Becoming a Climate-Tech Leader
Oliver Booth (MSES ‘22) fell in love with technology at an early age. Today he leverages that passion as he leads research in clean fuels and chemicals for the climate community.
Oliver Booth’s career aspirations were born during late nights hiding under his bedsheets looking at a magazine under the soft glow of a flashlight.
Popular Science magazine, that is.
Booth (MSES '22) was wildly interested in all things technological — and still is. He was seven years old when he was given a subscription to the magazine, and he maintained the subscription until he left for college.
"I still have a stack of those going back 10 years of every single issue that came out in that time,” he said. “I remember getting in trouble for reading them in bed with the flashlight and my parents coming in and yelling at me to go to sleep.”
Booth took that early interest and turned it into a professional path. He currently is a senior associate at Sightline Climate, a company that provides market intelligence and research focused on the climate technology sector.
His journey was aided by Northwestern's Master of Science in Energy and Sustainability (MSES) program. MSES is jointly offered by Northwestern Engineering and the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy.
“Almost every professor was a full-time professional in the industry in a big range of different roles within climate and energy,” Booth said. “That meant that everything was taught with an angle of ‘This is how this is used in the real world.’”
Booth sees the value of that training daily.
Sightline Climate started with its CTVC (Climate Technology Venture Capital) newsletter, which boasts more than 60,000 subscribers throughout climate-tech leadership. In 2023, company founders Kim Zou and Mark Taylor made Booth their first external hire.
Booth now leads the company’s efforts on clean fuels and chemicals research. His goal is to help find more climate-friendly options for the fuel that powers planes, the plastics used for containers, and a wide range of things in between.
The goal, Booth said, is not to find more environmentally friendly solutions that require companies or customers to pay a sustainability surcharge.
“Very few people are going to pay more for sustainable solutions out of the kindness of their hearts,” Booth said. “That's nothing against these people. That is the right decision for them to make. The real winners are the ones who are making their economic case on their own and the sustainability thing is almost a happy accident.”
These happy accidents are not only possible but already happening, Booth said. His research on any new technology option starts from a point of skepticism, but he also labels himself a climate-tech optimist.
“A big part of the job is looking at these cool things that are exciting and interesting and trying to figure out why they would not work,” he said. ”It makes it that much more exciting when we find things that are working.”
The MSES program heightened Booth’s ability to differentiate between technological will- and won’t-works in the energy and sustainability industry.
Of all his courses, Energy Project Development and Finance was the most useful for his post-graduation professional life. Booth said the hands-on course gave him a deeper appreciation for all the factors that go into determining whether a sustainability project is financially feasible and falls into that elusive “happy accident” category.
“It revealed to me how complicated energy systems are in a very real way,” he said. “It's one thing for somebody to tell you this stuff's really complicated. It's another thing to go through a big project and see how it gets built and all the things you need to worry about as it does.”
Booth said he sees the MSES program as a great option for technophiles like himself.
“It's a great program for getting you up to speed with a big range of climate-tech areas very quickly,” he said. “It’s a broad but very practical approach to learning a lot in a very short period of time.”