The current U.S. administration has de-emphasized many measures aimed at fighting climate change, but that hasn’t affected the conversation around sustainability among many business leaders, according to the chief executive of the nation’s largest provider of low-carbon energy.
“We’re dealing with some of the largest clients on the planet. You’ve heard us announce deals with Meta, with Microsoft, and with others. I will tell you the conversation in the room has not changed,” said Joseph Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation.
Dominguez spoke Friday morning at Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall at the Harvard Climate Symposium, part of Harvard Climate Action Week, which featured an array of climate-change-focused events across the University’s campuses.
Dominguez said business executives are well aware of the significant climate shifts that are expected over the coming decades. The last time the climate rose between 6 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius, it took 8,000 years, he said. This time it’s expected by the end of the century, with some models predicting warming to be even higher.
“If you’re a businessperson in this space, that’s got to tell you that 10 years from now this is going to be a much more difficult conversation, because not only are politics going to change but the environment — political and otherwise — is going to change,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who the president is. People are looking at business fundamentals and trying to predict the future environments. The bottom line is the president’s going to serve another three years, and then things are going to change again.”
The Constellation executive said the current administration has shown some support for selected low-carbon energy sources. The Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” cut credits for wind and solar but left them intact for geothermal, advanced nuclear, and battery storage. Dominguez predicted nuclear may be set up for a renaissance.
While nuclear power lost support among the public and many politicians in recent decades, Republicans have consistently supported the industry. More recently, he said, some Democrats have softened their stance against nuclear because it is carbon-free. That makes nuclear, while not the first choice on either side of the aisle, the second choice of both.
“Nuclear, ironically, after having been ignored for decades and, frankly, despised by some components of the Democratic Party, is now emerging as the consensus view on technology,” Dominguez said. “It’s the only thing that 100 percent of Democrats voted for and 100 percent of Republicans voted for.”
The symposium, organized by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, opened with comments from Harvard President Alan Garber and Salata Institute Faculty Director James Stock, Harvard’s vice provost for climate and sustainability.
Stock said this is a pivotal moment for climate and energy, with energy demand rising rapidly, in part because of the demand from data centers and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence. And despite the current political environment, the rapid growth of low-carbon technology is a reason for optimism.
“A key source of hope is the stunning progress on low-carbon energy technologies,” Stock said.
“Over the past 15 years, prices on solar power, wind power, and batteries have plummeted,” he said. “EVs are rapidly approaching price parity with internal combustion engines, and, due in part to important work here at Harvard, new methods of detecting methane leaks have improved dramatically so oil and gas companies can sell their natural gas instead of leaking it to the atmosphere.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said the work at Harvard is just part of her administration’s vision for the state’s future, which is to become a hub of climate technology. Key to that, she said, will be the continued development of jobs in the low-carbon energy sector.
Healey has appointed a cabinet-level climate chief to oversee all the pieces needed to make that come about, including workforce development, K-12 education, higher education, transportation, and even housing.
“The workforce is not just something that’s nice to have; it’s absolutely essential,” said Healey, who spoke at the Climate Symposium in discussion with Tracy Palandjian, Harvard Corporation fellow and founder of the nonprofit Social Finance. “For all the policy positions and laws passed, none of that does any good unless you’re able to actually implement and operationalize.”
Massachusetts needs an estimated 34,000 green-energy workers, Palandjian said, to fill well-paying jobs in the trades that also have the prospect of growth.
Palandjian outlined a program started by Social Finance that aims to boost community college graduation rates by providing funds for students to meet the everyday hurdles and expenses — such as transportation and childcare — that often lead them to break off their studies short of graduation.
The fund would be repaid by students if they land well-paying jobs or by the students’ employers, on a voluntary basis, and then cycled back to a new generation of students.
Healey praised the program, saying that kind of innovation will help a sector she believes remains a big part of the state’s future despite political headwinds.
“We’re going to do this. We have to do this. Our economies depend on this,” Healey said. “We just try to put points on the board and keep moving forward as best as we can.”