Climate technology forgot the consumer is still king

(Credit: PATRICK T. FALLON - AFP - Getty Images))

Tehmina Haider and Michael O’Leary lead L Catterton Impact, the impact investing arm of the consumer private equity firm L Catterton. Michael is also the author of Accountable: The Rise of Citizen Capitalism (HarperCollins 2020).

This spring, ExxonMobil chief Darren Woods came under fire after telling Fortune Magazine that consumers—not ExxonMobil—were the ones holding back the transition to clean energy. “We have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it,” he said, “but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”