Pragmatic climate activism kick-started by student job 

Portrait

During her summer vacation in Turkey, Yasemin Yavari saw the consequences of climate change first hand.

Today Yasemin is on the CIP Foundation Youth Advisory Board and she previously sat on the Youth Climate Council. In her job at Schneider Electric, she helps supply energy efficiency improvements. 

It is a coincidence that Yasemin Yavari has become a strong young voice in today’s sustainability debate. Through her student job at her current workplace, Schneider Electric, Yasemin became aware of the pivotal role of energy consumption for the green transition. 

Some five years after walking through the door at the Danish branch of the global French group, she is now one of the company’s voices to explain about smart factories and buildings and how data can be used for energy optimization. 

She doesn’t only talk about how aspects of the green transition can be tackled. She also explains why it’s necessary. Besides her full-time job at Schneider, Yasemin had a seat on the Youth Climate Council from 2022 to 2024, and since spring 2023 she has been part of the CIP Foundation Youth Advisory Board.  

However, Yasemin can point to several reasons why she has ended up in this particular job and has been on the council and advisory board. 

“Climate change came into my life because I have a Turkish mother and my family have had a holiday home in Turkey. When we were down there, it just got hotter and hotter every summer, and forest fires became increasingly frequent during droughts. This made climate change become very real for me. I’ve also been a vegetarian and then a vegan for many years. Initially, it was mostly a reaction to seeing how intensively farmed livestock were treated.” says Yasemin.  

Eureka moment with data 

As a student assistant at Schneider Electric, her job was to get smart buildings on the agenda in everything from the news media and trade press to the social media and events. She was hired for what communications jargon calls “thought leadership”. This means that the company profiles itself through professional, specialist knowledge. 

“For me, it was a Eureka moment. During my studies, I worked a lot with data. Among other things, we looked into how weather data can be used in traffic planning, so that more buses can be deployed when it’s raining. But I remember the exercise as very academic. When I joined Schneider, I realised that what I had learned could also be put into practice, and that you can use data to save energy in buildings,” explains Yasemin. 

Yasemin Yavari’s influence, and the knowledge she has accumulated during her work have left a solid imprint on a new project at the CIP Foundation. The Youth Advisory Board has contributed with ideas and suggestions to identify opportunities and barriers for more flexible electricity consumption.

You can turn production up and down at traditional power plants, but this is more difficult with renewable and climate-friendly energy sources such as solar and wind, so we have to be able to adjust the consumption side.

The project will analyse both opportunities and barriers. And this is very close to Yasemin’s home turf. She may not have a technical background, but after more than five years working for a company with energy efficiency as a mantra, she has some very sharp arguments.

”We can use data for energy efficiency in our buildings and in various production facilities, and this can also help make consumption more flexible. So far, we’re a long way from exploiting the full potential, and there is a number of barriers in the current regulations,” she says.

A quota for electricity consumption

There is also enormous potential for flexible consumption in ordinary households. Household electricity consumption peaks between 5 pm and 8 pm, when people are cooking and doing their laundry.

A crucial part of the new project is to look at how we can reduce electricity consumption during these hours. ”Peak shaving”, as it is also called, is very interesting. Lower consumption at peak times results in savings on both production and investment in grids and other infrastructure. Even if the consumption is simply moved to other times.

Besides objective analysis, we also need to think outside the box.

”You could consider a system in which each household has a quota for electricity consumption. The household can then decide for itself whether it wants to cook, do laundry or charge the electric car during hours when there is most pressure on the grid,” says Yasemin.

She is quick to emphasise that it is just an idea. She is acutely aware that you have to be very careful when it comes to regulating what happens behind families’ front doors.

Differences make us stronger

But it is important that there is room for thinking aloud and to air outlandish ideas.  This has always been a core purpose for both the CIP Foundation Youth Advisory Board and the Youth Climate Council.

What is a Youth Advisory Board? The CIP Foundation has set up a permanent Youth Advisory Board, which will advise the board in, among other things, which projects the CIP Foundation will work with. The Youth Advisory Board must ensure that there is a clear next-generation perspective in all the CIP Foundation’s activities. Therefore, members are also offered participation in the CIP Foundation’s Advisory Boards, in order to provide ongoing feedback to ongoing projects.

”Our different backgrounds make a lot of sense. For example, I don’t know much about agriculture. But I’ve learned a lot from listening to Niels, who is the chair of the Youth Advisory Board and comes from an agricultural background. Others who come from a different political or professional background can contribute something different. One area that I think is important is the whole field of education. If we’re going to transform society over the next 50 years, we’ll need people from a wide range of disciplines,” says Yasemin.

There is already a relatively wide range in both the Youth Climate Council and among the young people who advise the CIP Foundation. Some come with a background from prominent companies, others have been part of youth politics in organizations or parties with very diverse manifestos.

Yasemin describes herself as a pragmatic type. She prefers to be where solutions are explored. She brings objectivity and professionalism to the table whether she works at Schneider, in the Youth Climate Council or in the Youth Advisory Board.

”My main task at Schneider is to profile the solutions we have as a company. It was different in the Youth Climate Council and it is also different at the CIP Foundation. At the CIP Foundation it has been about how we can strengthen the necessary transition at societal level,” she says and elaborates.

”I think we need to draw on differences, and we need to involve large parts of society. I have friends who are strong climate activists. I’m not myself, I have nothing against companies making money. The important thing is that we change the way we do things. And in this context it’s crucial that companies also contribute. In the Youth Climate Council there was also a balance. We might well challenge government policy, but we didn’t stand up and say it was all bad.”

Stood out at the public debate

Another factor is that Yasemin works for a company that is considered by outsiders as one of the greenest in the world. Schneider Electric has been ranked among the world’s most sustainable companies for several years. The Canadian media Corporate Knights is behind a sustainability award in which they look into data from annual financial statements and sustainability reports.

Yasemin Yavari stands out especially in one respect. With a Turkish mother and Iranian father, she is one of the few young Danes with a minority background who is making her mark in the sustainability field, which is otherwise dominated by white Danes. She made an interesting observation herself when she attended the public gathering ”Folkemødet”.

”There was a lot of talk about climate and sustainability, but pretty much everyone else I met with brown skin was more interested in issues related to racism. That was actually very revealing,” she says.

Danish can be in short supply

She still experiences prejudice and racism from time to time, but working in a large global corporation has been an advantage. The high position in the Corporate Knights ranking certainly lives up to a reality check in terms of diversity, says Yasemin.

At the Danish head office in Ballerup, the plethora of different nationalities, religions and skin colours is not something they really think about. Or perhaps they do, but in a sort of inverted way.

”The day-to-day working language is English, and I’m in contact with people from many different countries. Sometimes we even talk about how difficult it is to recruit Danes. We need Danes because we have Danish customers who prefer to speak Danish,” says Yasemin.

The Global South pays the price

Her own Turkish-Danish background has given her an understanding of why climate and sustainability are not always at the top of the agenda.

”When I told my family in Turkey that I had joined the Youth Climate Council, they were a little puzzled about what it was all about. Although the effects of climate change are very visible, other issues in Turkey are much more urgent. Inflation is skyrocketing and there is still a lot of poverty. Politically, there is much uncertainty about everything from religious freedom to women’s rights,” says Yasemin, and she adds:

”The focus on climate and sustainability in Denmark also says something about the strength of the country. All the basics are in place. We can go to the doctor for free and we can get help if we lose our jobs,” she says.

Her experiences of the effects of climate change during her summer vacations in Turkey were put into perspective when she attended an international conference in the US a few years ago as a member of the Youth Climate Council.

In some countries, where there is more focus on basic living conditions, the consequences of climate change are much more severe than here in Denmark. They gave her some take-away stories that also stress the importance of the green transition.

”I spoke to many young people from the Global South, and they told me how climate change is affecting their countries with heat waves, floods and droughts. Ultimately, our way of living in the northern hemisphere is the reason why people in the Global South can no longer farm, feed themselves and earn a living,” says Yasemin Yavari.