Decarbonization is Consistent With Multiple Megatrends | D. Evan van Hook

D. Evan van Hook, Chief Sustainability Officer of Viridi, examines how sustainability is entering a period of reset in which environmental objectives are becoming more closely integrated with energy management, resilience, grid support, infrastructure planning, and cost reduction. Drawing on more than two decades of corporate sustainability leadership, including his appointment to lead sustainability at Honeywell in 2004, van Hook presents a results-oriented view of the function’s continued development.

The session explores the risk that reporting systems and protocols can become disconnected from implementation. Van Hook emphasizes that accurate data remains essential, but its value lies in helping organizations identify and execute actions that reduce energy use and emissions. His broader perspective places decarbonization within a set of major energy trends that includes rising electricity demand, constrained infrastructure, resilience requirements, data-center growth, distributed resources, renewable integration, and increasing attention to energy costs.

Battery storage provides the central operating example. Van Hook examines how distributed batteries can increase the usefulness of intermittent renewable generation, reduce reliance on high-emitting peaker plants and combustion-based generators, support the grid during peak demand, strengthen business resilience, manage electricity costs, and improve time to power while larger infrastructure projects are developed. He also discusses virtual power plants and Viridi’s work on battery systems designed to contain thermal propagation and support deployment near buildings and critical equipment.