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Investing in a Green Future Post COP26 – What Now, What Next?

Speaker

Lord Gerry Grimstone

Minister of Investment, UK Government

Key Takeaways
  • The first Industrial Revolution that shaped progress was all about coal and its uses. This next industrial revolution, the green revolution as it’s called, is all about making progress by the removal of coal and its uses to find greener alternatives.
  • We know where we’re starting with COP26 and we know where the end point was, in the case of the UK, NetZero 2050, but the path in between the two remained a bit indistinct.This has now given a huge fillip to alternatives such as Hydrogen, Nuclear and Offshore wind.
  • Governments can enable and set the framework but it’s up to the private sector to work together to take advantage of the opportunities available.
  • There is an immense potential for collaboration on innovation and R&D, and the UK and India need to encourage universities on exchange of research students to help build greater collaboration.

What Does the Promise of a Green Recovery Look Like for India?

Speaker

Bhupender Yadav

Union Cabinet Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India

Key Takeaways
  • The operationalisation of global goals on adaptations needs to be sped up by securing adequate finance and technology transfer.
  • Climate action is not limited to mitigation alone but also enablement and support in adaptation, finance, technology, and capacity building.
  • While the proposal that developed countries should mobilise $100 billion of climate finance per year for climate action in developing countries is being reviewed; it is crucial that this review should address Scope, Scale and Speed of climate action.

Funding Climate Action – The Way Ahead

Speakers

Nandita Sahgal-Tully

Managing Director, Thomas Lloyd Group

Simon Harford

CEO, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Rockefeller Foundation

Keith Tuffley

Global Co-Head, Sustainability & Corporate Transitions Group, Citi

Delphine Voeltzel

Managing Director, Asia, OMERS Infrastructure

Key Takeaways
  • Philanthropy plays an important part in ensuring energy transition is inclusive, affordable and accessible.
  • Research found that the ten large economies of Asia, with China & India being the largest ones in terms of emissions, were producing more carbon than all of Europe together. So, effectively, if the carbon cost-to-GDP is worked out which is CO2 emissions per trillion dollars, investing dollars or pounds in Asia would give four times more impact than in Europe or North America.
  • There is a deep political opportunity for India with regards to China and the current war in Ukraine, in the domestication of production of solar inputs, given the landmass and the opportunity that offers to convert into undersea cable or exporting green hydrogen.
  • Governments must frame regulation that will incentivise private sector to invest more in a country and do so for a longer term. The Indian government has taken a good first step in terms of setting up ambitious target in that sense.
  • Blended finance will hold the key to making climate finance accessible in developing economies.

Sustainability First – How Businesses Can Shape Energy Transition

Speakers

Barry Gardiner

UK Parliamentarian

Kishore Jayaraman

President - India & South Asia, Rolls Royce

Kanika Chawla

Programme Manager - UN Energy, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL)

Saif Malik

Global Head of Global Subsidiaries & Head of Client Coverage, Standard Chartered Bank

Anita George

CEO, Edhina Capital Advisors

Key Takeaways
  • Corporates who want to survive, and who want to be part of the solution than the problem, must really look at net zero commitments in a serious way.
  • Governments are beginning to wake up to the whole process of natural capital accounting.
  • Intent, Implementation and Innovation are important steps in mapping corporate journey to sustainability.
  • Sustainability is a key goal for the financial sector, with it becoming an agenda item in most boardrooms.
  • The learning curve in different parts of world is not identical, rather it differs from country to country. It's not just a learning curve of technology, but rather a learning curve of capital

Reimagining the Road to COP27

Speaker

Alok Sharma

President, COP26

Key Takeaways
  • No developed country can tell a developing country to curb its growth; what we can do is support them with finance & other means, which is what the UK is doing.
  • COP26 managed to get almost 200 countries to agree to a historic climate pact because every country saw it was in their own interest to act.
  • Climate and environment security are totally interlinked with energy and national security, something that the Ukraine crisis has underlined. Countries are now realising that we cannot remain dependent on fossil fuels but accelerate on renewables.

Fighting Climate Change Through Disruptive Technologies

Speakers

Mohit Joshi

President, Infosys

Gabriela Herculano

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, iClima Earth

James Hygate

CEO, Green Fuels

James Quinn

CEO, Faradion

Key Takeaways
  • Cloud technology is an important part of the journey for corporates going green because instantly you’re moving away from paper based to more resource-based systems. It also allows a lot of enabling technologies such as IoT which help in measuring consumption of energy at a granular level.
  • India is an excellent market opportunity for batteries as a service. You need standards to be able to do it.
  • Calculating time value of carbon can really help reduce emissions. The carbon that we preclude from emitting has much more impact now than direct carbon sequestration in the future. We need to understand how much it costs to not emit carbon now and take that concept forward by using the principle to underwrite investments and ensure the capital flows faster towards what really moves the needle.
  • In the UK, 10 per cent of all fuel is bioethanol. You can see this transition happening elsewhere. In India, there’s 5 per cent blend mandate. In the long term, liquid biofuels will move into those areas that are going to be difficult to de-carbonise in any other way

Rethinking Planet Consciousness – Why It Starts with Soil

Speaker

Sadhguru

Founder, Isha Foundation

Key Takeaways
  • We are in a cusp of time, which allows us to make a significant turnaround to save the earth’s biodiversity if we act now. As a generation, we face a challenge, but we have the privilege and opportunity to turn things around. The need to Save Soil is most urgently needed.
  • Nearly 35-40 per cent of the world’s global warming is because of open soil. But nobody is mentioning this in any convention because there’s no money in it.
  • Not a single country on the entire planet has the minimum organic content which the UN prescribes. The term soil can only be used if there is minimum 3 per cent organic content in the ground. But not a single nation has this average 3 per cent. The highest is in northern Europe which is 1.48 per cent.
  • Soil must be separated from other ecological concerns. Other ecological concerns will run into headwinds of opposing some business or the other. Enhancing the organic content in the soil is not against anybody. Oil industry, automobile industry, coal industry, fertilizer industry, pesticide industry is not against it.
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