Net Zero Emissions
Joanne Mello is the director for sustainability and energy policy at Southern Company Gas.
Richard Hyde is executive director at ONE Future.
In that famous scene in the sixties hit movie, The Graduate, the young man played by actor Dustin Hoffman is pulled aside at a party by a successful businessman, who then says a single word to him, plastics. Hoffman's character doesn't know what to make of this, when the businessman gives this advice, there's a great future in plastics. These lines are still funny, decades after the movie was first shown. Though, ironically, the plastics industry has indeed turned out to be one of the most transformational for society in those decades since then.
Which is why, if a movie studio did a remake of The Graduate this year, it might have the career advice to Hoffman be about, rather than plastics, decarbonizing gas. For, as the businessman might add, there's a great future in making natural gas sustainable. This field, the greening of gas, is evidently entering a period of enormous growth, in which innovation and investment in methane reduction all along the gas value chain, and in renewable substitutes like hydrogen, is increasing by leaps and bounds.
That's what Southern Company Gas is doing, itself and in concert with many other gas production, transmission and distribution companies, orchestrated by a new group called ONE Future. Check out its and our future by reading on. — Steve Mitnick
PUF's Steve Mitnick: Joanne, what is your role at Southern Company?