Watt It Takes: How David Crane Jolted the Power Sector
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2019
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Watt It Takes: How David Crane worked his way up in the power business to become CEO of NRG Energy — only to get tossed out of the job for his bold stance on climate.
In this episode, Emily Kirsch talks with Crane about taking risks in the conservative power industry.
We’re going to hear from Crane about why being a CEO is so lonely, how his open exit letter to NRG employees went viral, the best investment he ever made, and his early career.
Watt It Takes is a collaboration between Powerhouse and Greentech Media. The series is recorded in front of a live audience at Powerhouse headquarters in Oakland, California. Buy tickets for upcoming events.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by Wonder Capital. Wonder is now the top financier of commercial solar in the US according to our rankings at Green Tech Media and Wood Mackenzie. |
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| 0:25.0 | This week on what it takes, how David Crane worked his way up in the conservative power business to become CEO of NRG energy, |
| 0:35.6 | only to get tossed out of the job for his bold stance on climate. |
| 0:38.8 | I'm looking at my child at the time and I'm doing the math because I think I've learned for the first time that day that you know that the world scientists were telling us you know we got to be 90% down by 2050 and in the fact that that doesn't get to everybody still perplexes me is how we can just ignore the, you know, what we're doing to our children and grandchildren. |
| 1:01.0 | You know, I never was able to go to the board of directors at |
| 1:04.6 | NRG and say you know we should go from brown to green because it's the right |
| 1:08.0 | thing to do. You know if I literally had ever used words like that they would have |
| 1:11.8 | laughed me out of the room. |
| 1:15.0 | Welcome to What It Takes, an interview series produced by Powerhouse and Green Tech Media, |
| 1:22.0 | I'm Stephen Lacy, And in this series we hear from |
| 1:24.6 | founders and executives at the most influential clean energy companies. Their backgrounds, |
| 1:29.1 | their passions, their struggles, their deals, their management philosophies, their near-death experiences. |
| 1:35.4 | In this episode, Emily Kirsch of Powerhouse sits down with David Crane, an outspoken executive |
| 1:40.8 | who jolted the power sector in 2014 when he declared his intent |
| 1:44.5 | to make NRG the Amazon or Google of distributed energy. That vision fell apart in |
| 1:49.3 | 2015 when the board fired him abruptly. Crane says for taking necessary risks to change the company. |
| 1:56.0 | We're going to hear from David Crane about why being a CEO is so lonely, how his open letter |
| 2:00.7 | to NRG employees went viral, the best investment he ever made, and why his children are breaking records and becoming more famous than him. |
| 2:08.0 | This conversation was recorded live at Powerhouse's headquarters to learn about future speakers and attending a live event |
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