Four Processual Shorts on the Subject of ESG

 

[February 17, 2011] "Hanging out with the boys at the Bob." All were pro-amateur skateboarders. Over the past twelve years since this photo was taken, one became a loving and endearing missionary to the Thai people; one an accomplished artist in tiling, mosaics, painting, and leather work; and the last, my most special relationship, became my son-in-law and husband to my daughter, and father to my grandson. He took his passion for music and skateboarding and turned it into an industry for the Gen-YZ's of the world and then to everyone everywhere when building accessible, three-wheel recombinant trikes for recreational fun, the infirmed, the aged, and health. - res

Eco-Civ Short #1/4

Building ecological societies one ESG element at a time. Integrating nature, people, and ethical policies of sustainability, green and blue infrastructures, technologies, and global interaction together in improving streams of biotic value, functional generation and societal equality.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Eco-Civ Short #2/4

I speak to building processual "ecological societies" all the time. ESG is an approximation of this idea at this time... it brings a mixture of community-first eco-business with a high degree of competition utilizing biotic sustainability modeling in its business ethics. Which is why I include the Forbes, Fortune, and WSJ articles to FB every now and then re ESG along with my own articles on building process-relational societies (as versus "biblical" kingdom communities of oppression and domination).

Businesses will not be moving backwards into past non-ESG paradigms because ESG is much more than sustainability models now including green and blue community-based infrastructures, tech business integration, and community standards of equality.

Those businesses which cannot change their commercial and industrial modelling plans re environmental, societal and local policy impact, make for poorer investment models for investors wishing improvement across a wide scale of relief.

Hence, when businesses are being overlooked in outside funding it is because their older business models are not implementing themselves as environmental caretakers, employer-employee caretakers, or local societal policies of community caretake.

Such business models are no longer competitive and will show a poorer return on funds compared to those business competitors which have worked ESG into their programs for the good of the environment, society, and dealings with one another.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Eco-Civ Short #3/4

Purposely misunderstanding ESG is no defense for taking right actions towards the environment, people, and ethics in government.

• EEEE - Refusing to stop polluting and toxifying biotic and human communities shows willful disregard to the welfare of a highly integrated community.

• SSSS - Refusing to consider employment conditions and welfare of your workers again promotes money over value.

• GGGG - And allowing corruption, lies, and false dealing between elected representatives and the public means removal from office (hopefully immediately re criminal prosecutiins). 

In sum, THIS IS WHAT ESG MEANS... my word for ESG remains the same, socially responsible "ecological societies, communities, and global civilizations".  We live in processual worlds where processual caretake must be a part of our investment into one another and the world at large.

EXCERPT from Wikipedia

1. EEEEnvironmental aspect: Data is reported on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
2. SSSSocial aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises, and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
3. GGGGovernance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing bribery, corruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensation, cybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

Environmental, social, and corporate governance

• 
  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is a framework designed to be embedded into an organization's strategy that considers the needs and ways in which to generate value for all of organizational stakeholders (such as employees, customers and suppliers and financiers).

ESG corporate reporting can be used by stakeholders to assess the material sustainability-related risks and opportunities relevant to an organization. Investors may also use ESG data beyond assessing material risks to the organization in their evaluation of enterprise value, specifically by designing models based on assumptions that the identification, assessment and management of sustainability-related risks and opportunities in respect to all organizational stakeholders leads to higher long-term risk-adjusted return.^[1] Organizational stakeholders include but not limited to customers, suppliers, employees, leadership, and the environment.^[2]

Since 2020, there has been accelerating pressure from the United Nations to overlay ESG data with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), based on their work, which began in the 1980s.^[3]

The term ESG was popularly used first in a 2004 report titled "Who Cares Wins", which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of UN.^[4] In less than 20 years, the ESG movement has grown from a corporate social responsibility initiative launched by the United Nations into a global phenomenon representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management.^[5] In the year 2019 alone, capital totaling US$17.67 billion flowed into ESG-linked products, an almost 525 percent increase from 2015, according to Morningstar, Inc.^[6] Critics claim ESG linked-products have not had and are unlikely to have the intended impact of raising the cost of capital for polluting firms,^[7] and have accused the movement of greenwashing.^[8]

Dimensions

1. Environmental aspect: Data is reported on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, energy efficiency and water management.
2. Social aspect: Data is reported on employee safety and health, working conditions, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and conflicts and humanitarian crises,^[9] and is relevant in risk and return assessments directly through results in enhancing (or destroying) customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
3. Governance aspect: Data is reported on corporate governance such as preventing bribery, corruption, Diversity of Board of Directors, executive compensation, cybersecurity and privacy practices, and management structure.

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Eco-Civ Short #4/4

Ideological politics aside American business is committed to ESG as is global business. The wording, like CRT, is purposely misunderstood by MAGA-heads... but then again ideology serves no man or woman except those looking to gain power rather than doing right.

R.E Slater

February 17, 2023

EXCERPT

"Taking care of the communities you operate in helps ensure those communities will allow you to operate in the future. Recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce is essential to acquiring the best talent in a labor-constrained world. And focusing on how your company can meaningfully contribute to the climate transition is a way to create value in a business world that is clearly committed to that transition. In short, companies need to do a better job making it clear this is not about politics; it’s about good, long-term business."

Alan Murray, Editor of Fortune Magazine

Memo Link

Good morning.

Do deficits matter?

I have spent much of my career in the vicinity of that question, having covered U.S. fiscal policy as a cub reporter in the 1980s. That’s when supply-side Republicans dropped their concerns about deficits to push tax cuts as a counter to Democrats who had already abandoned deficit concerns to push spending increases. A stalwart but steadily shrinking group of people continued to beat the deficit drum, arguing deficit spending would “crowd out” private investment. But the new millennium obliterated that argument, too, by making capital plentiful and free. “Crowding out” went the way of the Walkman. 

Well, suddenly, they’re back. Deficits, that is. I’m not sure the last time a deficit story led the New York Times, but yesterday morning, it did. The story quoted new Congressional Budget Office projections showing a combination of pandemic-era spending, aging boomers and rising interest rates would add $19 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade—$3 trillion more than previously forecast. Total debt outstanding will equal the total economic output of the U.S. economy next year and reach 118% of GDP in 2033.

Meanwhile, “crowding out” has taken on new meaning. It’s not that deficits might crowd out private investment—the case for that remains weak, given inflation-adjusted interest rates that are still close to zero. Rather, the new numbers show that as nominal rates rise, servicing the debt will rise faster than tax income, eating up more and more of the federal budget, and leaving less money to address real needs.  

So what’s to be done? With a vibrant economy and a functioning federal government, the problem is solvable. The Committee for Economic Development, which is part of The Conference Board, laid out a reasonable road map earlier this week, which you can explore here. (Full disclosure: My wife is president of CED.) But while the U.S. has a vibrant economy, it still lacks a functioning government. Deficit reduction involves shared sacrifice, and that has to be done on a bipartisan basis. Don’t hold your breath.

More news below. And don’t get too excited about the uptick in home prices at the start of this year. Fortune’s Lance Lambert says they are headed south again.

Alan Murray

@alansmurray

alan.murray@fortune.com

Sustainable Energy Using Hydrogen

Blending public and private capital can make hydrogen projects bankable
and commercially viable. | Superestrella, Shutterstock

Green Hydrogen:

A key investment for the energy transition

article link

by Michael Kobina Kane & Stephanie Gil

June 23, 2022

Produced by using renewably generated electricity that splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, green hydrogen holds significant promise to help meet global energy demand while contributing to climate action goals.

The demand for hydrogen reached an estimated 87 million metric tons (MT) in 2020, and is expected to grow to 500–680 million MT by 2050. From 2020 to 2021, the hydrogen production market was valued at $130 billion and is estimated to grow up to 9.2% per year through 2030. But there’s a catch: over 95% of current hydrogen production is fossil-fuel based, very little of it is “green”. Today, 6% of global natural gas and 2% of global coal go into hydrogen production.

Nevertheless, green hydrogen production technologies are seeing a renewed wave of interest. This is because the possible uses for hydrogen are expanding across multiple sectors including power generation, manufacturing processes in industries such as steelmaking and cement production, fuel cells for electric vehicles, heavy transport such as shipping, green ammonia production for fertilizers, cleaning products, refrigeration, and electricity grid stabilization.

Moreover, falling renewable energy prices—coupled with the dwindling cost of electrolyzers and increased efficiency due to technology improvements—have increased the commercial viability of green hydrogen production. The figure below shows the forecast of the global range of levelized cost of hydrogen production for large projects through 2050.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, if these costs continue to fall, green hydrogen could be produced for $0.70 – $1.60 per kg in most parts of the world by 2050, a price competitive with natural gas. NEL, the world’s largest producer and manufacturer of electrolyzers, believes that green hydrogen production cost parity (or even superiority) with fossil fuels could be achieved as early as 2025.

How do we structure a bankable green hydrogen project?

Given this significant growth in demand, the scale of input energy required (22,000 TWh of green electricity to produce 500 million tons of green hydrogen per year), and the parallels of the hydrogen value chain to that of the fossil fuel value chain (with upstream, midstream, and downstream elements), the green hydrogen industry should attract investments.

Yet, to date, only a few green hydrogen projects have been successfully brought to market. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), most green hydrogen projects under construction and in operation are at the pre-commercial phase with limited electrolyzer capacity—typically less than 50 MW. While some proposed plants are of 100 MW capacity or more, they remain small compared to fossil fuel alternatives. In addition, green hydrogen projects present other peculiarities and risks that challenge traditional project finance: nescience of the technology; segmentation of energy input; production and transformation; storage; and transportation to end-users.

At the recent Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) Advisory Council Meeting, panelists agreed that blending public and private capital can make hydrogen projects bankable and commercially viable, but certain factors need to be considered. 

One way to position these projects for success is to locate renewable energy production and hydrogen production facilities together so they can be better integrated. This was the approach in Puertollano, Spain, home to both a 100 MW solar farm and Europe’s largest green hydrogen facility for industrial use.

Governments also need to create policy and regulatory frameworks that incentivize investments. Building capacity and providing technical assistance for governments, especially in emerging markets and developing economies, is key to developing these regulations and ensuring their enforcement and compliance. Further, there is need for a globally agreed definition of green hydrogen and methods to guarantee and certify the origin of the fuel. Also critical, especially in light of the Just Transition agenda, is the need to help workers develop the skills they need for this emerging industry.

How is the World Bank Group helping?

The World Bank Group is working with developing countries to accelerate green hydrogen projects from pilot stage to industrial scale.  To achieve this, we provide technical assistance to foster enabling policy, regulatory, and fiscal frameworks; build innovative financing that catalyzes concessional and climate finance resources; integrate risk mitigation and credit enhancement instruments to mobilize private capital; and transfer knowledge to develop local green jobs to support a just transition.

One example of our work is the World’s Bank program in the Latin America and Caribbean region, which has the cleanest energy mix globally and abundant, low-cost renewable energy potential. In countries such as Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil, the World Bank Group is taking multiple actions to establish green hydrogen as a fuel and to promote the use of green hydrogen as energy storage.  Specifically, we are working to design green hydrogen financing facilities, develop mechanisms to certify green hydrogen along the value chain, and establish carbon pricing through the Partnership for Market Readiness. Our program in the region is fully aligned with the countries’ visions to leverage green hydrogen as means to decarbonize their economies and facilitate a just energy transition. Ultimately, making these changes would increase competitiveness, open new markets, create local green jobs, and attract even more private sector investment—contributing to green, resilient, and inclusive growth.

Moving forward

The few pioneering projects that have reached successful commercial and financial close and have transitioned to operation have tested the financing parameters and established bankable project structures and documentation packages that can be referenced by commercial-scale projects under preparation across the globe. The GIF is uniquely positioned to provide technical assistance and transaction advisory services to support governments in EMDEs as they look to develop green hydrogen projects as part of their energy transition objectives.

Related Posts

• Green Hydrogen: A solution for Chile's climate emergency and economic recovery

• Mind the gap: Time to rethink infrastructure finance

• Blended finance can catalyze renewable energy investments in low-income countries

• Sloughing off Earth Day despair with resources to make climate-smart infrastructure a reality

• GIF: making climate-smart infrastructure bankable

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At MITEI’s 2022 Spring Symposium, the “Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale” panel laid out existing and planned efforts to produce hydrogen at scale to help achieve a decarbonized energy system. | Credits:Photo: Kelley Travers

Making hydrogen power a reality

article link

by Calvin Hennick | MIT Energy Initiative

June 27, 2022

Hydrogen fuel has long been seen as a potentially key component of a carbon-neutral future. At the 2022 MIT Energy Initiative Spring Symposium, industry experts describe efforts to produce it at scale.

For decades, government and industry have looked to hydrogen as a potentially game-changing tool in the quest for clean energy. As far back as the early days of the Clinton administration, energy sector observers and public policy experts have extolled the virtues of hydrogen — to the point that some people have joked that hydrogen is the energy of the future, “and always will be.”

Even as wind and solar power have become commonplace in recent years, hydrogen has been held back by high costs and other challenges. But the fuel may finally be poised to have its moment. At the MIT Energy Initiative Spring Symposium — entitled “Hydrogen’s role in a decarbonized energy system” — experts discussed hydrogen production routes, hydrogen consumption markets, the path to a robust hydrogen infrastructure, and policy changes needed to achieve a “hydrogen future.”

During one panel, “Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale,” four experts laid out existing and planned efforts to leverage hydrogen for decarbonization.

“The race is on”

Huyen N. Dinh, a senior scientist and group manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is the director of HydroGEN, a consortium of several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories that accelerates research and development of innovative and advanced water splitting materials and technologies for clean, sustainable, and low-cost hydrogen production.

For the past 14 years, Dinh has worked on fuel cells and hydrogen production for NREL. “We think that the 2020s is the decade of hydrogen,” she said. Dinh believes that the energy carrier is poised to come into its own over the next few years, pointing to several domestic and international activities surrounding the fuel and citing a Hydrogen Council report that projected the future impacts of hydrogen — including 30 million jobs and $2.5 trillion in global revenue by 2050.

“Now is the time for hydrogen, and the global race is on,” she said.

Dinh also explained the parameters of the Hydrogen Shot — the first of the DOE’s “Energy Earthshots” aimed at accelerating breakthroughs for affordable and reliable clean energy solutions. Hydrogen fuel currently costs around $5 per kilogram to produce, and the Hydrogen Shot’s stated goal is to bring that down by 80 percent to $1 per kilogram within a decade.

The Hydrogen Shot will be facilitated by $9.5 billion in funding for at least four clean hydrogen hubs located in different parts of the United States, as well as extensive research and development, manufacturing, and recycling from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure law. Still, Dinh noted that it took more than 40 years for solar and wind power to become cost competitive, and now industry, government, national lab, and academic leaders are hoping to achieve similar reductions in hydrogen fuel costs over a much shorter time frame. In the near term, she said, stakeholders will need to improve the efficiency, durability, and affordability of hydrogen production through electrolysis (using electricity to split water) using today’s renewable and nuclear power sources. Over the long term, the focus may shift to splitting water more directly through heat or solar energy, she said.

“The time frame is short, the competition is intense, and a coordinated effort is critical for domestic competitiveness,” Dinh said.

Hydrogen across continents

Wambui Mutoru, principal engineer for international commercial development, exploration, and production international at the Norwegian global energy company Equinor, said that hydrogen is an important component in the company’s ambitions to be carbon-neutral by 2050. The company, in collaboration with partners, has several hydrogen projects in the works, and Mutoru laid out the company’s Hydrogen to Humber project in Northern England. Currently, the Humber region emits more carbon dioxide than any other industrial cluster in the United Kingdom — 50 percent more, in fact, than the next-largest carbon emitter.

“The ambition here is for us to deploy the world’s first at-scale hydrogen value chain to decarbonize the Humber industrial cluster,” Mutoru said.

The project consists of three components: a clean hydrogen production facility, an onshore hydrogen and carbon dioxide transmission network, and offshore carbon dioxide transportation and storage operations. Mutoru highlighted the importance of carbon capture and storage in hydrogen production. Equinor, she said, has captured and sequestered carbon offshore for more than 25 years, storing more than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide during that time.

Mutoru also touched on Equinor’s efforts to build a decarbonized energy hub in the Appalachian region of the United States, covering territory in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. By 2040, she said, the company's ambition is to produce about 1.5 million tons of clean hydrogen per year in the region — roughly equivalent to 6.8 gigawatts of electricity — while also storing 30 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Mutoru acknowledged that the biggest challenge facing potential hydrogen producers is the current lack of viable business models. “Resolving that challenge requires cross-industry collaboration, and supportive policy frameworks so that the market for hydrogen can be built and sustained over the long term,” she said.

Confronting barriers

Gretchen Baier, executive external strategy and communications leader for Dow, noted that the company already produces hydrogen in multiple ways. For one, Dow operates the world’s largest ethane cracker, in Texas. An ethane cracker heats ethane to break apart molecular bonds to form ethylene, with hydrogen one of the byproducts of the process. Also, Baier showed a slide of the 1891 patent for the electrolysis of brine water, which also produces hydrogen. The company still engages in this practice, but Dow does not have an effective way of utilizing the resulting hydrogen for their own fuel.

“Just take a moment to think about that,” Baier said. “We’ve been talking about hydrogen production and the cost of it, and this is basically free hydrogen. And it’s still too much of a barrier to somewhat recycle that and use it for ourselves. The environment is clearly changing, and we do have plans for that, but I think that kind of sets some of the challenges that face industry here.”

However, Baier said, hydrogen is expected to play a significant role in Dow’s future as the company attempts to decarbonize by 2050. The company, she said, plans to optimize hydrogen allocation and production, retrofit turbines for hydrogen fueling, and purchase clean hydrogen. By 2040, Dow expects more than 60 percent of its sites to be hydrogen-ready.

Baier noted that hydrogen fuel is not a “panacea,” but rather one among many potential contributors as industry attempts to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions in the coming decades. “Hydrogen has an important role, but it’s not the only answer,” she said.

“This is real”

Colleen Wright is vice president of corporate strategy for Constellation, which recently separated from Exelon Corporation. (Exelon now owns the former company’s regulated utilities, such as Commonwealth Edison and Baltimore Gas and Electric, while Constellation owns the competitive generation and supply portions of the business.) Wright stressed the advantages of nuclear power in hydrogen production, which she said include superior economics, low barriers to implementation, and scalability.

“A quarter of emissions in the world are currently from hard-to-decarbonize sectors — the industrial sector, steel making, heavy-duty transportation, aviation,” she said. “These are really challenging decarbonization sectors, and as we continue to expand and electrify, we’re going to need more supply. We’re also going to need to produce clean hydrogen using emissions-free power.”

“The scale of nuclear power plants is uniquely suited to be able to scale hydrogen production,” Wright added. She mentioned Constellation’s Nine Mile Point site in the State of New York, which received a DOE grant for a pilot program that will see a proton exchange membrane electrolyzer installed at the site.

“We’re very excited to see hydrogen go from a [research and development] conversation to a commercial conversation,” she said. “We’ve been calling it a little bit of a ‘middle-school dance.’ Everybody is standing around the circle, waiting to see who’s willing to put something at stake. But this is real. We’re not dancing around the edges. There are a lot of people who are big players, who are willing to put skin in the game today.”

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SUSTAINABLE ENERGY [PROJECTS]

CNBC article link

The race to make green hydrogen competitive is on. And

Europe is building industrial-scale electrolyzers to help

by Anmar Frangoul

June 24, 2022

• Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.

• Siemens Energy and Air Liquide have announced plans to focus on the production of “industrial scale renewable hydrogen electrolyzers in Europe.”

• A growing number of multinational firms are attempting to lay down a marker in the green hydrogen sector.

Siemens Energy and Air Liquide have announced plans to set up a joint venture focused on the production of “industrial scale renewable hydrogen electrolyzers in Europe.”

The move, announced on Thursday, represents the latest attempt to find a way to drive “renewable” or “green” hydrogen production costs down and make the sector competitive.

The establishment of the joint venture — Siemens Energy will have a 74.9% stake, while Air Liquide will hold 25.1% — is subject to approval from authorities.

If all goes to plan, its headquarters will be in Berlin, with a facility producing electrolysis modules, or stacks, also based there.

Plans for electrolyzer production in the German capital had been previously announced. Manufacturing is set to begin in 2023, with a yearly production capacity of 3 gigawatts reached in 2025.

The European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, has previously said it wants 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzers to be installed in the EU in 2030.

In Feb. 2021, Siemens Energy and Air Liquide announced plans related to the development of “a large scale electrolyzer partnership.”

Siemens Energy shares, year-to-date

Described by the International Energy Agency as a “versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.

It can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it “green” or “renewable” hydrogen. Today, the vast majority of hydrogen generation is based on fossil fuels.

In Oct. 2021, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch spoke of the challenges facing the green hydrogen sector. On Thursday, he stressed the importance of scale and collaboration going forward.

“To make green hydrogen competitive, we need serially produced, low-cost, scalable electrolyzers,” Bruch said in a statement. “We also need strong partnerships,” Bruch added.

Air Liquide CEO François Jackow described the creation of the joint venture as “major step towards the emergence of a leading European renewable and low-carbon hydrogen ecosystem.”

Siemens Energy and Air Liquide’s plan for a joint venture represents the latest attempt by multinational firms to lay down a marker in the green hydrogen sector.

Just last week, oil and gas supermajor BP said it had agreed to take a 40.5% equity stake in the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, a vast project planned for Australia.

In a statement, BP said it would become the operator of the development, adding that it had “the potential to be one of the largest renewables and green hydrogen hubs in the world.”

In Dec. 2021, Iberdrola and H2 Green Steel said they would partner and develop a 2.3 billion euro (around $2.42 billion) project centered around a green hydrogen facility with an electrolysis capacity of 1 gigawatt.

Bill Gates' Summer Reading List, 2022

5 great books for the summer

By Bill Gates|

June 06, 2022 3 minute read

I loved all of them and hope you’ll find something you enjoy too.

As I was putting together my list of suggested reading for the summer, I realized that the topics they cover sound pretty heavy for vacation reading. There are books here about gender equality, political polarization, climate change, and the hard truth that life never goes the way young people think it will. It does not exactly sound like the stuff of beach reads.

But none of the five books below feel heavy (even though, at nearly 600 pages, The Lincoln Highway is literally weighty). Each of the writers—three novelists, a journalist, and a scientist—was able to take a meaty subject and make it compelling without sacrificing any complexity.

I loved all five of these books and hope you find something here you’ll enjoy too. And feel free to share some of your favorite recent reads in the comments section below.

The Power, by Naomi Alderman. I’m glad that I followed my older daughter’s recommendation and read this novel. It cleverly uses a single idea—what if all the women in the world suddenly gained the power to produce deadly electric shocks from their bodies?—to explore gender roles and gender equality. Reading The Power, I gained a stronger and more visceral sense of the abuse and injustice many women experience today. And I expanded my appreciation for the people who work on these issues in the U.S. and around the world.

Why We’re Polarized, by Ezra Klein. I’m generally optimistic about the future, but one thing that dampens my outlook a bit is the increasing polarization in America, especially when it comes to politics. In this insightful book, Klein argues persuasively that the cause of this split is identity—the human instinct to let our group identities guide our decision making. The book is fundamentally about American politics, but it’s also a fascinating look at human psychology.

The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles. I put Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow on my summer books list back in 2019, but I liked this follow-up novel even more. Set in 1954, it’s about two brothers who are trying to drive from Nebraska to California to find their mother; their trip is thrown way off-course by a volatile teenager from the older brother’s past. Towles takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys and seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. When I was promoting my book on climate change last year, a number of people told me I should read this novel, because it dramatized many of the issues I had written about. I’m glad I picked it up, because it’s terrific. It’s so complex that it’s hard to summarize, but Robinson presents a stimulating and engaging story, spanning decades and continents, packed with fascinating ideas and people.

How the World Really Works, by Vaclav Smil. Another masterpiece from one of my favorite authors. Unlike most of Vaclav’s books, which read like textbooks and go super-deep on one topic, this one is written for a general audience and gives an overview of the main areas of his expertise. If you want a brief but thorough education in numeric thinking about many of the fundamental forces that shape human life, this is the book to read. It’s a tour de force. Bonus: You can download a free chapter from How the World Really Works on the full review page.

Bill Gates - 2021 Glasgow COP26 Review

Three major shifts in the climate conversation

Nov 8, 2021

In Glasgow, I saw three big shifts

in the climate conversation

by Bill Gates | November 8, 2021

A lot has changed in the past six years.

Last week I spent three fantastic days at the global climate summit (known as COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. My main impression is how much things have changed since the last summit, back in 2015—and I don’t mean because of COVID. The climate conversation has shifted dramatically, and for the better.

One big shift is that clean-energy innovation is higher on the agenda than ever. The world needs to get to zero carbon emissions by 2050. As I argue in the book I published this year, accomplishing that will require a green Industrial Revolution in which we decarbonize virtually the entire physical economy: how we make things, generate electricity, move around, grow food, and cool and heat buildings. The world already has some of the tools we’ll need to do that, but we need a huge number of new inventions too.

So at an event like this, one way I measure progress is by the way people are thinking about what it’ll take to reach zero emissions. Do they think we already have all the tools we need to get there? Or is there a nuanced view of the complexity of this problem, and the need for new, affordable clean technology that helps people in low- and middle-income countries raise their standard of living without making climate change worse?

Six years ago, there were more people on the we-have-what-we-need side than on the innovation side. This year, though, innovation was literally on center stage. One session of the World Leaders Summit, where I got to speak, was exclusively about developing and deploying clean technologies faster.

I also helped launch the Net Zero World Initiative, a commitment from the U.S. government to help other countries get to zero by providing funding and—even more important—access to experts throughout the government, including the top minds at America’s world-class national laboratories. These countries will get support with planning the transition to a green economy, piloting new technologies, working with investors, and more.

The second major shift is that the private sector is now playing a central role alongside governments and nonprofits. In Glasgow, I met with leaders in various industries that need to be part of the transition—including shipping, mining, and financial services—who had practical plans to decarbonize and to support innovation. I saw CEOs of international banks really engaging with these issues, whereas many of them wouldn’t even have shown up a few years ago. (It made me wish we could get the same kind of turnout and excitement for conferences on global health!)

I announced that three new partners—Citi, the IKEA Foundation, and State Farm—will be working with Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a program designed to get the most promising climate technologies to scale much faster than would happen naturally. They’re joining the first round of seven partners we announced in September. It’s amazing to see how much momentum Catalyst has generated in just a few months.

I was also honored to join President Biden and his climate envoy, John Kerry, to announce that Breakthrough Energy will be the primary implementation partner for the First Movers Coalition. It’s a new initiative from the U.S. State Department and the World Economic Forum that will boost demand for emerging climate solutions in some of the sectors where it’ll be especially hard to eliminate emissions: aviation, concrete and steel production, shipping, and more.

The third shift I’m seeing is that there’s even more visibility for climate adaptation. The worst tragedy of rising temperatures is that they will do the most harm to the people who have done the least to cause them. And if we don’t help people in low- and middle-income countries thrive despite the warming that is already under way, the world will lose the fight against extreme poverty.

So it was great to hear President Biden and other leaders repeatedly raising the importance of adaptation. I got to join the president, along with officials from the United Arab Emirates, to launch a program called Agricultural Innovation Mission for Climate. It’s designed to focus some of the world’s innovative IQ on ways to help the poorest people adapt, such as new varieties of crops that can withstand more droughts and floods. More than 30 other countries, as well as dozens of companies and nonprofits (including the Gates Foundation), are already supporting it.

As part of that effort, I joined a coalition of donors that pledged more than half a billion dollars to support the CGIAR’s work to advance climate-smart innovations for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Some people look at the problems that still need to be solved and see the glass as half-empty. I don’t share that view, but this is what I would tell anyone who does: The glass is being filled up faster than ever. If we keep this up—if the world puts even more effort into innovations that reduce the cost of getting to zero and help the poorest people adapt to climate change—then we’ll be able to look back on this summit as an important milestone in avoiding a climate disaster.