Michael Walton is a sustainability strategist, systems thinker, and clean technology leader with over two decades of experience driving triple bottom line impact—economic, environmental, and social. With a background in sustainable design from ETH Zurich and the University of Tennessee, Walton has advised a broad spectrum of clients from clean energy startups to global nonprofits and private equity firms. Through his work with Energy Transition Finance and Emerald Operating Partners, he continues to shape the future of sustainable infrastructure, emphasizing innovation, equity, and global collaboration. Walton’s vision blends grounded pragmatism with an unwavering commitment to intergenerational stewardship.

The Social Digest: You have had a very diverse career in multiple sectors and have worked for over 20 years helping businesses and communities improve their sustainability, what initially did inspire you to pursue this as a career? 

I grew up in a small town in the mountains of northeast Tennessee with a close personal relationship with the environment and saw first-hand the impacts of unsustainable development on the ecosystem that provides for our life. My grandfather was a supervisor at a strip coal mine in West Virginia and died of pneumonia when my father was only five years old. I decided to pursue architecture initially as the best way of supporting sustainable development that provides for the needs of our growing society today while protecting the ability of future generations to thrive. I studied sustainable design at the ETH Zurich and University of Tennessee and then had the opportunity to work at one of the leading sustainable design firms in the world in Washington D.C. It was through our clients including the US Green Building Council, World Resources Institute, Gates Foundation,  that my eyes were opened further to understand the complex systems that drive development decisions and I then sought to move upstream from individual projects to integrate a triple bottom line philosophy, that is economic, environmental, and social sustainability in how we develop large systems like energy, housing, mobility, education, and economic development. Since then I have spent my career seeking opportunities to have a positive impact across the three pillars of the triple bottom line.

The Social Digest: Could you tell us about some of the most exciting and impactful projects that you have worked on at Energy Transition Finance and Emerald Operating Partners? 

Some of our most exciting projects are

• UBQ Materials, a biobased thermoplastic made from the mixture of organics and unrecyclable plastics left over in the household waste stream after you take everything that is conventionally recyclable out. UBQ can be a drop in replacement for many types of virgin plastic, reducing both the environmental impact of the waste stream and the embodied carbon of plastic. We are supporting UBQ’s expansion into the US market and in successfully pursuing a $64.5M 48C tax credit for advanced energy manufacturing.
• Solaris Coach and Bus, the leading EV and Hydrogen transit bus company in Europe. We are supporting their US market entry, providing sustainable transportation solutions to US cities and improving air quality for millions.
• Gradient Comfort, a through-window, cold-temperature heat pump that expands the accessibility of electrification to older and often more affordable buildings.
• OceanWell, a pioneering energy efficient desalination technology that will expand accessibility of fresh water to millions.
• Dvele, a company developing prefabricated modular zero energy homes with solar and over-sized battery energy storage at an affordable price that form a Virtual Power Plant when many are installed in the same utility grid. These homes maximize the capacity from the existing transmission by distributing power generation resources and distribution system while also providing health and resilience to the homeowner.
• PearlX, a Virtual Power Plant developer installing solar, battery energy storage, and EV charging in affordable multi-family housing.
• Small Module Nuclear Reactors and their supply chain to provide carbon-free baseload power to meet the needs of electrification of everything and the exponential growth of data centers. Side note: I should say that I share many environmentalists’ opposition to the negative externalities of nuclear energy and hope that energy storage technologies advance far enough and fast enough to make nuclear obsolete, but for the time being it remains a practical and necessary solution to address climate change. Some Generation 4 SMR technologies are walk-away safe, meaning they do not require the kind of back up power to cool down that led to previous nuclear disasters.
• The Maryland Clean Energy Center is financing a wide range of clean technology projects including Posigen which provides solar to low-income households, school bus electrification, renewable energy and energy efficiency for critical buildings, and decarbonization of ports and heavy industry.

The Social Digest: Also what are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced during these projects and how did you tackle them? 

In any situation where you are developing and deploying new technologies you encounter situations where you have circular causality (aka “chicken or the egg”) challenges. Project finance at the scale of these projects in the 100’s of millions of US dollars or in some cases billions requires progressive derisking of foundational challenges including site selection and control, operational/technology risk, feedstock risk, construction risk, offtake/sales risk, fundraising risk, and in some cases decommissioning risk. Equity investors need confidence in debt commitments and offtake/sales agreements. Offtakers want confidence in the project’s construction timeline, secure financing, and site control. EPC contractors need assurances of funding availability. State, local, and government incentives and community engagement can make or break the whole project. We always start with a gap analysis of the project and work with our clients to prioritize actions and strategically engage relevant stakeholders, develop consensus and build trust, and then work with the client to develop any missing plans or agreements.

The Social Digest: You have worked with various clients from energy developers to private equity firms, what according to you is the most important factor to create successful partnerships in the energy and sustainability sector? 

Building successful partnerships is fundamentally based on integrity, shared values, and clear communication. I try to only work with partners that are in it for the right reasons, which is that they are vision-driven. Money is a means, not an end. Make no mistake, I charge for my work, but that is not my purpose. My purpose is to leave the world a better place than I found it for generations to come, and I try my best to work with people who share that approach. That said, I try to add value in every interaction and do my best to connect people to the resources they need to be successful, regardless of whether it benefits myself or my firm. Setting clear goals and mutual expectations are critical as almost any conflict arises from poor interpersonal communication and mismatched expectations.

The Social Digest: Having experience in sustainable design, what advice would you like to give to companies looking to incorporate sustainability into their operations/projects? 

Successful sustainable design is all about creativity and balance. It almost always begins with design thinking (I personally like to use the double diamond approach to design thinking but there are several successful methodologies) to ask the right question and identify the real problem which may be underlying a particular symptom. A good example would be a company looking at putting solar panels on the roof of their building. While there is likely a positive net present value (NPV) of that particular project along with some potential Scope 2 emissions reductions, it may be more impactful to do a full materiality assessment of the business, a power map of who they have influence over, and to then compare the holistic return on investment and net present value to alternate strategies, for instance installing a smaller solar array but combining it with a battery energy storage system that can interact with the grid and EV charging that can benefit fleet operations and employee satisfaction. We can see that accounting-based outperformance and market-based outperformance of companies that invest in sustainability are not found simply in project internal rates of return but also in the knock on effect of their employee attraction and retention, customer loyalty, goodwill in market valuation, and other externalities that need to be analyzed.

The Social Digest: What do you think is the most important skill or mind set for young individuals to develop if they want to create an impact in the field of sustainability and energy transition? 

Combining my previous answers to the last two questions, I would say the two most important skills are design thinking and interpersonal communication. There are many pathways beyond those whether it is law, engineering, construction, finance, or community engagement, but design thinking with a wide and long perspective and clear communication underpin all of them.

The Social Digest: As you have deep involvement in the energy transition where do you see the greatest opportunity for global collaboration in combating climate change? 

I think the most important first step to global collaboration is to change our paternalistic and extractive mindset as it relates both to nature and one another and to agree that addressing climate change is not about saving the planet, which will continue to adapt and thrive with or without us, and focus our efforts on ensuring our ability to thrive as a species within the ecosystem on which we rely. The human trait that has underpinned every important advancement that has improved longevity and quality of life has been cooperation and considering how our actions will impact others. We have grown too accustomed to approaching relationships as a zero-sum game and that any benefit to another person or group of people must come at the detriment of yourself or your group. The inherent beauty of reaching for sustainable systems is providing elegant solutions that solve multiple problems simultaneously.

We are faced with the reality of widespread human suffering, exponential wealth inequality driven by extractive economies, degraded natural environments from extractive development, and seemingly intractable cultural rifts that lead to armed conflict, repression, and even more human suffering. The development of vaccines, such as smallpox or Covid-19 shows a pathway, however, where the countries that have the resources to invest in innovations like developing a vaccine, do so with multiple competing solutions, and then work to distribute those technologies as rapidly as possible with those that have the ability to pay doing so, but not withholding it from those that don’t because the emergence of a deadly, easily communicable virus anywhere affects all of us everywhere. (It is important to note, that any vaccine developed in the United States is nearly certain to be contributed to, if not led by someone not born in the United States. So even though the means exist here to pilot, demonstrate, and deploy technologies, we do not have a monopoly on good ideas or talent.)

Another example, many developing countries went from having no telephone service straight to having cell phones, thanks to the deployment of technology developed for convenience in the United States, skipping the need to develop the messy and expensive infrastructure of landlines.

As we extend those examples into sustainability and the energy transition, the advanced technologies being developed in wealthy countries (often by people not from those countries) to confront climate change and other environmental challenges must be deployed as widely and quickly as possible to support the global project of raising people out of poverty, reducing human suffering, and enabling future generations to enjoy not only the quality of life we have today within the ecosystem on which it relies, but to have an even better quality of life with less global conflict because renewable resources are abundant, circular economies are stronger, and diverse. We also know that while economic mobility is often determined by the neighborhood in which a person is born, human ingenuity, intelligence, creativity, work ethic, etc. is not. Today we are not tapping into the full potential of humanity to solve the problems that we face. Wealthy countries must invest in global public health, education, and provide the means to develop and deploy the best ideas. This is one reason why much of my time is focused on helping companies deploy clean technologies in the US market from other countries to leverage the advantages of our technology development ecosystem but to eventually deploy those technologies globally with the capital liquidity that is available in the United States for technologies that can prove their viability.

The Social Digest: And lastly, having such a distinguished career, what is your definition of success and what is it that motivates you to push boundaries of what’s possible in sustainability? 

I view success as a balance between improving the world and enjoying the world. I have spent my career working on developing sustainable solutions to increasingly large projects starting with underpinning trailer-homes (installing an insulated “skirt” from the ground up to the bottom of the cheaply-built manufactured house to keep wind from blowing underneath) in rural Appalachia to make them more energy efficient in the winter when I was in high school to serving on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council as the business and industry representative to help build solutions to address present and historic environmental injustices while also confronting challenges like climate change and the widening wealth gap. I have done well for myself and enjoy fly fishing, backpacking, camping, soccer, and traveling with my wife and two boys.

This interview was conducted by our Head of outreach, Ansh Vachhani, The Social Digest on 24/03/2025. If you have any interview recommendations or have a story that you want to share with our readers, get in touch with our editor Vedant Bhrambhatt, at editor@thesocialdigest.com