how hard this is. Our goal is to be fast and to be smart. Every day matters and we live by that methodology, we feel the weight of the responsibility. In terms of energy security, that has been the fundamental driver of progress. Nothing has accelerated action more towards outcomes than energy security.

Energy security is good because the investments we're making are investments that get us to the same place on climate change. It's good to see the catalyst as well as the action. Energy security transformation has been led by Ukraine somewhat and I've been honoured to lead on our support for Ukraine. We have proudly had the ability to provide Ukraine with emergency equipment, along with many other companies, to keep the lights on.

It's been an eye-opening experience for the whole planet that we can no longer take the grid for granted. In response, the world has said we have to really invest in energy security and the grid. Whether that's cybersecurity, more extreme weather events, just the growing demand on the grid, the variability that renewables introduce has been a real driver for action here. 

We're working with the public sector to create strategic partnerships so that we can add capacity, grow our supply chains and deliver technology even faster so that we can meet the growing demands of energy security. The last two years have been a complete game changer when it comes to this. Energy security is a near-term driver and that's driving good progress towards climate change.

Q. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is often cited as a critical technology for reducing emissions. What are the key challenges and opportunities associated with adoption of CCS and how can it contribute to achieving global sustainability targets?

Carbon capture is a critical breakthrough technology. We're trying to deliver technology this decade to make as much progress as possible. We have a category of products called breakthrough technologies that we're innovating today for commercialisation early next decade that will really move the needle when it comes to that trajectory towards net zero. 

The ones that we're focused on are carbon capture sequestration. Hydrogen as a fuel, small modular nuclear reactors, direct air capture — when it comes to carbon capture, both that and hydrogen work together. Hydrogen has the opportunity to decarbonise pre combustion, using clean hydrogen as a fuel with the hope of reducing emissions significantly. All of our turbines will be able to run 100% on hydrogen by 2030. 

Then, carbon capture gives you the opportunity to capture the remaining emissions that might come out of something like a turbine. There’s direct air capture too, which removes excess carbon from the air. We are innovating today to address carbon capture at scale in the UK. 

We’ve been selected to provide the turbines for the Teesside Project, which will be the leading carbon capture demonstration project in the world as it moves forward. Our focus has been on developing unique technologies, like sorbent, that can capture carbon at the scale that our turbines operate. Our turbines probably move air faster than any equipment in the world, so this isn't any old carbon capture technology. We have to build the most complex and industrialised carbon capture technology. That's our focus, but that's the only part of it. 

We feel very optimistic that we're going to solve carbon capture from our turbines. What we have to work on is creating the whole infrastructure for carbon capture hubs, the pipelines, the storage systems. We only play one part in that and that's why the UK's Teesside Project is so critical — the UK is thinking very holistically, solving problems for the whole system. 

Q. Looking ahead, what emerging technologies or trends will have the most significant impact on sustainability across the energy landscape? How should companies and governments prepare to integrate these innovations into their sustainability strategies?

As someone who's been doing this for 30 years, it's safe to say we're in a transformative era of action and that history will look back on this. People will look back and say that this was the time when we started to act. This was the beginning of an era of action to address these issues. It's very exciting and highly motivating, especially for those who are really passionate about this. 

There are three trends that are driving change. Energy security first of all is really leading to and driving action. Secondly, the fundamental realignment between the public and the private sector comes into play. We’re now seeing this very close alignment between the public sector and the private sector, with the private sector showing leadership and the public sector enabling that. In the UK, the US and the Inflation Reduction Act in the European Union, legislation is creating a notion of stimulus and incentivising companies to act. That's been a big trend, a game changer. 

What is really radical and different is that the rest of the world now sees climate change as not as an economic risk but as an economic opportunity following the Paris Agreement. Now, countries are betting the future on innovation and technology in this space — they see this as the next Silicon Valley, as an opportunity for workforce development, for training to lead in innovation. We're in a space race this decade on who's going to lead the clean tech of the future. This is all fundamentally transforming the pace and the movement towards action. It's a very exciting historic time to be in this space — we're just trying to use every day and every moment to keep up with it.

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