Making the energy transition real with Tamara Lundgren

With COP28 here, CEOs are wrestling with the need for practical action while maintaining hope in the face of disheartening climate statistics. So, who better to turn to for wisdom than the recently named Word’s Most Sustainable Company, Radius Recycling?

Delivering a future with less waste and sustained natural resources, Radius Recycling puts recycled metals at the heart of progress. This organization demonstrates how, when done right, coordinated long-term action combined with short-term measures can lead to innovation.

I sat down with Tamara Lundgren, the company’s Chairman, President and CEO, to learn how this 117-year-old company translates its bold sustainable vision into meaningful impact—all while honoring its heritage brand.

My favorite takeaway? That balance is key for the public and private sectors on their shared road to net zero.

Let’s dive in.

Your company recently transformed, rebranding from Schnitzer Steel to Radius Recycling. Talk to me about that journey: What's the significance of this transition? And why now?

We are a 117-year-old company founded by an immigrant who had a vision to find value where others saw waste by recycling metals, and we're still doing that today over a century later, obviously at a very different scale and with vastly different technology.

The catalyst for the rebranding was really twofold. First, over the last several years, our global trading partners announced specific and meaningful commitments to transition to low-carbon technologies.

And then last January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, we were named the World's Most Sustainable Company by Corporate Knights. Now, this is not a recognition we applied for. Corporate Knights applied their own analytics and reviewed 7,000 companies around the world. And while we had made their list of "most sustainable companies" before, we had not been number one.

We were honored by that and got a lot of attention for it. But the headlines were all "Steel Company Most Sustainable Company of the World." And our steel activity definitely did contribute: We make net-zero-carbon-emission finished steel products and utilize recycled metals, and hydropower, but our largest business is metals recycling.

Tamara, 117 years, you really are a heritage brand. And I know that Schnitzer Steel meant a lot to the people in Portland and the Pacific Northwest. As you were writing the next chapter, how did you think about honoring the past legacy?

It is a very significant name, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, and also with many of our customers around the world, who are very familiar, for decades, with Schnitzer Steel.

But once our stakeholders understood both to the strategy behind the name change, and that while our name and our logo are changing, our core values remain the same, it was easy to see the path forward. Portland and Oregon have a very strong story as it relates to sustainability, and our name change also reinforces those connections. 

What advice would you have for CEOs who are contemplating a similar change? And, in particular, is there anything you think you'd have done differently?

You have to have an authentic reason to do this, and for us there were a lot of market forces that were really supportive of this transition. The interview process, internally and externally, is a great opportunity to listen and hear what people are thinking about your company, especially about the kind of impact you're making. 

Listening is crucial, external expertise is vital, and it's important to ensure that within your organization, you identify enough influential individuals at each level. This way, when decisions are being made, and once they have been made, there are people who can effectively shape and impact the communication of those decisions over time.

There really isn't anything that I would have done differently, and the feedback since we announced it has also been very positive.

If I now just pull back up and say "energy transition," in your view, what role could or should the private sector play?

The private sector, in my opinion, has been responsible for making the energy transition real. I mean, it is a journey, we are at the very beginning of that journey. But if you look at the commitments, for example, of the auto companies beginning two years ago, and changing their production processes, changing their design, changing their core strategies: Until you have the private sector really adopting it and really changing what they do, it can't be a reality. So, I applaud the private sector for taking this issue and translating it into action.

The public sector has also been impactful, in particular with the recent infrastructure and IRA legislation, both of which have the potential to drive significant support in this journey. Recent geopolitical, labor, weather, and health events: They've all illustrated risks of over-reliance or over-concentration. 

In my opinion balance is key to successful transitions. And that probably applies to a lot of things way beyond energy transitions, but to most significant transformative transitions balance is key.  

So, going forward, I think that a collaborative partnership approach—and we're seeing a lot of that occur right now — between both the private and public sectors is the best path forward. It can also be very motivating to set aggressive stretch goals.

These days there is no conversation we can have without talking about Generative AI. Are you experimenting with this technology? How do you see it improving productivity for Radius Recycling?

Our business is a great example of micro- and macro-economics. The supply flows of scrap metal represent millions of individual decisions. And demand for recycled metals is driven by macroeconomic factors, such as interest rates and GDP growth. As a result, we accumulate a lot of data that now, with GenerativeAI, we may be able to deploy or employ to better inform buying decisions and production levels. This is a new frontier for us, and we are very excited about exploring it. 

I'd also say that our team is always monitoring advances in using AI for predictive maintenance and recycling technologies. So that integrated analytics, or integrated advances in AI and robotics, for example, have the potential to enable us to recycle more metals from the materials that are going through our processes, and as a result send less to landfills. So, there are a lot of rising technology applications that could significantly change the efficiency of our business.

Finally, "uncertainty" has become not just a buzzword, but almost a permanent state for CEOs. How have you improved your personal resilience as a CEO? And, in turn, how have you created a more resilient business?

I think you're 100% right: Uncertainty has always been there. It's, I think, why strategy is such an important part of a CEO's job. I think there's a big difference today—and even in the years that I've been CEO, there's a very big difference in the speed with which information flows today, and the risk of whether that information is accurate, and how quickly people are able to react to that information. 

For me personally and being in this commodities sector for as long as I have, scenario planning, and incorporating into our company's culture the "one eye on the telescope, one eye on the microscope" approach to operating and planning: These are the ways that we're able to translate "resilience" into "nimbleness." And I think that is what gives us the ability to navigate through a lot of the volatility that is occurring at a quicker pace than it has in the past.

Tamara Lundgren is the is the chairman and CEO of Radius Recycling (formerly Schnitzer Steel).

Asutosh Padhi is a senior partner and the managing partner for McKinsey in North America, leading the firm across the United States, Canada, and Mexico and serving as part of McKinsey’s 15-person global leadership team. He is also a member of McKinsey’s Shareholders Council, the firm’s equivalent to a board of directors.

He is also the co-author of The Titanium Economy, a new book that explores the industrial tech sector and the bright future that it can help create. It’s available now.

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