Green energy is having a moment right now. Worldwide, $1.7 trillion was invested in renewable energy in 2023, or $1.7 for every $1 invested in fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency estimates.

“The tandem push of federal investments flowing into clean energy and pull of decarbonization demand from public and private entities have never been stronger,” Deloitte wrote in its 2024 renewable energy outlook report.

But challenges remain, especially in the more nascent area of renewable fuels. The infrastructure for vehicles that run on green hydrogen, for instance, is still in its infancy. Other alternative fuels, such as green methanol, are in even earlier stages of development. And uncertainty around guidance for renewable fuel tax credits has left investors in limbo: According to Deloitte, $50+ billion of investments in clean hydrogen were announced in 2023, but less than $1 billion were actually committed.

For green energy startups like Oberon Fuels, securing capital in such an environment isn’t an easy task. These companies need to convince investors that their technology is sound, that a market will one day exist for it, and that they’re prepared to weather changes like political shifts that could affect ESG legislation.

But Oberon’s new CFO, Ann Anthony, is up to the task.

To continue reading, click here.—Courtney Vien

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Finance leaders, like many in the workforce, can face mental health challenges due to a stressful environment, overwork, and other factors, according to Joyce Marter, a licensed psychotherapist, speaker on mental health in the workplace, and author of The Financial Mindset Fix: A Mental Fitness Program for an Abundant Life.

CFO Brew recently spoke with Marter about common stressors for CFOs (especially those long hours!), mental health challenges tied to remote work, and the steps that organizations can take to champion mental health awareness and healthy practices in the workplace.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the mental health challenges that CFOs, other executives, and the teams working under them face?

For all employees, we have been dealing with chronic change and transition and uncertainty. And those are huge stressors for human beings. We don’t like change, and we’ve been in a chronic state of change for four years or more. And we’ve also been dealing with overwork and burnout…the World Health Organization came out with a study [published in journal Environment International in 2021] that [found] 785,000 people die per year from overwork and burnout due to heart disease and stroke, and that was for individuals who worked more than 55 hours per week. I would assume that CFOs fall into that category. And so, there are physical health implications as well as mental health implications, like increased stress, which can trigger or exacerbate depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, because a lot of times we self-medicate our anxiety, depression, or stress with drugs or alcohol.

For more on maintaining mental health in the workplace, click here.—AZ

In the race to dominate the artificial intelligence (AI) market, companies see opportunities to reap major profits—and some are willing to offer big salaries to the candidates who can help them get there.

“Astronomical” salaries. The price employers put on hiring the best AI talent became apparent to Kaitlyn Knopp, founder and CEO of compensation software firm Pequity, when her team recently helped advise the founders of Inflection AI, who were tapped to join Microsoft, on what competitive pay looks like among major industry players.

To get a sense of the market rates for AI roles, Pequity reviewed its own compensation data, as well as market research of publicly available sources, including compensation trends from OpenAI. The company that launched generative AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022 is currently valued at $80 billion, and is credited with starting an AI “arms race” among businesses. When reviewing the compensation data, Knopp saw that OpenAI was paying AI and machine learning talent anywhere from 125% to nearly 400% the going rate of what software engineers traditionally earn at big tech companies like Google or Microsoft.

The reason for this salary inflation, according to Knopp and other compensation experts and recruiters in the field, comes down in part to a supply-and-demand issue, as well as the potential for top AI talent to help companies reap major financial rewards.

Click here to keep reading HR Brew’s story on astronomical AI salaries.—Courtney Vinopal

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