Power to the people: the energy company dedicated to giving profits back to customers

When presented with one of the biggest problems of the energy industry today, Karin Sode, CEO of People’s Energy, decided that if no one else was going to solve it, she’d do it herself. Here she talks to Andy Martin

CEO Karin Sode with co-founder David Pike (People’s Energy)

Karin Sode isn’t your average CEO of an energy company. For starters, she was born on an island in the Baltic Sea and she has a degree in Nordic philology and psychology. But then People’s Energy isn’t your average ruthlessly profiteering energy company either. It’s more of a social enterprise, dedicated to giving the profits back to its own customers.

Sode (pronounced “Sotha”) met her first husband at Copenhagen University and then moved with him to Jerusalem to do archaeological research into the Assyrian period, digging around “Jezebel’s Palace” in the Jezreel Valley. When she moved to the UK, she taught Scandinavian Studies at Edinburgh University and gave birth to her first daughter. At the same time she was doing a PhD on how we use words to construct identities.

But academic theory was not enough for her: she yearned to apply her knowledge in the world beyond the ivory tower and in 2005 set up as a business psychology consultant, working with big corporates like Diageo and RBS. She specialised in assessing whether potential topline appointments would be a good fit for the company. I told her I’d heard that a narcissistic sociopath would make a good CEO – that it helps if you’re supremely ruthless and self-interested. “That would be a bad CEO”, she says. “A good CEO needs qualities of self-awareness and humility. I’ve worked with a few sociopaths. They’re not willing to listen. The CEO should be able to listen.”