Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Li Tan, co-founder and general partner of Audacy, a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm, for our interview series celebrating the extraordinary women recognized in Fin-Erth’s inaugural list of energy transition leaders.

Li and her partners are on a mission to drive decarbonization across APAC by investing in climate technologies. “In the Asia-Pacific region in particular, there is a huge funding gap for sustainable technologies that presents both a challenge and an opportunity for transformation,” says Li. “This is where we think we can add the most value.”

She discusses the importance of investment that promotes adoption of deployable technologies such as energy storage and fuel cells, as well as the value of collaboration between the public and private sectors in accelerating deployment of such technologies.

Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Gelem Del Mar, Senior Vice President for Global Sales of Grid Technologies at Siemens Energy, for our interview series celebrating the extraordinary women recognized in Fin-Erth’s inaugural list of energy transition leaders.

Gelem discusses the increasingly pivotal role of data in the transition to a cleaner, more reliable global energy economy, citing its importance in enabling equipment manufacturers to increase the efficiency of current equipment and anticipate the evolving needs of transmission system operators.

She also notes the value of pausing to recognize progress in the transition thus far. “A lot is much better than we tend to think,” she observes, pointing to dramatic increases in the number of people who now have access to both clean cooking and electricity.

Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Annicent Busingye, CEO of Danish investment manager Frontier Energy’s Uganda portfolio, for our interview series celebrating the extraordinary women recognized in Fin-Erth’s inaugural list of leaders advancing the energy transition.

Annicent, who oversees eight hydropower plants in a country where most electricity comes from hydro, discusses her focus on attracting and retaining women by creating a supportive workplace (including for mothers) and mentoring women and girls in and outside the workplace.

While Uganda has ample power generation capacity, Annicent notes that advancing the transition will require building new grid infrastructure. That drives electrification, which can ease the burden on women collecting wood or charcoal for cooking — freeing them to work and reducing health risks from indoor smoke. “The bold action to be taken is to increase that infrastructure,” she says.

In this episode of our “Fin-Erth Women in Climate” series, Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Ana Hajduka, founder and CEO of Africa GreenCo, which is working to increase generation and growth of renewable energy markets across Southern Africa.

Ana and her team have partnered with the Zambian utility ZESCO and local industry to address the country’s energy crisis—securing private financing for critical electricity imports from South Africa and bringing power to homes, hospitals, schools and businesses. More recently, GreenCo played a key role in unlocking commercial financing for the largest grid-connected solar development in Zambia’s history.

“The private sector really has to step in to bring onboard much-required power generation,” Ana told us. “That is the key issue that we are trying to overcome in the Southern African context, in collaboration with the public sector itself.”

In this episode of our “Fin-Erth Women in Climate” series, Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Purnima Gandhi, Head of Strategic Investments at Aglaia Family Office in Singapore.

A former director at Temasek, Purnima suggests that accelerating the energy transition isn’t about chasing the next big thing—it’s about scaling what already works. Proven technologies like energy efficiency, heat pumps, and renewables are key. “What we need is relatively simple,” she says. “Boring things that work at scale and at the right price.”

Purnima started her career at the intersection of finance and energy, working to make energy more affordable for companies by delivering it as a service. By freeing businesses from the upfront outlays, finance could help businesses with their energy transition, she explains, “without having the initial capital expenditure on day one.”

In this episode of our “Fin-Erth Women in Climate” series, Linda-Eling Lee, head of the Institute, speaks with Page Crahan, general manager of Tapestry at X, The Moonshot Factory for the electric grid.

They discuss work by Crahan and her team on behalf of Chile’s independent system operator Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional to accelerate the country’s energy transformation.

Their breakthrough? Software that uses AI to expand the scenarios energy planners can model by 30x and accelerate simulations by 90%

A striking achievement, and, as Crahan says, a reason for optimism. “That should give us a lot of optimism about what we can all do as a community to make it easier to plan the energy infrastructure we need for our future,” she notes.