Decarbonise or Destabilise? Navigating the Climate Crossroads

Welcome to the unDavos Summit - A community-organized series of interactive panels, talks, and networking taking place in Davos, Switzerland - and online - in parallel to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 20-24 Jan 2025. Our mission is threefold: 

• Democratizing Davos: We open the doors to diverse voices and ideas, breaking down traditional barriers to participation. 
• Humanizing Davos: We foster genuine, relationship-driven connections that go beyond transactional networking. 
• Bringing Action to Davos: We turn meaningful discussions into tangible, real-world solutions.

Join us for the "Decarbonise or Destabilise? Navigating the Climate Crossroads" panel discussion, where we confront the pressing challenges of climate change head-on. As the urgency for rapid decarbonisation escalates, this session will highlight innovative technologies and actionable strategies to create a sustainable future. Engage with industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and financiers who are paving the way for climate-positive impacts and exploring new pathways to prevent irreversible planetary tipping points. With the stakes at an all-time high, the time to act is now!

Moderated by Cristian Citu, CEO & Co-Founder of Qurator.com, our esteemed panelists include:

- Scott Wharton, CEO of Tandem PV: Leading a disruptive solar panel company, Scott brings a wealth of experience in driving significant growth in the tech industry.
  
- Dr. Ari Aaltonen, CEO of Efides AG: A fintech leader and AI expert, Ari focuses on ESG impact and innovative finance solutions to tackle food security and waste.

- Sarah Antor, Managing Partner at Helena Capital: With three decades of experience in banking and tech, Sarah is a champion for female founders and international investment.

- Jennifer Turliuk, Practice Leader, Climate and Energy AI at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship: A technologist and climate tech investor, Jennifer develops AI tools for advancing climate innovation.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insights and participate in a crucial conversation about the paths we must take for a sustainable future. 

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Transcript

Decarbonise or Destabilise - Navigating the Climate Crossroads - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-omYHtyU8Mg

Transcript:
(00:01) [Music] good morning everyone congratulations for being here I know uh you know by this time of the of the Davos week it's uh you know we probably had some late nights somewhere so um thank you for the motivation um we have this panel on decarbonization um my name is Christian situ I actually used to come to Davos while working for World economic forum and I was kind of stuck in the Congress Center and always wondering you know what's happening in the rest of Davos and last year it was the first time I had a pleasure to come as an
(00:38) entrepreneur um I'll tell you more about uh my focus but first let's do some quick intros so Scott go my name is Scott Wharton I'm a Serial entrepreneur doing my fifth startup scalop in a row right now I'm working on uh a Next Generation solar panel that's going to be 30 to 40% more efficient better and cheaper uh not made in China so you can make it um with secure supply chain thanks hi uh super happy to be here um my name is Sarah Anor I'm based in Munich uh and I am raising a firsttime fund 200 million series B fund
(01:18) to invest in uh Global Supply Chain Technologies in particular we want to focus on making sure that those are uh have decarbonization Technologies embedded in them thank you uh my name is Ari alen uh my background is coming from a big corporates working for Oracle cognizant and cap gemin um now I've been a Serial a Serial entrepreneur and um we recently launched company called Ides which is uh digitalizing commodity trade Finance really helping the banks to finance more food food trades as well as the other commodity transactions which has a
(01:55) significant impact to the carbon thanks hi everyone thanks so much for coming my name is Jennifer turck and I'm practice leader of climate and energy AI at the Martin trust Center for MIT entrepreneurship at Mi so I build research and instruct on AI for climate and Energy Solutions and before this I was a climate Tech Venture investor and before that I was an entrepreneur so excited to be here and chat with you all amazing thanks for that intro and I'm also excited every time I have the chance to sit on a panel with such
(02:28) diverse backgrounds as well as such different geographies so before I'll start addressing questions to to my fellow panelist let me tell you a little bit you know how I've ended up in in this position to to talk about decarbonization because I haven't been a sustainability professional actually I was mentioning while I was working for World economic Forum um I was doing completely different stuff I was leading a portfolio on digital Innovation um I even had a community on Quantum Computing uh but at the time you know my
(02:55) only exposure to climate change to sustainability to decarbonization was through the mainstream media I was you know scrolling through the headlines uh but obviously we has always focused quite a lot on climate change and I had many colleagues at the time doing very deep work in climate change climate adaptation so being exposed to all those facts I was like troubled I was like okay I started looking at the big equation right we put 38 billion tons of CO2 per year in the atmosphere and um the many unknowns of this equation
(03:25) didn't didn't sound promising at all so I said um okay I this strongly resonates with me and I thought I will try to leverage my my you know digital Innovation profile and uh try to be part of this movement uh so together with two other colleagues from World economic Forum one expert in decarbonization one expert in machine learning and AI uh we created uh this startup called curator.
(04:00) io or you can do decarbonization with the human nii I guess human ni it's the it's the faster equation um so while the negative things happening with the planet were the things that triggered me to to jump on this uh train um we should always remember there are many positive things happening that we should celebrate um and actually you know I think this is an important mindset for all of us if we are involved in sustainability or if we're simply you know checking the news it's very easy to get depressed right I mean La fires
(04:30) floods here and there you know the numbers are not looking great we already passed 1.5 degrees uh but there's a lot of good stuff happening and continues to happen I mean China it's hitting its decarbonization targets ahead of schedule uh UK stopped using coal the you know some of the biggest polluting countries like China and India the per person CO2 emission has already picked and has already picked at much smaller numbers like China it's like five tons per person India one ton compared to for instance Europe UK was 14 tons CO2 uh
(05:03) India you know with its giant train networks has already 100% electrified also so there is a lot of good stuff to celebrate um it's also you know one one recommendation I'll give you right now it was a book which kind of you know put me in the right mindset when it comes to being climate depressed or you know being based on facts first question how many of you have read factfulness by uh Hans the gentleman from Sweden factfulness no Okay add it to your list it's basically he takes the facts about the world and to make sure you know that
(05:33) we we don't judge the planet based on headlines but we judge it based on facts and um do you know our world in data you came across yeah so there is this uh this lady who works there and she wrote a book inspired by by factfulness but she's focusing on facts from climate change she was actually a climate environment scientist quite depressed and then she started looking at the facts and realize you know what there's a lot of good stuff going on so if there's one thing you know I would like you to to to live with it it's
(06:01) definitely try to follow the facts there's a lot of stuff going on but let me start with Jennifer because Jennifer you have a kind of a holistic uh view into this can you can you give us you know from your point of view you know MIT based you're also you know involved in a lot of projects it's not just academic research right so you're also bringing helping bringing to Market Solutions what's your um what's your evaluation of the current status quo of the decarbonization so I think my evaluation of the current status quo is is trying
(06:31) to be optimistic um I would say that I went to cop 29 this year and while it was clear to me that individual countries have made a big difference in terms of REM reducing their emissions um as a society we unfortunately have a hockey stick curve I'm a Canadian so I like to use hockey analogies we have a hockey stick curve of the worst kind in terms of emissions where they just continue to increase in an unabated manner so we need to do everything we can from a technological innovation standpoint a policy standpoint investment standpoint
(07:08) and so much more in order to get us back on a path towards our climate goals can you do you have a point of view on like the the technologies that are enabling most of decarbonization today well I think you know most of the emissions that we have today come from energy um and it's about 62 to 70% depending on various estimates and that happens some of you may already know this but just as a refresher for those who don't uh that comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and those non-renewable energy sources make up
(07:48) around 80% of the energy mix so only 20% is Renewables like solar or wind so we need to increase the amount of Renewables that we have in order to reduce the emissions associated with energy awesome well since you mentioned Renewables and solar we have Scott over here Scott can you give the audience a view on the past of the solar industry the present and the future uh yes I I think there are some huge changes happening recently and I'm not talking about the what happened in Washington I'm talking about more what's
(08:22) happening in solar because there going to be a lot of people talking about that so I think what most people don't know is that solar has gone down in next last 10 years 90% % in cost it's now the lowest cost um solution for energy and uh I double checked this morning just to look it up so in the US in 20124 the latest statistics uh 80% of all new energy came from solar and batteries so about 60% was solar 20% batteries and another 13% for wind so it's almost in single digits now any new capacity happening with fossil fuels and nuclear
(08:54) but I looked it up just to check to compare it with China and said all right that's the us maybe we're not growing as fast what's happening in China it was really interesting it's the same numbers 60% solar uh 20% batteries about 15% wind almost no new coal um and the and what's fascinating about that is that the US deployed about 40 gws of solar but China deployed 300 gws in in one year in fact China deployed more two things about China they deployed more more solar last year in 2024 than the United States did in the last 68 years
(09:26) since solar's been around and um in in terms of decarbonization they had set a goal which we were all I think frustrated about saying in 2030 they would start to decline they're actually declining this year and the reason why they're declining is solar and batteries primarily so I think while things are shitty and there's a you know political backlash that we know about I think the fundamental facts and economics are kind of on the side of decarbonization now I think the discussion we should have is how do we go faster because clearly not
(09:53) fast enough but I think there the momentum is clearly there and I think it will pick up it will only pick up because solar and B are only going one way they're going down and the other costs are are not well you ended your statement with the word keyword cost cost money so this is a good transition into Sarah uh Sarah maybe you know U tell us also bit how you know through your career you've actually ended up you know transitioning to have an interest in the space of climate decarbonization and what's your evaluation of the
(10:22) current state of you know the the money available in this sector sure and and Christian I was as I was listening to you earlier I also don't have a a decarbonization background um my background is in banking law and Tech um and so this has been kind of a transition for me as well but once I think once you start to get into this sector and read and learn you can't unsee and unhear uh what you find out and I think for me um moving from sort of fintech investment banking uh and and and legal areas into this was kind of an easy
(11:00) transition for me because I've worked along the entire life cycle of of uh company startup growth to to exit but I needed to hone in on on a particular area and I started looking at um supply chain just because I have a lot of relationships with strategics and what I've noticed I'm also very optimistic so both of you just talked about well I think also Jennifer as well um I think that's a key takeaway is that we should be optimistic and here why on the funding side um when I was starting to look at where I wanted to focus I had a
(11:36) lot of conversations and I continue to have conversations with Aeronautics agriculture industry Advanced manufacturing um automotive and what is true is that they have cut back either completely or or or almost completely with their R&D facilities sort of inhouse on decarbonization Technologies as well as supply chain Technologies and postco as we all know um the supply chains broke down and the geopolitical pressures are of course not making it better uh even three four years post pandemic um and they're looking for
(12:14) Solutions this creates a new sort of Paradigm on the funding side because we have strategics who are interested uh they're getting into conversations right here in tavos um with private Equity Funds who say okay we're interested but uh this is a little bit too too risky for us um you will notice some of you KKR has just uh uh launched a climate Tech fund B capital uh is now launching a capital Tech fund excuse me um a climate Tech fund and you start to see the the the movement towards this missing middle so um because there has
(12:59) been no almost no funding in uh uh in in climate Tech and also in particular supply chain Technologies what we feel is that I kind of liken it we are live stream but I kind of liken it to feeding vegetables to my children I'm covering up the broccoli you know with with cheese or with ketchup um the guys I'm talking to very much want to bring their legacy Industries into uh uh you know into present day quite frankly um and and they're happy if it's AI enabled they're also happy or They Don't Really Care in some cases if we embed those
(13:40) decarbonization Technologies and the good news is the the new generations of these technologies have decarbonization embedded into them so we're seeing a nice closing uh for those of you and I feel like we have a very sophisticated room here but for those of you who don't know um you know climate Tech requires uh as as do other sectors but um de decarbonization requires uh big money and it is still risky so you've got sort of private Equity who doesn't want to come down necessarily into a series B area where we're operating um because
(14:18) that is too risky for them early stage VC it's it's too the money is too too intensive right it's too Capital intensive on the front end so we've got this this funding Gap um and there there are definitely firms like mine who are now focused on uh series B on this funding Gap uh uh but we we need more but I'm seeing I agree with Scott we're seeing like huge momentum in this area when you start to notice a PE dipping down you start to see VC uh uh uh having um setting aside more reserves for follow on Capital at series B and Beyond
(14:54) that's when you you know you're you're getting in as a first mover so I'll I'll relas relinquish and we can come back to it absolutely thank you thanks for that assessment Sarah so you mentioned the buzzword of the Year AI um I think you know it's I must say you know the first day when I arrived in Davos and I was walking along the promite and I've seen that every single company had the slogan with AI U I was just laughing um it's it's you know it's the hype of the of the time you know it's overhyped of course it's also highly transformative
(15:26) um but obviously AI has also a role to play in in the climate change discussion I mean I was mentioning you know the startup that i' I've created I've co-created right we we have to use AI right in order to to maximize that efficiency um so I mentioning this ARA because on one hand you know we're talking about facts so obviously we need to to to measure properly everything that's happening around the carbonization you need proper data analytics capabilities so I'll give you the challenge AR let's talk about a bit
(15:56) analytics in decarbonization in the carbon economy but then also transitioning to this super digital capability which is AI uh so um I think the key thing is that uh we need the measurability um unless we don't measure it's very difficult for us to follow the action and I think uh in decarbonization one of the key challenges that there is very little data that can be used there's no proper way of detecting it collecting it and then consolidating that to to get this kind of bigger picture uh of the view and of course this is now
(16:31) changing this year we start getting more data from the satellites um and uh and and basically being able to cook it to this kind of big picture what for example buks are using now for the assessing uh what price they should put in a credit uh for individual uh commodity Finance transaction because I come from very much in of supply chain perspective Global supply chain for raw material side this is a has a very very big impact so today because there's no problem measurement there's this kind of penalty kind of cloud on top of the
(17:03) banks um for example the the Cal transactions they just don't get financed um and uh we still need a coal we have lots of coal power plants some of them we have been able to convert into the gas but then if we do that then we are again depending of the geopolitical impact like a Russian gas so uh we have to see this big picture and the banks also need to see the big picture how it actually interrelates and uh regulator is requiring them to to price the credit deciding which transactions they are financing but they
(17:35) really don't have a tool they don't have a way to assess where which ones to pick which ones to not to and and what price they should put into the place and I think AI can play a big role here so not just to to uh basically build a model to say that okay this is the data what we require but then start consolidating it packaging it uh visual providing the visualization and also providing the red flags for any kind of issues uh that the banks would need to to be aware of and then that will help to process more transactions through and
(18:10) I think this will impact not just for the for the goal uh trading but it also impacts to the food trading uh so it has a multiple uh impacts to the different different perspective awesome well I'm looking at Jennifer Jennifer you're the only one here with the word AI in your title so U maybe you tell us exactly how how are things you know when you're looking from your perspective CU you know you have the academic profile but you also work with lots of startups um out of MIT who are leveraging this capability and trying to apply it to the
(18:39) sustainability space sure I'm happy to chat about this so I'm going to chat about some of the challenges I see and then some of the opportunities so in terms of challenges in AI for climate first of all as many of you probably know AI uses a lot of energy currently 1 to 2% % of worldwide energy but projected to grow to up to 30% which is extremely substantial and unfortunately the large corporations like Google Microsoft Amazon and so forth have all said hey we're no longer on track to meet our Net Zero goals and the reason
(19:16) is AI so there's obviously some substantial issues with um leveraging AI for climate another one being a ton of CO2 emitted today is not the same as a ton of CO2 to emitted later because the ton that's emitted today has implications over the next number of years and so I think there's a lot of chat U myself included about ai's potential for doing things to reduce climate change but we're kind of on this teetering point where we're admitting to to try and Achieve that but what if it doesn't achieve what we want it to so
(19:58) I'm sort of trying to think through this kind of equation of what ai's potential beneficial climate impact could be if anyone's seen any work on this before I'd love to check it out okay so that's around the challenges and there's a lot of others that I didn't cover but those are some of the top ones now let's talk about the opportunities so I think AI has been an amazing resource for some of our top climate issues just to give an example the wildfires in LA um Google or now alphabet used Ai and machine learning to review Drone footage to see
(20:36) where um Rescuers needed to go for wildfires and they were able to identify that within minutes and seconds whereas before they wouldn't have been able to come close to that so they were able to identify okay here's the hospitals we need to go to here's the schools and send out rescue teams that's a great example in my opinion of AI for adaptation purposes it can also be helpful for mitigation for example in energy Peak shaving or load shifting where imagine 10 EVS all come
(21:10) home at 600 p.m. they all plug in at the same time this creates what's called a peak load the grid may not be able to handle but what if AI is installed at that site so that everyone goes to sleep and their cars intelligently get charged at different times throughout the night meaning there's not the same Peak load and the grid doesn't get strained or need to have um an expansion of physical grid infrastructure that's the type of use of AI I could see where it can help to reduce the cost of expansion of physical grid infrastructure and can also reduce
(21:40) the emissions Associated and the electricity cost for individuals I think those are some really great examples of you know use cases that you mentioned Jennifer and I mean this is what I love about um AI use cases the use case it's relatively simple of course sorting it out you know developing the right um AI solution to to enable that it's the complicated thing um but I see you know because in with with my startup you know our role is really to to Scout and to observe you know who are the most relevant players over Hardware software
(22:11) you know materials but now strictly talking about Ai and software there's such a boom in the number of AI players in energy optimization for instance right I mean take it you know this building maybe 10 years ago you switch on you know AC you switch on the lights and that's it right nowadays you know with a relatively simple AI energy optimization software you can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of this hotel just by you know switching off things you know and adjusting the temperature and stuff like
(22:35) that uh Scott AI does it play a role in your industry um sure I mean I would say for our company we're based in Silicon Valley and part of what we're doing is using AI for product development so in addition to having smart humans look at the data we're creating tons and tons of data so I think it's a good augmentation for anybody doing product development to help you get smarter and faster looking at billions of variables um I I'd say also from a decarbonization point of view there there are a few myths about what we can or cannot do
(23:05) like one example that Jennifer talked about a common myth is um there's how many of you have heard of the duck curve for solar where there's just too much solar during the day so one myth is oh we can't do anything about that that demand is fixed people will only consume it during the day um or we need base load but one of the things we can do is with software and pricing to basically incent people to use power differently so today we talk about power our cars at night which is funny because why are we powering at night when we have more
(23:33) power during the day now we should be swipping switching that and that could be done with software and pricing and intelligence um and there's this other problem that we talk about is we need base load power uh Renewables are intermittent they're not enough but if you change the incentives so that we can use power when the power exists or switching it off from batteries then I think this problem could largely go away so there are these huge myths I think or problems about why we can't decarbonate that quite frankly they're and
(24:01) a combination of uh smart you know intelligent software and pricing mechanisms could could change people's behavior we're pretty resilient I think we've all seen when uh when we're able to get incentives to change um so why can't we change for this seems relatively simple to um run your dishwasher during the day or car versus at night easy I'm I'm looking at Sarah you know I'm thinking AI from your perspective as a as an investor you know I was mentioning earlier you know that on the promite here you know all the technology
(24:31) companies seems to seem to suffer from F or from fear of missing out they have to talk about AI right otherwise they're left out of the conversation and I I kind of observe an interesting pressure on the Innovation on the startups uh that they kind of have to be AI startups nowadays even if they start with the DNA of sustainability of decarbonization everyone feels like yeah we have to be you know powered by AI is is it really expected from from the investors that right away you know in order to be potential successful startup you have to
(25:01) be part of thei the core or is it more like you know people are over exaggerating right now yeah it's a great I think this is the question on everyone's mind also for for those of you who were here last year it was even worse AI was sort of everywhere I feel like it's a little more balanced this year um it falls into in my opinion falls into kind of two buckets one is you know AI which sort of took over the world over the last 18 months um and that AI has to be sort of sprinkled into everything but it's very
(25:33) much on the chat gbtm side in my opinion the other side which I think all of us think is more interesting is the actual applications to my op you know from from our perspective Supply chains but also for strategics like how are we actually going to change the world with AI as opposed to and I ju I I kid you not I heard uh one CEO this was not at Davos was probably just before the holidays uh November a CEO said yeah we've we've rolled out chap GPT across our entire company but you know my assistant uses it to write letters for me and I you
(26:12) know there's a lot to unpack in that one statement but it kind of tells you that CEOs don't necessarily understand what applications AI is going to have for their companies in their business um good thing the politicians know better yeah exactly exactly so back to your your question I do think it's exaggerated I think we we have to have this bubble uh if you will but the more interesting conversation is is what we're doing here which is what are the applications that we're seeing um and you know being smart about how to
(26:48) use AI but again back to a point I made earlier we there there's a gap here in knowledge and and myths and and understanding factually what's possible and we need the the the folks on the side of the technology to bring that information to the folks yeah the politicians and and and the CEOs and that's going to be kind of difficult I think I'm in a lot of conversations where people's eyes you know widen and when I talk about companies like pcta for example who is uh they're here at Davos and I met with her yesterday so so
(27:21) friend of mine uh uh she's not the founder there's two two guys who founded the company um but they are BAS Lan and they're using AI uh also to go up uh you know take these drone pictures of of the of the planet of areas so that they can better you know before and after pictures at the end of the day so that they can better predict um uh the change in the climate the change in the topo topography and they are now this happened yesterday it was a nice little Davos connection um but I hooked her up with the CEO of ACU weather Joel Meers
(27:58) who is also here they do a ton of obviously weather prediction and they're already using Ai and so hooking up these two companies which is sort of a big and a small um they're really excited to enter into kind of a partnership to to to to figure out how to one to give the data to the other so that's another point I think the corporates strategics I'm generalizing who don't really know or understand the applications have all the data and the techn the the technology folks uh need that data so we literally this
(28:35) won't work unless we sort of bring these two together I think what you mentioning earlier Sarah the fact that you know we have to be factual we have to you know bust those mths um we have you know to to make sure we are really understanding things you know because uh when you know a few years ago when I started looking into the space sustainability decarbonization one of the things that shocked me was the inefficiency in the fossil industry so basically everything that burns if it's oil if it's gas think about you
(29:06) know big part of the planet it's still powered by by gas right I mean that's a huge percentage waste right that is just the heat that goes into into into the atmosphere and as I I was learning about this inefficiency when we burn things you know to produce energy in the economy is that by replacing fossil fuels with renewable that inefficiency dis appears and I mean I was chatting about this with um with with Scott and obviously you know solar it's one of those I mean you capture the energy it goes into the battery sure there is
(29:37) always a little bit of lust there but nothing compared you know to to to the things that we burn and related to this you know what I discovered at the time and it shocked me is that it can significantly accelerate our Global decarbonization plans not by replacing oneon-one the fossil fuel economy with Renewables but if we replace a third of the fossil fuel economy with Renewables because of this comparison inefficiency on burning things versus highly efficiency on Renewables that can allow us to liap frog and I think you know for
(30:10) me this is a really important fact that should make us aware we can do this right versus I hear and I meet so many people that say yeah we're already doomed you know we pass 1. Five there's no point you know Trump is there so I'll I'll I'll pass this to you a bit um Scott you know talking about efficiency on solar like why why aren't people aware of this major difference you know I don't know I mean most people are not aware of physics and the laws of thermodynamics I I admit I I've been working on this for a couple of years
(30:38) now and I didn't know about this fact that if you uh when you when you burn fossil fuels you basically lose two-thirds of it to heat so I think just building what you said it's a myth that you need to replace every uh every part of energy with fossil fuels with Renewables you can you only need one for every three that you're replacing um and I think there are other uh efficiencies I mean people hear about heat pumps and other things and uh I mean one other thing just to bring up from a decarbonization is um you can have these
(31:06) big long electric uh transmission lines now and if you move from AC to DC you know with AC you just can't move it very far you get these huge losses when you move to DC I think you lose 3% for every thousand kilometers so there's a possibility of moving energy to where the sun is because I think that's another myth is that you can only run solar where the sun is but if you take Sun out of a or solar out of Saudi Arabia or California other places or Australia and you move it via these high transmission lines you can go both uh
(31:34) where the sun where there isn't but also move across time zones where it's dark so it's just another example where there are technologies that exist that I think that they there are um we have to be creative about rolling them out awesome um and you know talking about the facts and the reality of things and you know what's feasible versus what's a m um initially when I jumped into the into this movement of sustainability and I was meeting a lot of people said let's just shut down you know the oil industry overnight tomorrow and initially I was
(32:02) like yeah sure makes sense and then I realized like wait a minute while talking to people everything around us you know look at the materials you're using look at you know a big part of the global economy global trade it still relies on oil I mean sure we should stop burning fossil fuels for energy but you know if you take the chemical industry I mean you know there's so much going on that still relies on that so if actually we will be shutting down by the end of this week you know the oil industry we'll probably trigger a recession and I
(32:29) had a little bit of a chat like this with with Ari because he's also involved in commodity training which also covers Cole so maybe you give us a little bit you know how how you see things from your angle regarding the status quo today what's realistic to transition versus you know what's you know uh just a Utopia for the time being thanks so thanks uh so um I think we need to see always the big picture uh and it's very difficult um we have to we have as a company we have to look the supply chain from very beginning to the very
(33:01) end and uh then we come to the situation that we have to see where do these energies come from how are they used and uh I have good cases for example the I mean the the coal was a one case um we do need goal we need to have a mechanism to finance the goal we have to facilitate that transaction to happen because otherwise we cannot we cannot just switch of the coal power plants but then we also have Industries lot of Industries who have to produce heat energy uh use energy with the lowest possible cost base because otherwise
(33:33) they have to transition that cost to the end products cement uh steel uh something like that and I have been in the sites uh where um by the end of the week uh the they have to start burning car tires to reduce the emission not to increase the emission because the the base heat source that they have been using is the lowest quality scrap oil which come from refineries which cannot be used even for the uh for the uh any other use um and uh of course the pollution impact is massive so we often I would say major in minor things and we
(34:12) forget this big picture The Big Industry where we can make such a small difference uh without disrupting it we we definitely agree we should not even think about moving away from oil moving away from coal for the very short time but have a transition plan gradual transition plan and measurement framework today is not measured that is one of the key reasons there's no mechanics to measure it if if even Banks what they using because they have to now price the credit based on the carbon perspective they use rating agencies and
(34:43) they pretty much made up the numbers I mean there's no real source for that information this year we are starting getting more of that information and and and my view is coming from very strong AI background and uh and building kind of business models using AI I think we need to come from the models and said okay what does matter what data is needed to support that then start collecting the data analyzing it and linking it to the model and then say that okay this is our scoring system and uh now we can use it based on real data
(35:13) not just something made of data and uh and I think this would be the way where we can make much much big bigger impact than uh uh we can maybe imagine cool so we discussed a lot about the status quo and the transition um now since we have only a few minutes left i' would like to fast forward into the future 2050 this is where you know most of us you know where the corporation say okay would plan to be Net Zero by then um and you know we're talking about the energy consumption today by 2050 the forecast is we will consume at
(35:44) least four times more energy and I don't even think you know that calculation that forecast of 4X considers the the Boom in Ai and how much more energy will will that consume and then I'm thinking know how do we how do we get to you know know producing more energy producing more renewable energy and one of the things that Jennifer reminded me is and it shocked it when I learned about this a few years ago is everyone talks like we need to build more Renewables we need to build more Renewables and then a lot of the Renewables that are
(36:12) built they it takes years until they coupled to the grid I know Jennifer if you have a a point of view on this or maybe you know if you if you think there's a solution but to me this is like crazy right because it's like how come you know that we we creating know huge plants of you know solar how come you know we we create you know um new offshore winds and then it takes years until we we connect them to the grid like that bottleneck is just insane I think it's spoton what you just said so in the US it takes two to eight
(36:44) years to add a renewable such as wind or solar to the grid just think about that two to eight years climate change is the most urgent issue of our time and Renewables is a major way to help us reduce climate change but we have to face that long waiting period now that comes from a a variety of different re reasons that bottleneck but I do think the electrical grid is a huge bottleneck in our journey to decarbonize because with increasing energy demand and increasing demand for adding Renewables we need to be able to add more physical
(37:15) grid infrastructure or adjust our loads such our electrical loads and demand for them such that we don't need to do that physical grid infrastructure expansion as much and and through things like Peak shaving and load shifting I do think that's an interesting possibility because expanding the physical Grid in such a substantial manner that's currently projected to be required which in the US would be doubling the grid within the next uh decade or so um if we can avoid that by Peak shaving or load shifting then that'll help us reach our
(37:49) climate goals faster it won't be as expensive and there's actually a huge amount of excess capacity in the Grid in the US um that's unused so could avoid that and I've been encouraged by some of the entrepreneurship I've seen at MIT and other schools so just a little bit of context on um what we're seeing I helped run the climate and energy Ventures class at MIT which has had about 60 spin out companies with over5 billion doll raised and now we're expanding that class to other universities so now it's at Technical
(38:20) University of Munich it's at chingua University um and it's at other universities and we've created a suite of AI tools to empower climate entrepreneurs to accelerate for example some policy tools that let them enter their business idea and see the relevant regulations and incentives within seconds and we heard from a startup that said hey I just spent $10,000 on a consultant who took months to produce this information but your tool just came to the same information practically within seconds for free so how can we build tools that can Empower
(38:56) climate innovators and Entre R preneurs to accelerate I think that'll help us reach some of our our goals and uh the startup we worked with um for that is called artifacts AI they're part of the climate scaleup delegation of climate startups that have come to Davos all right so unfortunately we're out of time um but if you're in this room it means you know you care about this topic and you know all of us will continue to be around here and you know Davos this week so let's make sure we we continue the conversation one last thing you know I
(39:25) want to to leave you with is most most people think sustainability and decarbonization it's someone else's job and I think we will not accelerate fast enough until we realize that every single one of us can play a role and I'm not talking here about yeah our individual you know if you're switching your lead balls or you know eating less meat but as long as you have a job or you know if you're in a corporation and this is what I tried to tell people just because you're a corporation hired a chief sustainability officer doesn't
(39:51) mean that this is done like if you have a corporate budget that corporate budget has a carbon footprint how do you decide to spend that corporate budget and that carbon footprint it's up to you so every single person every single professional needs to take some responsibility in this we're changing the panels so don't leave the room we're just you know swapping here to the panelist and then we're continuing with the under this umbrella of climate thank you so much for for this panel thank you [Applause] [Music]