Hendrik Tiesinga, the chief strategy officer of clean energy startup accelerator New Energy Nexus (NEN), has left the non-profit he co-founded almost six years ago.
He moves on to be an independent advisor to clean tech ventures, impact investors and entrepreneurs.
Tiesinga moves on from an organisation that has offices in eight countries and supports 200 renewable energy startups every year. New Energy Nexus has a considerable footprint in Asia, operating programmes in China, India, and Southeast Asia.
In an email to contacts, Tiesinga said that after six years building NEN, the firm was “entering a new phase of maturity and growth. Having reached this stage, I’m ready to take on the next challenge in the climate space.”
Over his career, Tiesinga co-founded The Finance Innovation Lab, an incubator for companies pushing the finance system towards sustainability, in 2008, and he also birthed sustainable innovation firm Natural Innovation in 2009.
He has also worked as a researcher with Rocky Mountain Institute’s electricity innovation lab in the United States, and the European Corporate Governance Service, where he was managing partner for Pension Investment Research Consultants in London. He is author of Labcraft: how social labs cultivate change through innovation and collaboration.
Tiesinga was a recent panelist for this year’s launch of sustainability innovation competition The Liveability Challenge. An outspoken commenter on clean tech, Tiesinga said that the energy transition was not just “about windmills and solar panels” and required a rewiring and retooling of the entire energy system, “from your plug in the wall all the way to solar panels, and everything in between, including your cars.”
