Steven Pinker and Caroline Cochran to advise Kärnfull Energi

Sweden’s first 100% nuclear electricity provider Kärnfull is coping well amidst global uncertainty, and keeps adding renowned profiles to its pro-bono advisory board. Steven Pinker, award-winning author and Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and Caroline Cochran, COO Oklo Inc., have decided to team up with world-leading scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and energy experts to advise the start-up.

Kärnfull has enjoyed rapid success after launching its 100% nuclear electricity tariff to Swedish households in December, following a very successful sign-up period. The company attracts an ‘eco rational’ audience, leveraging the buzz created following their August sign-up phase announcement. What started as a domestic initiative has now caught global attention with their news and facts heavy social media channels continuously growing in popularity.

Earlier this month Kärnfull became one of the 20 most liked Swedish electricity providers on Facebook, and in France there’s a petition with over 2 500 signees requesting the company’s services. Kärnfull’s scientific-based knowledge sharing stance actively contributes to improving the debate climate in Sweden and helps fuel the growing pro-nuclear opinion witnessed. 8 out of 10 Swedes support the technology according to a recent Novus survey with over a thousand citizens asked. Only eleven per cent claimed to oppose nuclear.

One contributing factor to Kärnfull’s growth is likely their R&D funding initiative, building up a yearly donation per each sold kilowatt-hour. In December, Kärnfull customers will be invited to vote for on one of three recipient candidates, nominated by the advisory board. This international panel combines know-how and large platforms, bringing together professor Christian Ekberg (Chalmers), energy expert Kirsty Gogan (Energy for Humanity), artist José Gonzalez, researcher Klara Insulander Björk (Chalmers), music producer Johan Carlsson as well as award-winning entrepreneur Eric Ingersoll. With the addition of Steven Pinker and Caroline Cochran the advisory board is complete.

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT.

He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his ten books, including Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications.

Joining Kärnfull’s pro-bono advisory board was an easy choice:

“Capturing energy is our only way to stave off the ravages of entropy and to secure our health, prosperity, and freedom. The challenge for this century is how we can capture abundant energy, all over the world, without emitting dangerous greenhouse gases. Nuclear power is the safest and most scalable carbon-free energy source, and people will need to adopt it wholeheartedly to secure a livable planet for our children and grandchildren. Kärnfull is an interesting initiative I’m happy to advise on, as their pioneering model provides nuclear power as an active choice, allowing eco-modernists, rational environmentalists, and other thoughtful stewards the same opportunities for a positive statement and a personal commitment that traditional greens have long displayed with their less effective renewables.”

Caroline Cochran is the co-founder and COO of start-up Oklo Inc., based in California. Their 1.5MW advanced fission plant, the Aurora powerhouse, hopes to replace diesel generators with clean, reliable, affordable power. The Aurora has inherent safety characteristics and can utilize nuclear waste as fuel. Caroline cares deeply about the environment and health, which underlies her dedication to making advanced fission a reality. She earned her BA in Economics and her BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Oklahoma and her MS in nuclear engineering from MIT.

Caroline says:

”It is crucial for the world’s future to invest the most resources in energy sources with the lowest lifecycle emissions and ecosystems footprint. Nuclear power is far and away that source once reliability or backup requirements are factored in. We are excited about the blueprint Kärnfull is setting for the world to consider how to practically implement novel clean energy investment practices! My co-founder Jacob DeWitte actually has ancestry from Sweden, so we are delighted to reconnect with his roots – although I’m convinced we’ll see Kärnfull pop up in many other countries too before long."

Kärnfull’s founder Christian Sjölander comments:

“We are very honoured and proud to have gathered such a dynamic, diverse and renowned group of advisors. They are incredibly helpful, especially in helping us deal with all the international attention we’ve been getting recently. The future looks bright for us and nuclear energy in general. We can’t wait for our next chapter to begin”

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About Kärnfull Energi

Kärnfull Energi is a part of Kärnfull Future AB, a wholly-owned company by founders Christian Sjölander and John Ahlberg. Kärnfull is a Swedish electricity supplier, and hence not an electricity producer that can influence supply and demand of the electricity market. The start-up, on top of proving market demand and citizen interest via electricity sales, aims to improve dinner conversations everywhere by making nuclear power, and its key role in fighting climate change, more understandable and likeable. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, @Kärnfull.

Contact:

media@karnfull.se

Christian Sjölander, CEO & founder

+46 739 435605