How can we redesign the global energy system to meet the needs of both our economies and the environment? What are the economic risks and where are the opportunities for our society? And what can each of us do to contribute to solutions?

When Lint Barrage, Professor at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics at ETH Zurich, stepped on stage at Treffpunkt Science City this autumn on 16 November 2025, she didn’t begin with charts, equations or policy terms as it could be expected given the talk was about energy and climate protection. Instead, she began with a photo, intriguing….!

But a satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night, the south bright with economic activity, the north nearly dark, set the tone for her central message: energy is the lifeblood of modern civilisation. It is the invisible infrastructure behind our prosperity, our safety and our wellbeing. And rethinking how we produce, use and value energy will determine whether we can protect both our economy and our climate.

What followed was one of the most thoughtful, nuanced, motivating, inspiring, engaging and human-centred perspectives on climate and energy I have ever heard.

Seeing the World As It Is And As It Could Be

Professor Barrage invited us to zoom out and look at the global energy system with clarity. Today, humanity consumes the equivalent of 8 million atomic bombs in energy every year. Despite impressive growth in renewables, 80% of global energy still comes from fossil fuels.

And yet, as she reminded us, nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide still has no access to electricity, and half the global population lives with unreliable energy. Without energy, there is no modern healthcare, no education, no economic opportunity. “There are no rich countries that use little energy,” Barrage noted, a simple but profound observation.

This poses an unavoidable reality: the future growth in energy demand will come almost entirely from developing economies. Their choices will shape the fate of the global climate.

So where does Switzerland fit in?

With just 0.1% of global emissions, Switzerland alone cannot change the climate trajectory. But it can influence the world profoundly — not through size, but through innovation, policy leadership, and the ability to develop technologies others can adopt.

That, Professor Barrage argued, is where our responsibility lies.

Avoiding The Illusion Of “Domestic Only” Solutions

One of the most striking parts of her talk was her explanation of how well-intentioned climate policies can backfire. For example, if Switzerland simply bans all emissions-intensive production domestically, manufacturing will move abroad, often to countries with higher carbon intensity.

The result?

Lower Swiss emissions on paper, but higher global emissions in reality.

The alternative is far more ambitious and far more promising: Switzerland developing technologies, business models and policy frameworks that can be exported worldwide.

Her example of low-emission Swiss cement said it all: if cleaner Swiss innovations became the global standard, worldwide emissions could drop by up to 3%, thirty times Switzerland’s annual footprint. That is the leverage of innovation.

Incentives, Investments and the Power of Innovation

Reaching net zero will require more than goodwill. It demands:

• Smart incentives to reduce emissions, such as carbon pricing
• Massive investments into the energy transition – more than CHF 100 billion in Switzerland alone
• Focused innovation, from hydrogen to carbon capture to sustainable aviation fuels
• Stable political frameworks that make long-term investment possible

Professor Barrage showed clearly that technologies exist but too often, they are still too expensive or not yet deployed at scale. Clean innovation, she emphasized, doesn’t happen automatically. It requires intention, support and thoughtful policy.

A Climate Strategy With A Human Heart

But perhaps the deepest message of the talk was not about economics. It was about people.

Transitions create winners as well as losers. Workers in fossil industries, communities dependent on resource revenues, and low-income households facing rising energy costs all bear risks in the energy transition.

These realities, Barrage urged, must be acknowledged with empathy and seriousness.

Policy must be economically sound and socially fair.

She quoted her doctoral advisor, Nobel laureate William Nordhaus: “We need to approach these issues with a cool head and a warm heart.”

Evidence and compassion. Logic and empathy. Climate ambition anchored in humanity.

Walking Out Inspired

Leaving the auditorium, I felt a rare combination of clarity and motivation. Professor Barrage didn’t sugar-coat the challenges. She didn’t offer simple answers. Instead, she offered something far more valuable: a way to think about climate and energy that is honest, innovative and deeply human.

Her message is one that stays with you:

• Think globally
• Design smart incentives
• Invest in innovation
• Build policies that people can believe in
• And above all, combine a cool head with a warm heart

Please watch Professor Barrage’s full talk in German here:

On 30 October 2025, ETH Zurich hosted a compelling edition of its Global Lecture Series: Powering Change – The Energy Transition in Practice. Moderated by Chris Luebkeman from ETH Zurich’s Strategic Foresight Hub, the discussion brought together two inspiring women speakers: Bettina Bachmann, a veteran energy executive with over three decades of experience at Shell and an advocate for Women in Tech, and Lint Barrage, ETH economist specialising in climate and energy policy.

The conversation went far beyond technicalities. It explored the realities behind the energy transition, challenging assumptions and highlighting what truly matters: adding energy to meet global demand, driving innovation beyond technology, and ensuring equity across nations. Here’s more in the shape of 5 key takeaways and stand-out quotes from our guest speakers:

Energy Transition: More Than Replacement

“Adding energy is often forgotten in this conversation,” Bachmann reminded the audience. “We cannot just replace fossil fuels; we have to grow at the same time.” Her point was clear: with global energy demand rising, the transition is not a simple swap—it’s an expansion.

Urgency and Continuum

Barrage offered a sobering perspective: “We’ve been too slow for decades. If we had started gradual action earlier, the same level of climate protection could have been achieved at a much lower cost.” Climate action, she stressed, is not binary. Every tonne of emissions avoided today reduces future harm tomorrow.

Innovation Beyond Technology

Both speakers agreed that technology alone won’t solve the problem. “We’re not waiting for a silver bullet,” Bachmann said. “We have the technologies—we need to scale them up and integrate them.” Barrage added that innovation must extend to finance, policy, and behaviour: “People respond to incentives. We need to make clean tech massively more profitable to redirect R&D.”

Global Equity

The panel underscored the ethical dimension: developing nations must leapfrog polluting paths. “We have a duty to ensure they don’t have to go the same hard, slow path that we did,” Bachmann said. Barrage pointed to creative financial instruments as key: “We need smarter ways to leverage private investment and reduce risk.”

No-Regret Actions

Both experts closed with practical advice. Bachmann urged: “Think hard before you replace something—whether it’s clothing or heating systems. Avoid waste.” Barrage’s top three? “Invest massively in innovation, provide better information on energy use, and price carbon where feasible.”

Check out the pictures from the event here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/meeteth/albums/72177720329550116/

And in case you missed, watch the talk here:

If you enjoyed this post and the lecture, you may be interested in the upcoming Energy Week at ETH Zurich: https://esc.ethz.ch/events/energy-week.html

The Catalyst for Change

Hi! My name is Bettina and I recently graduated from ETH in environmental science and policy. How on earth did I get here? It was actually more of a coincidence than a planned step in my career, much like getting into politics at a young age.

How so? After having flown as a flight attendant for two years, I figured I wanted to do something that felt more purposeful than tending to passengers’ needs even though I did feel a sense of purpose at times– for example when I tended to people who were part of an American immigration project: They saw electronics for the first time in their life and had to be told how to plug in headphones; and a mom had to be helped who had never used a diaper for her children before.

Without giving it much time and thought, I met someone who had studied the same. It sounded interesting along with the allegedly pleasant, cooperative mindset of people who went for the same studies. My career advisor told me to rather go for some hard science, like maths or biology and do an MBA afterwards, because environmental science was nothing really concrete, scratching the surface of a lot of topics.

Academic Pursuit at ETH

Well, he was right about that part. To show how vaguely defined the studies are in peoples’ minds, this is what a different set of people think I do as an environmental scientist:

Jokes aside, what environmental studies allow you is to get the fundamental basics of all hard sciences and learn to think systemically. That I see as the main benefit of my studies: the way we learned to think.

What do I mean by that? While a biologist might see the ecological niche for a certain species, the geographer sees how that certain ecological niche came about, the mathematician delivers the tools to calculate and measure it, an environmental scientist needs to understand all these factors on a general level, make the connections and often apply it to human life.

Real-World Application and Discoveries

Last week, I was discussing with the professor of quaternary geomorphology (glaciers and how they formed our landscape), how gravel pits have been filled around Zurich. Imagine Regensdorf, which is densely populated now, had to fill up its gravel pits to make room for

settlements. Now instead of taking any kind of cheap material, what has been done is to take gravel material from digging holes for houses (from nearby places). How neat and efficient and cost-effective a solution is that? These are things that get me excited: concrete, effective solutions to real-world problems.

My professor, seeing my awe, said: “We quaternary geologists get really frenzied up by looking at rocks and analyzing them and this is what excites you.” Nice to see how people and their knowledge complement each other.

Challenges Along the Way

Because of being uncertain whether I was learning something that could actually serve my initial goal, moving towards doing something “more purposeful”, along with little vacation and tight requirements of ETH, I seriously thought about quitting several times. But I pushed through and I’m glad I did. One important factor that kept me going were the regularly occurring excursions where what was learned could actually be applied and put into practice to make a difference in real life. Or attending ETH week, where basically a group of overexcitedly motivated nerds works on a project about a real-world problem for a week.

At this point, I would like to point out a rather inconvenient truth – studying at ETH is tough and a shocking high number of people studying with me actually went into burnout, even I was close to it at some point and my counsellor back then was wondering what was going on at ETH, because she allegedly had many clients from ETH. Having said all that, it is reassuring to know that this problematic is addressed with projects such as wie gETH’s? by VSETH. This is a representative study about mental well-being at ETH, for students and employees alike and had been done already in 2018. The results led to improvements to tackle exactly aforementioned problematic, e.g., more peer-mentoring programs or changes in study regulations.

Career Reflections and Opportunities

So where do I stand now, after my studies? Let me explain first how I came to today: along with family planning (I am a mom), I was trying hard to choose the right career path.

ETH offers many great opportunities to help shape this decision. Such as doing programs at the FAO in Rome (for editors: picture 2), or in my department, D-USYS, being relatively free to choose the direction of one’s thesis. I was always interested in development and cooperation, so I went for it and thanks to that I figured out that this sector/world is not for me, the reasons for which would go beyond the bounds of this blog post.

Another route I was taking, was due to getting into an entrepreneurial program (again by chance), rooted in ETH. I learned a lot of essential things (how to “think business”, something that just didn’t fit in our curriculum, but would be vital in a capitalist world) that I know I will use later in my life.

Another thing I was wondering about, was whether to go into consulting, as I do feel the need to bring across what I actually learned. I found it intriguing, but not easily combinable with being a mom.

However, coming from ETH, I got into consulting recruitment events fairly easily, so I could attend the Sustainable Switzerland event last year and even briefly meet Gro Harlem Brundtland, a sustainability legend, due to her chairing the UN commission which defined the term “sustainable development” in 1987 as it is used today.

I also felt at the conference, which was more of a business and less academic setting how prestigious our institution is regarded. It said BCG and ETH on my name tag, and people treated me differently than they use to without this specific name tag, they came and talked to me! This never happened at another conference before – it seems like the hard work of the last half decade is paying off in some sense at least. 😉  

So, consulting wasn’t the right path either, how did my career continue then? Again, by chance, in my last master’s year I was asked to substitute as a high school teacher. This is something that feels purposeful, aligned with my talents, and combinable with being a mother: Becoming a teacher for young people who want to learn something and guide them in a sense, trying to bring across systemic thinking and also thinking out of the box while hopefully making them excited about science.

So, this is where ETH has taken me for now. I will start off learning how to teach people (yes, ETH also offers a teaching diploma) and trying to become really good at it, while I will keep one foot in the sustainability scene. To all you readers out there – do you have any projects in the sustainability scene and feel like I could contribute? Please reach out to me at: bhaenny@ethz.ch .

Looking Ahead

Whoever of you knows Richard Feynman’s famous “Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher» might remember that he proposed the following: If we were to only pass on one scientific principle to next generations, it would be about the principle that everything is made up of the same set of particles.

Why on earth do I bring this up? Well, to me it feels like ETH – metaphorically speaking –  has given me the knowledge that everything is made up of particles. So now I have the privilege to know what I need to explore the planet and find where, with my talents, I can be content and best contribute.