Venture Climate Alliance’s Post

According to GIIN research, a majority of impact investors target positive impacts for climate mitigation in their investment strategies to support limiting emissions and meeting climate goals. At the GIIN Impact Forum 2024 in Amsterdam on October 23-24, academics, policy leaders and climate finance experts will come together for a series of discussions on innovative strategies to close the gap in the march towards a net-zero economy. Register today and be part of crucial conversations aligning impact strategies with climate solutions like the ones below: https://lnkd.in/gmixJTZY 💡 How Renewable Energy Manufacturing and Gender are Interlinked Gender equality plays a crucial role in shaping the future of renewable energy. Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, will discuss how gender inclusivity in renewable energy manufacturing can enhance innovation and drive sustainable development. 🌎 Planetary Boundaries The stability of our planet is at a critical juncture, with planetary boundaries defining the safe operating space, marking critical thresholds for increasing risks for humanity and ecosystems. Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and professor in earth system science at the University of Potsdam, will discuss these crucial thresholds in a video interview with GIIN CEO Amit Bouri, exploring the urgent actions needed to protect our Earth’s future. ⌛ Countdown to 2050: Prioritizing Climate Solutions Portfolios The GIIN has been working on landscaping the climate solutions space. It is clear that we need to direct capital into climate solutions portfolios that are impactful enough to meet the net zero challenge. Join this panel session to hear our findings and exchange views on current approaches. Featuring: Danielle Brassel, Head of Responsible Investment, Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. Sarah Wilson, Managing Director, Head of Climate Solutions, Nuveen Alexandra Harbour, Founder & Chair, Venture Climate Alliance P.S. - We will be hosting our Transforming Your Portfolio training on October 22 in Amsterdam alongside the Forum. Empower your impact investing portfolios with cutting-edge techniques and insights. Space is limited, so register today. 🔗 Register for the GIIN Impact Forum and Training: https://lnkd.in/gmixJTZY

Top scholars, including our Research Director and Deputy Director Åsa Persson, are pushing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to extend beyond 2030. “As we approach 2030, the SDGs should not be abandoned. They represent the world's most ambitious development agenda,” asserts Persson. In a comment published today in Nature Magazine, the authors urge UN member states ahead of the United Nations Summit of the Future in September, to adapt and extend the SDG framework to 2050, addressing challenges like AI and ensuring inclusive input from affected communities. Halfway to 2030, many SDGs are off track due to COVID and global conflicts. Updated goals with interim targets for 2030 and 2040, and final targets for 2050 are crucial. They highlight six priorities, including achieving net-zero carbon energy systems, reforming international finance, and incorporating emerging technologies like AI. 🔗 Read more about their recommendations and the proposed extension to 2050 in this paper: https://buff.ly/4et4cCI Co-authors, led by Kungliga Tekniska högskolan's Francesco Fuso Nerini: Mariana Mazzucato, Johan Rockström, director of PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Harro Van Asselt, Jim Hall, Stelvia Matos, Åsa Persson, Benjamin Sovacool, Ricardo Vinuesa, and Jeffrey Sachs. #SummitOfTheFuture #SDGs #AI #GlobalGoals #2030Agenda

NEW PUBLICATION: What happens to the #SDGs after 2030? Some ideas in this commentary published in Nature today.

Did you know that gender and climate issues are interconnected and that addressing these together can create powerful, synergistic effects? In a recent interview, Ryuta Kuniyoshi, a graduate from the University of Cambridge and participant in the IFC Impact Investing Challenge, shares his journey from research to real-world impact. Through master classes and feedback from IFC experts, Ryuta gained a deeper understanding of how tackling gender and climate challenges simultaneously can lead to significant positive outcomes. Read more about Ryuta's insights and experiences here. http://wrld.bg/QxlL50U5HAU #CareersWithImpact

For those interested in how to really create impact for research and career. Impact will lead to more realistic description about the sustainability in what we do. Nov 7 | 11 AM (CET) Link in first comment. #siliconcarbide #impact #transferofknowledge

TL;DR: We are looking for 12 young people to join our new research project on developing equity criteria to integrate into net zero standards! Applications close 14 October. Participants will be financially compensated for their time. 🎒 It’s almost back to school season here at Oxford! The town is buzzing with freshers and excitement, and I’m excited to get stuck into the start of the academic year for my sixth (?!) time at Oxford, for the third time as a research staff member (time flies!!!). 📄 In my last few years at Oxford Net Zero, we’ve been working to ensure that new or revised standards that provide guidance on how to ‘achieve net zero’ as an organisation are in line with best practice and high integrity. ⚖️ However, our recent mapping of 37 different voluntary initiatives, standards and campaigns working to provide guidance on net zero showed that very few of them can adequately handle the big question of how to get to net zero ‘equitably’. What does it mean to integrate equity and justice into net zero guidance, particularly when it’s geared towards corporates? This nebulous issue has remained under-examined, with only around 1/3rd of guidance docs even mentioning equity and justice. And when they do, it remains really high-level vague, and difficult to implement. The exclusion/under-development of guidance on equity and justice in net zero has huge implications on *how* we get to net zero (if we actually manage this feat, which we must!). 💥 Young people, who will be profoundly affected by how we achieve net zero, are traditionally excluded from the spaces in which standards are created, revised and implemented. These perspectives mean that existing patterns of power and influence are repeated across the net zero governance landscape. 👩💻 Our new research project, funded by ACCESS Advancing Capacity for Climate Environment Social Science and in partnership with our amazing colleagues at BSI, will convene and train young people to engage in the net zero standards landscape and co-create equity criteria for net zero. We will then advocate for the uptake of these criteria in the standards and net zero governance landscape! I couldn’t be more excited to start this project alongside my dream team Matilda Becker Kaya Axelsson. But we need motivated young people to join us to make it a reality! You will be compensated for your time working on this project. We are particularly lacking applications from LatAm & Asia right now! https://lnkd.in/dfvQicSV Copying to ask friends and colleagues to kindly repost! Shana Gallagher Emily Faint Agustín Ocaña Genaro Matías Godoy González Pooja Tilvawala Marie-Claire Graf Heeta Lakhani

A Sunday Thought (#84): ‘Decoupling’ - sorry, did you mean ‘Decolonizing?’ Working in the sustainability field for 35 years causes many déja-vus. ‘Decoupling’ is one of them. The term came up in the 90’s already, both by environmentalists that wanted absolute resource reduction for a better nature, and by economists that found another trick to genuinely go on with GDP growth as their mantra. Many other terms followed, trickle-down economics, CSR, Creating Shared Value (CSV), Circular Economy (CE) or the current winner of empty buzzwords, Net Zero. The thing is, they never worked at a scale needed for the transformation globally and all rely on continued economic growth! The UNEP Global Resource Outlook 2024 expects an increase of resource extraction of 60% by 2060, and recommends drastic changes on the supply side and the demand side. Let’s be clear: we are already too far into the polycrisis, into the domino effects of collapse and into the stress effects of these multiple crises for humans globally (surprise surprise: even in the Global North) that quick solutions are possible by policies or strategies. I suspect policy makers know that, but don’t acknowledge that in public! Companies position themselves with the most awkward excuses, like Exxon Mobile’s CEO Darren Woods this week when he pushed all responsibility for the climate issue to the users of fossil fuels: us! ‘How dare you?’ one would love to smash it back at him. But well, frankly the majority of us civilians are lame, have evenly awkward excuses, are uneducated or already in dire need of how to manage the next day, especially in the non-elite, non-compounded islands of affluence in the Global South. What the 60% resource extraction increase by 2060 really means is this: ongoing colonization on steroids! So the only two strategies to a new global balance are 1) the immediate stop of colonizing efforts by the Global North, and 2) the total shift in economic system logic to serving all life, and not the ‘privileged few.’ This must include a total renewal of the financial markets logic. So here’s my question: do you see that any of that is possible in an adequate amount of time, say by 2030, or 2035? No? Me neither. And that is why an economic system collapse is inevitable, it will come by force of nature, every year a bit more, spiraling downwards. It’s time to ‘decouple from decoupling’, as my colleague Bill Baue said recently. The narrative is dead for at least a decade, and it’s not saved by adding the demand side request on top of the supply-side. Not gonna happen at scale until after worst came to worst. The Exxon Mobile obfuscation trick pushing responsibility to the customers doesn’t really work here either! See the Exxon Mobil CEO obfuscation here: https://lnkd.in/eExCZAtx See the UNEP GRO 2024 Report here: https://lnkd.in/e2Z_RCuG

What is the role of for-profit organizations in the fight against climate change? While we know that we need new regulations and the work of not-for-profit organizations, the role of for-profit organizations is more difficult to understand. Often, they are seen as the problem rather than the solution. However, in our current economic system, there is no doubt that for-profit organizations must become a part of the solution. To provide insights into the role of for-profit firms' innovative efforts in tackling societal challenges, the JPIM Journal of Product Innovation Management just published a special issue edited by Prof. Shlomo Tarba, and colleagues. It contains many interesting papers, including a chapter of my dissertation that was already published online about a year ago. Ann-Kristin Zobel, Stephen Comello, and I investigated the collaboration of for-profit incumbents and startups in the clean energy space. The paper reveals factors that facilitate and hinder climate innovation: 1.      Technological innovation and collaboration between incumbent firms and startups in ecosystems have the potential to unlock a more renewable, modular, and decentralized energy future. 2.      Conflicts with incumbent business models in for-profit organizations and lacking ecosystem capabilities can slow down progress in climate innovation. Have a look at our paper for more details on ecosystem strategies for climate innovation (https://lnkd.in/eRxzABQ9) and the entire special issue (https://lnkd.in/eBhPpc6t). Reach out if you want to exchange ideas! 

Products and services from roughly 11% of publicly listed companies may contribute to climate adaptation and resilience, finds an analysis published on Thursday by the MSCI Sustainability Institute and the Global Adaptation & Resilience Investment Working Group (GARI) that used #AI to surface companies whose businesses span activities ranging from water-efficient agriculture and supply-chain resilience to weatherization of power infrastructure and buildings. Read more: http://ms.spr.ly/6047ciQh5 The analysis follows guidelines outlined in a framework for investment in climate adaptation and resilience developed by GARI for use by institutional investors across asset classes, companies, sectors and regions. The framework, developed with support from the Bezos Earth Fund and ClimateWorks Foundation, arrives as investors are increasingly turning their attention to growing demand for technologies and solutions designed help governments, businesses and consumers withstand the impacts of climate change.

Today the Brazilian media picked up the information about a #NASA’s report that Brazil could be uninhabitable in 50 years due to climate change effects. Although this is not exactly news, as a Brazilian reading this from many news outlets early in the day, it certainly shook me. We are arguably beyond the 1.5C target. The problem is complex and there is no single solution – but a coordinated approach to solutions is what would take us to a better path again. Tackling climate change requires a comprehensive approach to mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation. A lot is being done, but we are still behind of what is required for means of implementation, or in other words, financing. Although we often mention climate as the critical issue (and it is), this is strictly related to social and economic development as well: health, poverty, infrastructure – our safety nets and economic base…it is all connected. We need more capital flowing to solutions in all those areas as a prerequisite for change. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), to achieve the #SDGs by 2030 (as a guiding light for change), it is required USD3.3-4.5 trillion per year investment to transition to a new economic matrix. These resources need to come from different sources, but particularly from the private sector. I've worked for years in the #ODA and #philanthropic markets, and we make a herculean effort to fund and to promote cutting-edge solutions for development, mostly de-risking projects and providing proofs of concept. However, governments and NGOs simply cannot provide all the resources needed. Investment flows from the private sector (which is where the bulk of the money is) also need to take this matter seriously and ensure that the projects funded do not set us back, while taking more chances to scale up the de-risked projects. Today there are financial products and financing structures with attractive returns that can make it happen, but they need to grow and become mainstream. Earlier this year I worked on this topic at the Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI) and my key take away is that impact/sustainable investments need to have more #reliant, #resilient and #responsible products that are traceable and underpinned by confident #impactmonitoringandmeasurement frameworks (#IMM). We need to make the best use of what we know and what works to be able to confidently say where and how capital deployed affects communities and the environment. I wrote a series of three blog posts published by #SIRI about this topic, which by no means intend to give all answers to the problem but rather hopefully to be good food for thought in the right direction: https://lnkd.in/eCSyfxtx https://lnkd.in/eugddzqt https://lnkd.in/eBrs4uQm