11. Fortune Global 500 energy executive Damien Dhellemmes on building green-powered city ecosystems, reducing the energy impact of cryptocurrency, and creating purpose-driven employment opportunities

Hello, Bonjour, Nihau, and salut. Welcome back to the Impact around the World podcast. I'm Cassandra Pittman, edX Country Manager for the UK and Ireland and host of the show. Joining me this week all the way from Singapore is Damian Delem, senior Vice President of Commercial and Digital services at the Fortune 500 energy solutions company Schneider Electric. An EDEC MBA graduate from 1995, Damian leads Schneider's energy efforts to help customers make the most of their energy. Fun fact. Damon is helping me and my husband get EV chargers for our electric car all the way here in London. The value of a global network in action.

I can't wait for you to hear.

More from Damian himself.

I feel like the only way to start these conversations in this day and age is how are you? How's your family? How's your community?

Indeed, that's definitely the right way to start. Have you been able to keep safe during this very interesting times? So everything is fine on my side. Singapore is a small island and we've been pretty well protected, I would say, from what's happening in the rest of the world.

That's good. So I am guessing from the accent that I'm hearing that you are not from Singapore. Tell us about your journey, how you ended up there.

I graduated from EDHEC, the MBA from. From EDEC in 1995. Actually, I'm first of all an engineer by training, I would say, or by education. And after I graduated from Essen Institut Electronic du Nord, which is kind of a neighbor to the EDHEC business school in France in Lille, I did work for a couple of months in an R and D job, but I hated it. And there was a lot of software, programming, et cetera. So I got scared that I was going to end up doing this kind of of things for the rest of my life. And I felt like I was going to miss the people interaction, the commercial side of a career. So I very quickly decided to go back and do an MBA right away. So did that. Graduated from Medic MBA in 1995. So more than a quarter of a century ago.

Oh, my gosh, we're all so old. We're all so old, Damien. It's crazy.

Yeah. And then I got so from there, I got a job with Schneider Electricity. So I stayed with Schneider all along. And they hired me as a technical commercial guy. Actually, that's why they hired me, which was definitely what I wanted to do, right. Mix my engineering background and my very recent MBA and degree. But big corporate organizations, sometimes they hire you to do Something and actually I was supposed to be based in UK as well, which was part of the deal. So technical commercial job based out of uk, which was really ticking the boxes of what I wanted to do because I wanted to work outside of France, but big organization, the restructure of exchange focus. So what happened is basically they told me, hey, the job is not anymore there in uk, but we hired you already. So we got something for you in Thailand, Southeast Asia, and it's going to be in a factory. So it's not going to be any more technical commercial, it's going to be in one of our factory that we're just starting as an industrial engineer. So it sounded like Thailand sounded like an exotic destination back then. And yeah, and I said why not? I mean industrial manufacturing environment, I knew nothing about it as well. So I decided to give it a shot. And that's how I spended 20 of my 25 years with nitric in the manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, procurement, environment. And you'd work in Thailand back in France to eventually become a plant manager, then moved to China because I really wanted to go back to Asia. So spent five years in China, then moved to India, spent four years in India and eventually landed in Singapore in 2013.

So eight years ago when you first moved to Thailand, did you have a family? Were you single?

Yeah, so I was single by then. And you know, I was kind of, it was under the VIE type of program, you know, that we have in France, which kind of is a partnership between government and companies. But very there was part of the dealer, I would say a commitment to switch to a full time employees right away and then a commitment to stay longer in Thailand. So the, the VI is like 15 months. But I had right away a two to three year contract in time, which is what I wanted.

And your role now has something to do with ensuring that people make the most of their energy?

Right.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, so actually that's what we say as a company in Schneider. We help our customers and make the most of their energy. And as I told you in terms of career, I spent the past four years running commercial operations, also selling the full Schneitric portfolio and being really the ambassador and representative of the company for the three countries. But then I just moved a couple of months ago to a global role again as the head of commercial for our digital energy division, which is really at the forefront of the digital transformation of the electrical distribution, which is what we do as a company mainly. And I'm also responsible Globally for our digital services activity, which is very, of course, very innovative, a lot of innovation and very much on combining the IT and OT together and to propose and sell to our customer OT solutions. So definitely we can talk more about what it means.

Yeah, I would love to talk about that. And as you're overseeing in this global world use of digital energy, I can't not ask you this question. So for our listeners, we're recording this in the middle of May and just yesterday, Elon Musk said, said that Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment because of how much energy Bitcoin takes to mine. Do you have some thoughts on energy as it relates to cryptocurrency?

You know, we live in a world, of course, which is more and more digital and beyond digital, you have data and behind data you need data centers. Right. And data centers are big energy monsters. They consume a lot of energies because you have a lot of cooling. And that's a very strategic segment for us. We work very closely with all the web giants as a key customers, key partner for us. And today of course, their business is booming definitely in this digital world, but they have a big challenge to face on the sustainability side. So we're also helping them a lot on the energy transition. So as an advisor on how we can be more efficient to reduce their energy consumption on one side and then on the other side for whatever the energy they still consume, how they can move to renewables or they can move to green sources of energy. And it is very, very true that this industry specifically has a challenge to tackle there. But the good news, and to be an optimistic, optimistic, you are clearly on top of it. You see more and more beyond the countries, all these data center web giant players making strong commitment in the field of sustainability. And that's part of our business to help them in their transition, their journey.

So what are the renewable sources of energy that can produce enough energy to meet our digital demands?

Yeah, so after definitely, of course, wind turbines. And if you live in windy areas in my part of the world, which is Southeast Asia, we definitely have a lot of sun. So there's still a lot of untapped opportunities with solar generation. Now let's what we tell customers and we apply to ourselves in our factories, in our own facilities, let's always be careful. But you also, we can all be more efficient. And the way we position the, the sustainability transition for customers is to say you can be 50% more efficient. And you have to really work towards this direction through investment through what we call Capex investment, capital expenditure, but also through the opex, the operational side. So you can be 50% more efficient and then the remaining 50% then the business case will fly as well when it comes to switching to renewables. Now you clearly see countries making, which is good news, eventually making really strong commitment about being fully carbon neutral by 2050. We made ourselves a commitment to be as a company by 2025 and we already carbon neutral for operation in Singapore. Now we're working on the scope 3 with our supply chain, our suppliers embedded to really get it also carbon neutral by 2030, which is a challenge, but we're going to get there. So it's feasible. The good news is the technology exists today and the technology is also more and more affordable. Right. So to me, again I'm an optimistic there and we clearly see that the trainers left the station. I mean, right, every day there's a lot of money being flushed into more sustainability investment, more renewables, et cetera. So very promising on this front and by the way a very good area for employment and the future of the EDECH graduates.

Absolutely. I mean, I'm sure You've seen our 2025 strategy and we're putting sustainability in all of its pillars at the core of what we do and particularly I think investing quite a lot of our resources, financial and otherwise, in sustainable finance to leverage the strength we already have in finance. And I'm really excited to see what comes of that. Not just with edec. I think you, you see this a little bit with top tier business schools globally. I have a theory that post the financial crisis there was a little bit of an identity crisis for a lot of business schools. That said, what are we really here to do in the world? And we're seeing, I think more and more say we really want to make a mark in having a positive contribution to everything that matters, not just wealth creation. So I think that's pretty exciting.

Definitely. We have also ourselves, like many companies we do, we have a foundation. We have also what we call innovation at the edge, which is really developing venture capital, investment in startups, etc, so we do it a lot with a problem which we call access to energy, which is creating, you know, access to energy in part of the world where there's no access to electricity and you still have countries, there's no, you know, something sometimes we forget because we take it for granted, passing the world where you don't have a electricity 24, 7 or maybe sometime even, you know, even more than a couple of hours per day. So access to energy and then when you do is access to energy because they love remote places, it has to be from renewables. And then when you do that, you also can create employment and jobs and opportunities. So you're right, you're right. I believe that a fair amount of all this transformation and innovation can come from in a green and sustainable way.

You mentioned, and we see this in data that we've actually explored as well in our new Gen Talent Center. But you've mentioned that for the generation of students who is graduating now, having a positive impact or a purpose behind the hours they spend at work is really central and motivating to them. And conversely, if again the data bears out, if they cannot link it to a purpose, they're very, very likely to be demotivated very quickly and move on from their roles very quickly. Has working for an organization with sustainability at its core helped you stay motivated, helped you stay loyal to the company you've worked for?

For sure. I mean definitely, personally and collectively, for sure. That really has really allowed us in terms of marketability or attractiveness also on the market for fresh graduates, etc. As Differentia has made an impact. So yeah, I mean, for sure. And to me, I think companies have realized that. Right. So and it's going to become more and more complicated for those who are not matching the expectation of the, of the best students, I would say to recruit in the market and to attract the best talents. But then after you have to retain them. So you need to ensure that of course you provide them the right working environment for them to fulfill their own, I would say their, their vision or their purpose.

And do you have any advice for. I mean this has been a tough year for obviously students to graduate over the last 12 months. Hopefully we're going to see a V shaped recovery and we're already starting to see some signs of that, but particularly for our students or actually any young graduate who does want a career with purpose, who might want to, might not have an engineering background, for example, but might want to have a positive impact in the field of sustainability. Do you have any advice for them?

Yeah, so. Well, actually that's a sector that is booming, right. So there's a lot of business opportunities. I think to me you have really. And you have internship, you have opportunity to kind of break your studies and take a break and work for a couple of months. There is of course also a lot of startups in this area and domain. So for me being curious and really I would say creating the opportunities rather than to be passive, which has always Been true. But more than ever it's very important. As I said, I was with your students here and it's interesting at the end of the one hour sharing session together, five or six of them made sure they stay with me and we discussed on the side and a few of them followed up later on. I mean you clearly see that the ones that do that, of course, when the time comes and they, and they look for internship or they look for recommendation, of course they will have better chances than the others. So to me, to be curious and to say any opportunity you have to create a network to engage, don't miss it.

Yeah, yeah, I love that you said that. We do at edhec we do something called treks, like career treks, where we take groups of students. I mean obviously we have not in the last year and a bit, but normally we take groups of students to London, to Dublin, to Switzerland to meet with companies. And I recall when I was that age and I was just thinking, I just need a job, right. And so the question is like, are they going to hire me from this? And we're always sending the message, no, this is not a recruitment event. But you're going to meet a bunch of people in this company. Right. And that can only ever help you even if. Or just even in the ecosystem.

Right.

Maybe not even in that company, but in the market and in that region. So it's thinking long term. Definitely.

If I can show another example, we have a created, it's more than more than 10, 15 years ago competition which is Go green to the city. It's for university students. So two students together to come up with a green sustainability innovation ideas recommendation. That's a global program with I think we have five or six hundred universities participating every year, like 13,000 students. And then there's country level jury and then you have regional and then you have the global jury. And what we've realized is we end up recruiting 50% of the students for internship and then out of the 50% that join for internship, normally almost 50% of them stay on board at the end of their internship. So to me, beyond Schneider, I would say that's kind of a traditional way still internship, et cetera, but again making sure you get the maximum chances to engage and as you said, to take every opportunity to create a network. So when the day comes, it makes a difference to me. Very important. And being curious, I really. But on this one, I think the new generation is more curious than we were. I feel personally they are also more. Therefore I feel.

Yeah, yeah, I always, you know, it's funny, we sponsor this group with the French Chamber of Commerce, which is an HR forum. So heads of HR for lots of different companies, usually mostly French, but not all French operating in the uk. And sometimes when it gets to managing Gen Z, there's a lot of, you know, the expectations are so high and it's so hard to keep them motivated and they want change and they want everything and they want it all now. And I think, oh, but we expect so much from them, right? I mean, this is an incredibly mature, engaged generation and we expect them to like have started a startup on the side and been involved in five different clubs and have gotten the best grades and gone to the best school. And I definitely didn't feel that I had that much pressure at that age to be doing so many different things, you know.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's true. But on the other end, maybe at our age there was a lot of focus still on grades. Right. As the criteria when today it's not at all anymore. I mean, and to me it's not about. And of course we want everything, but I think if you have something that really makes you, at least for us on the Schneider side, if you have something that makes you a little bit different, if you show as well from the, again the engagement, the curiosity, the interest that you're different, I think you stand higher chances than if you have the best grade in the full team. Personally, this has changed a little. And that's a good change, by the way.

Yeah, I think it's a good change too. I think it's a good change too. I mean, we could have a whole other interview about how education is changing and how rapidly now. I mean, it was already changing and I think the pandemic is, has made that change even more rapid and we have to think about different ways of learning and different ways of evaluating knowledge as well than the rote kind of exams that we're all so used to. What is the most. Well, maybe the most is not the best way to put it. Is there an area of innovation when it comes to sustainability and particularly managing energy and digital resources that you are particularly excited about?

Yes. So the way we see innovation in this field for us is we have what we call innovation at the core, which is kind of more the traditional R and D that you have for the existing products. And then we have what we call innovation at the edge, which is about partnership with startups, new ventures, new go to market, new technology, etc. And that's the Part I'm the most excited about. So I spent, I spend a fair amount of time as a sponsor of several joint ventures, startups that we've created, some with universities, some with partner customers of different companies from different industries. And to me that's always very exciting. And let's be careful that innovation is not just as we're a technology company, but even for us, we learned that it's not just about the new products. New technology can be also into the new go to market and the new business model, et cetera. And there's still a lot of opportunities there. So that's the part that really these days is spending a fair amount of time on new business models. Innovation for our organization.

Can you give us an example or is it all secret?

Oh no. But there's one which is even in our industry or in our own domain which is around energy management. And it starts with the basic switch and sockets you have in your home. I'm sure you have in the room around you the switch and the socket to turn the light on or to plug whatever device. And then you have the circuit breaker and the electrical distribution. So we have a traditional way to sell products and we sell software, et cetera, through traditional partners and we sell them as a capex. But what about an OPEX model as a service model for your electrical distribution network? I'm going to tell you, hey, don't worry, you will always have a power on. Don't worry, you will also have the optimized electrical distribution network with the right, I would say value for money type of environment. So you don't need to bother about spending anything as a capex. It will become. So we have a lot of initiative or whatever as a service model even in our traditional industry, which to me is very, very exciting.

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's interesting. On a personal level to me, I appreciate you probably looking at grander scales than my house, but we are desperately trying to get the resources out here to, to get an electric car plug because we are in like the, you know, a 200-year-old house here. You couldn't possibly plug it into this electrical network in the house. So we have to get the grid to come out and build us something and it's taking months.

Yeah, that's. And you're right, by the way, the biggest roadblock to electrical vehicle, you know, penetration in many countries in the world, it's not the EV charging, it's not the vehicle, it's infrastructure. And if you think about it, you know, everybody in the morning leaves home between 7:30 to 9:00am, right. Everybody comes home between 5 and 7:00pm and guess what? When you come home with your EV car, you plug it in right at home.

That's right.

Imagine the whole neighborhood doing the same thing at the same time. What does it mean for the grid? Right, for the electrical grid. So that's a big challenge for the electrical utility in terms of transformation and even revolution. Knowing that in parallel, these people in the past were very much relying on, if it's, I would say, either a coal or traditional power plant, you know, which you turn on your power plant or your nuclear plant and it's very stable. But nowadays they get a fair amount, which is good, of the, of the supply from renewables. And the wind is changing the sun. Right. You've got clouds in the sky. So these people, they have a tremendous challenge moving forward. On one side, the generation, you know, is very unstable, and on the other side, the consumption is going to be also very unstable with bigger peaks than what they used to have. And that's the type of challenges and problem we like to solve, by the way, with our customer, thanks to our technology. So very exciting changes.

I know it's not really there yet, but when we had all of these problems with getting, not problems, but delays, with getting people from the grid to come out and look about how they could install this for us, I was thinking, why can't we just have our own electricity supply for our car? Like, why can't we just cover our roofs in solar panels? I mean, we're in England, so we don't get loads of sun or whatever it might be. And I think the answer I got was, look, you just can't generate enough electricity from that yet. And then that got me thinking, will we get to a place where we can just have a car which is covered in solar panels and it actually charges itself?

Yeah. And the roads as well, by the way, on the roads and technology which can be covered with solar panels. Now, the answer, what you just said is not completely true because if you look in Australia, you know, the penetration and the domestic penetration of solar panels is amazing. And then after, you might alone not be producing enough for yourself. But with your neighborhood, if you join forces in your neighborhood and your neighbors, everyone has different profile, you know, in terms of household, I mean, way of living, etc. And to me, this is why beyond that, we also see the explosion of micro grid concept, you know, with also the fact that you can have also more and more affordable, you know, competitive energy storage solutions, right? So that you can also store the energy you produce and consume it in the time where you really need it. Okay? Because daytime you're not there. You can, you can, you know, you can produce energy, but you're not going to use real time. So what about storing this energy or maybe sharing it with your neighbor who is at home and he needs it so that when you come back you can use also part of the energy that your neighbor doesn't need. So to me, that's again, that's existing already and some countries are, and Australia to me is a good example, are moving very, very fast.

Damian, this is fascinating. I could talk to you forever about this, but I want to be respectful of your time. And thank you so much for joining us all the way from Singapore. I know that the timings make it difficult with the time changes and everything between us, but I really appreciate your time.

My pleasure, Cassandra. I hope we meet soon at EDEC or elsewhere. Actually, anywhere EDEC is in the world, right?

Impact around the World is an initiative of the pioneering EDHEC Delegations team and EDHEC alumni. A huge thank you to my fellow country managers, Patricia in California, CC in China, Nilesh in India and Joyce in Singapore for making these interviews happen.

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