Climate change has been making headlines — more than ever — in recent days, and Public Service Enterprise Group’s Ralph Izzo is the latest top exec to take on this global challenge.
The energy company’s chairman, CEO and president released this week his “5 Things to Tackle Climate Change” strategy, urging the world to step up its efforts to reduce carbon emissions and increase other measures that will help the environment.
“You don’t need to be a physicist or an engineer to see that we need to act on climate now to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change in the future,” Izzo said in a prepared statement. “If we hope to mitigate the most damaging impacts of our changing climate, it’s clear that there are five things we need to do — some more quickly than others.”
Izzo may not be a social media darling like teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg, but he certainly has the resume to back up his ideas, having led PSEG since 2007 and worked for the company and its subsidiaries since 1992. He got his start as a research scientist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and is chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Izzo’s 5 Things that demand attention and action are:
- Energy efficiency;
- Preserving carbon-free nuclear energy;
- A price on carbon;
- Renewable energy;
- Electrifying transportation.
Newark-based PSEG is no stranger to controversial energy issues. It was involved in a fight over nuclear energy subsidy funding in 2018 and 2019, but also announced a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 earlier this year.
