Accelerating corporate climate ambition at VERGE 23
Shameless selfie in front of the VERGE sign.
The Environmental Defense Fund recently invited me to moderate a panel at VERGE about corporate climate ambition and net zero. I headed to San Jose, California for the leading climate tech event accelerating solutions to the most pressing challenges of our time. Leaders from business, government and startups had come together to discuss innovative approaches for addressing the climate crisis.
My panel included an all-star lineup of professionals from business and government, including Elaine Hsieh, senior advisor to the Under Secretary for Infrastructure at U.S. Department of Energy; Paul Augustine, founder of Climate Decade; Boris Gamazaychikov, emissions reduction project lead at Salesforce; and Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director, EDF+Business at Environmental Defense Fund.
In case you missed it, here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion:
We're out of time for pilots and business and government must get going on decarbonization now and not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Politics matter and the next election will decide if we continue to accelerate progress on climate action or slam the brakes.
There's lots of great tools and technologies out there that will help companies advance net zero goals. The Department of Energy’s Pathways to Liftoff reports includes information about different clean technologies we need to further develop to achieve net zero, and the funding and support they require now to get there. These reports were developed through extensive stakeholder engagement and a combination of system-level modeling and project-level financial modeling.
For companies looking to learn more about how to go about their net zero journey, the EDF Net Zero Action Accelerator offers 75 business pathways and equips leaders within companies with industry-specific guidance to climate action, environmental justice and the bottom line.
To keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we must achieve net zero globally by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Every company needs a net zero roadmap with a clear strategy for achieving net zero by 2050. For example, the Mars Net Zero Roadmap, which I helped my client Mars develop, is a great example of clearly communicating a net zero strategy. If your organization is curious about learning more about net zero roadmaps, don’t hesitate to reach out.
