ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Rinaldo Brutoco has been at the helm of the World Business Academy for over 38 years. He founded it to focus on the role that businesses should play in solving humanity's greatest challenges. The Academy promotes the responsibility of business in relation to the moral, environmental, and social concerns of the day. To spur change, and where markets are not acting fast enough, Brutoco and his non-profit have spun off for-profit businesses... taking ideas and convictions and turning them into products and services to drive change.
He and Ted dig into his education and the value of his law degree, what he calls a "set of tools" that have served him well. As a young lawyer he took on the largest of the baby bell telephone companies, and won a $132 million settlement at the California State Supreme Court. But as he lamented, he lost further lawsuits in the same case, disillusioning him about the value of lawsuits and the profession of law. At the urging of Ralph Nader, he formed the California Public Interest Law Center... to highlight issues of great importance in need advocacy. He explains that his mission has been about shifting human consciousness... and allowing businesses to lead the masses, building new business paradigms, replacing old-school business school metaphors of jungles and wars... with noble professions and stewardship.
The conversation digs into nuclear power, a technology that he says will never have a viable role in our clean energy future. Small nuclear modular reactors, he explains, have all the same problems as large nuclear reactors. And despite millions of dollars of investment and the government's promotion, no businesses are buying it. Instead, hydrogen is the future... providing high temperature applications for cement and steel, powering locomotives and large 18-wheelers.
The current administration, he implores, is doing everything wrong. "What isn't it doing to hurt green energy?" The United States has lost its leadership in solar and wind and now in hydrogen. While the Chinese have latched on to electrification, the White House has been pushing "drill baby drill." But Rinaldo explains that oil company executives, while taking advantage of government subsidies and tax breaks, see the writing on the wall too. They do not want to drill baby drill as markets for oil are falling. Every EV driver is stripping away the value of oil, and thus major investments in its infrastructure are becoming less and less valuable.
The discussion ends with a focus on the electric power grid, and how it is fast becoming obsolete. It will be replaced, Rinaldo states, with honeycombed microgrids that are resolute in tapping solar and wind and geothermal, while reducing the need for costly and inefficient transmission that tie us to fossil fuels of waning importance and value. The 100% Clean Energy Moonshot he envisions for California, has no oil or nuclear... just resources that tap the sun's infinite and free energy. This he makes clear, is where wealth will be generated. This is where businesses will lead.
