Final episode of 2021

listener. I've had an amazing community of people who listened to this podcast to download it every week, whether you listen to it in a browser on your computer, whether you use a podcast application on your phone, get every episode, as soon as it says it's published every Wednesday morning. Whatever it is, however you consume it, thank you for constantly doing so because there are hundreds and hundreds of you now doing it every single week with every new episode that

I publish. So that's amazing. That's the first thing I wanted to say. The second is, it would be really awesome. If over this holiday period, you could introduce one or two new people to the podcast, if you know other people who have an interest in climate. And you think they would benefit from listening to some of the episodes, please do introduce them to it. And if they're unfamiliar with how podcasts work, show them open up the podcast application on their smartphone, type in climate 21

Hit the Follow button. And then they'll get every new episode as is published. You know, if only 10 or 15 of you do this, that would make a big difference to the numbers in the show. Well, it'll make a difference to the numbers in the show. But it would be fantastic. And that would be a that would be an amazing Christmas present for me. And I would really appreciate that. So as I said, this is the last show of 2021. I'm taking a break for the

holiday season. I've been producing four podcasts, four podcast shows a week for a year now and you know, taking a little break for the holiday season. But this show will be back again in January, the first show will go live on the 12th of January. So Wednesday the 12th. We'll be back on our usual weekly cadence once more from January 12 onwards, and I have something of some really, really interesting episodes lined up

for you. Coming in January. I have one with a guy called Gavin, you'll hear more from Gavin on the 12th of January. And I have an excellent episode phenomenal interview with him about some really, really interesting stuff. He's doing hugely, hugely ambitious project. So stay tuned for that one. And then a week later, I have another really interesting one where we delve into the legal aspects around climate because I've already had episodes where we've gone into the finance side of things on a

number of episodes. Insurance was another one I had the chief risk officer from Zurich on business a lot. But haven't gotten new legal yet. So we have a an interesting episode coming up on legal on the 19th of January next. So watch out for that one. And more of that there's more to come as well after that. Episode after that is with a chap called Troy if I remember correctly, so yeah, lots of really interesting

things coming up. But just maybe you haven't had a chance to listen to all of the episodes. Because this is episode number 54. So there's 53 previous episodes. Now if you've listened to all 53 Kudos, well done. Thank you for that amazing, really amazing, I really

appreciate that. But if you haven't, let me just give you a couple of tips on some of the episodes that have been published over the last year and I say year because the very first episode of this podcast where I had a guest on, which was actually episode number two technically but the very first one we're adding a guest on went live on the second of December

2020. So just over a year ago, and that was with a chap called Thomas salary Isaac, who is the is a member of the executive board of SAP and that was a really interesting podcast episode. Now, I'm not going to go through every single episode that I recorded, not all 53 of them that have been published so far, that would just be too much. And you'd fall asleep pretty quickly. So, but I'll skip to some of the highlights. Now, one of my all time favorite episodes, was episode number

four of the podcast. And that was an episode with a chap called Lucas chopper. And Lucas is the chief environmental officer of Microsoft. And if you've not listened to this episode, scroll back through the previous episodes, either in your podcast application, or on the website. And if you don't remember the website, it's just simply www dot climate 21 podcast.com. Or just go to Google and type in climate 21 podcast, you'll find it straightaway. So scroll back and listen to that episode with

Lucas choppa. He's the chief environmental officer for Microsoft. And what Microsoft are doing in the climate space is incredibly ambitious, I called it a couple of times, like the gold standard for what companies should be doing. So if you're interested in what your company could or should be doing, take a leaf out of their book, listen to what Microsoft are doing. Listen to it, in the words of Lucas himself, it was a really, really interesting episode. And then some other

really good ones. I had Professor, Professor Stephanie Bertels, on in January, talking about climate goals for organizations. So Stephanie has a site where you can compare organization's climate goals and see who's doing well and who could, you know, work a little harder if we want to if we want

to be polite about it. I had a great episode with a guy called Okay, Hoekstra know, okay is a researcher on electric vehicles and, you know, regular listeners to the podcast will be aware that I have a very, very strong interest in electric vehicles. And okay, is a guy who does some absolutely fantastic debunking of some of the scare stories that are put out there about

electric vehicles. He's prolific on Twitter, if you're not following him on Twitter, and you have an interest in electric vehicles, I recommend you follow him because I don't know how he does it. I really don't know how he does it he has in credible patients. And he has a really,

really, what's the word? He goes into huge detail when he's debunking these stories, you know, so he goes down line by line by line by line by line debunking why all these individual stories are wrong with all fact based all based on research, and debunks them completely really, really well. So he's well worth a follow if you're interested in that. In the finance space, I had some fantastic conversations. I had

one. The very first finance one I had was with a guy called Paul O'Connor, who is head of ESG debt, capitalized markets for JP Morgan. And that was a, you know, an introduction to me to the whole world of ESG. And it was a really fascinating conversation. So if you have an interest in that, check that one out. And then two weeks later, I had one with a colleague of mine, Adam Lyons, again, talking ESG for organization. So if you're interested in ESG at all, those are two really good

episodes to start with. I got into a bit with sport as well, because I had a chap on called Rudy basso, and Rudy is heading up this thing called the E one series. What's that? The E one series is a series AROUND ELECTRIC powerboat racing. Yep, you heard that right. So we already have Formula E, which is electric car racing, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec. But electric powerboat racing is becoming a

thing now as well. And there's this series called The E one series, which hadn't started yet. But Rudy basso is the CEO of the E one series, they're kicking it off, they're designing the boats and they're getting them ready and they're going to launch next year. So that was a really cool episode as well. I talked to Mark Cornelius.

Mark is the CSO of a company called and ever and ever and ever is a company that has a large indoor vertical farm in Kuwait where there producing 500 kilos of fresh greens every day. And it's very sustainable, because that uses, you know, 5% of the land that a farm producing that much greens would produce 5% of the water that a similar farm would produce. So really, really low inputs required for really, really high

value outputs. And when I say high value, what I mean by that is the, because they're producing the Greens close to their market, they don't have to optimize for things like shelf life. So instead, they're able to optimize for things like flavor and nutrition. And they're No, they've got this farm in Kuwait. As I said, they're building one now also to come online in Singapore, which will be three times the size producing one and a half tons of

fresh greens per day. And they, they're turning this method they have into a complete platform. So they'll be able to drop these large indoor vertical farms in the middle of cities all over the world. That's the idea. There are cooler chats, staying in the in the food space, I had a cool chat as well with a woman called Rebecca Moses. She's the head of strategy, if I remember correctly for Impossible Foods. And she was talking about the impact of agriculture and how to

reduce that. And what Impossible Foods does is it takes plant protein, and converts it into what looks like animal protein, essentially, the likes of beef. So they're producing things like ground beef patties have grown beef, but it's not made from cows, it's made from plants. And similarly burgers and other things like that. So that was a really cool conversation as well. I had a great chat with

Professor Faulkner sick. And we talked to there about using concrete, sorry, using carbon as an ingredient in things like concrete. So today, the manufacturer of cement for concrete has an enormous carbon footprint. But they've come up with professors six folkers research group have come up with a way of taking carbon and using it as an actual ingredient in the manufacture of cement. And the resultant concrete is actually more flexible than

standard concrete. So it requires less steel rebar in it. So it's a win win, because the manufacturer of steel also has a huge carbon footprint. So you're, it's a win win win, because you're taking co2 out of the air and putting it into something where it is sequestered. The thing that you're making that sequester the concrete, you're reducing its carbon footprint, and you require less steel. So that's, you know, that's three wins, and one is a phenomenal idea. So that's great episode, I really

recommend there as well. I had a superb episode with David Harris, who's the head of a sustainable business at the lawn at the London Stock Exchange. And two weeks after that, I have one with his colleague, Shri Cooley, who heads up the green bond facility for the London Stock Exchange group. So if you're interested in again, in finance, that's those are two really excellent episodes to watch out for. In between those two episodes, I had a chat with

a guy called Bill McDonogh. Now, if you've not heard of Bill McDonogh, I would Google him straightaway. Because he's like the father of the circular economy. He wrote a book in around 2007 2008, that kind of ballpark one, I think it was called Cradle to Cradle. And that really kicked off a lot of people's thinking around circular economy. He's a he's a well known architect as well.

And so that was a fascinating conversation where we talked about how design can be used to help in the fight against climate change how designing things properly from the outset, can help reduce climate climate change. Another one of my favorite episodes, was with a chap called Professor Sir David King. If you haven't heard of him, I wouldn't be you know, to worry that he's extremely well known in climate circles because he's the former adviser to the UK

Government chief scientist. He's a Cambridge professor, he has about 500 papers to his name. He has something like 22 PhDs, no, most of them are honorary degrees that are conferred on him, rather than being earned. But he has, he does have a PhD as well, obviously, that he earned himself or he wouldn't have become a professor in Cambridge. And he heads up a thing in Cambridge called the

Center for Climate repair. And in the Center for Climate repair, it does what it says on the tin, they're looking into ways to repair the damage we're doing currently to the climate. And one of the things he talked about, and this was the first mention of this on the podcast, he talked about using whales to help in carbon sequestration. And that came up a few times afterwards. So we'll refer back to that in a second. I mentioned sports, and having Rudy basso on talking about the he won series

well, as well as that. I also had on a chap called Alejandro Ag, and Alejandro, and Alejandro AG, heads up the Formula E, and extreme e motorsports. So Formula E, as I mentioned already, is akin to Formula One, except it's with electric vehicles. And then extreme extreme E is a new series, which is off roading, and, you know, really, really interesting stuff. So you should check out that one if you're doing motor

sports, particularly. I also had on the head of the Mercedes EQ Formula E team, a chap called Ian James. And when he talked about electric motor sports on their Formula E team on the importance of data for how they, you know, get all the data from the vehicles and use that to improve their performance while at the same time, keeping the carbon footprint as low as

possible. I had a professor morning, Ramo on Professor Raymo are mo talked about sea level rise, what's kind of coming, what's baked in and how businesses can help minimize it, which you know, is really interesting as well. Another hugely interesting episode was one with God Bannerjee. This is on July 7, if you're looking for a Data Reference, God talked about his organization, which is

called Northstar transition. But he talked as well about the requirement we have for systemic change, to try and deal with climate because, you know, it's a huge, huge problem, which requires huge, huge solutions, piecemeal solutions are not going to cut it, we require systemic level change. And the ambition that God talks about, and shows and demonstrates in this podcast, are the kinds of level of ambition that we absolutely need for the level of

change we need. And if you know, the kind of level of ambition that he talks about, reminds me very much of the episode I mentioned at the start with Gavin, which is coming in

January. So watch if big picture stuff and big projects and you know, boiling the ocean, probably not a good analogy or metaphor to use when we're talking about climate change, but in the ocean, but if you know, that kind of boiling the ocean level, ambition projects are the kind of thing that you know, get you out of bed in the

morning. Absolutely. Listen to this one with God Bannerjee if you haven't heard it already, and watch out for that one coming with Gavin in January, at an excellent episode was a guy called Roy for coolin as well from circular Raikou circular IQ, where he talked about circular economy initiatives, how to measure them and how to manage them. And he is a platform for doing that. And a cool episode with a guy called Tarek fancy again in July of

this year, and July 21. And you know, Tariq is the former head of sustainable business for BlackRock, one of the largest investment companies in the world. And he had some really interesting points of view that he put out there about sustainable business and sustainable investing. And you know, whether or not what we are doing at the moment is the right way to do it. And maybe maybe we should be making some changes. After that I had several other episodes that were interesting.

Had Zurich's Zurich insurances chief risk officer, for example on giving the insurance industry's perspective on this I had a chap on cold Robert Gardner who heads up a sustainable investing for an organization called St. James place wealth management. And he heads up a fund of, if I remember correctly was something like 145 billion pounds sterling. I could be wrong on that. But anyway, it's a lot of money, however much the actual figure is, but he talked about the power of your pension to

influence climate. And it's a really interesting one, because most businesses have kind of a requirement to report every quarter. And so short term thinking is kind of baked into what they do. On the other hand, pension funds, I mean, let's say you start your pension, when you're 30, you're going to be taking it out when you hit 6570. That means pension funds have to think in a window of 30 to 40 years, not, you know, three

months. And so if there's anybody that's thinking long term, it's people who manage pension funds, because they have to, they have a fiduciary responsibility to do so. And so, and they manage huge amounts of money. So that's an enormous lever right there. So that's an episode I really, really strongly recommend. If you haven't heard that one, go back and listen to that 1/8 of September, deceit while at September 21, is when I

published it. It's with Robert Gardner. It's called the power of your pension to influence climate. What else I had Ken Parker on can is the former CEO for timberland. And it was there when timberland started doing reporting of their carbon footprint. For example, that was a really interesting episode as well, he had a lot of cool insights. I had Hugh bond hitch you wq been bu Dublin, who was is the head of a startup called

deadline at the DVD Lyne. And they have a an interesting dashboard, which shows organizations how they're doing against their stated goals. So if you're in an organization, and you have stated goals to hit net zero by 2030, let's say, well, then they take in your data, and they give you a you know, a display, kind of did usual traffic light kind of thing of green, amber red showing you, you know where you are, and when you're likely to

get to that netzero goal. So you'll see whether you get there by that 2030 aim you have or 2050 or 2090 or 2025, maybe you're on the right path, you know, so that was a very cool one. And then another and I keep saying this, but another one of my really favorite episodes was with Ralph Shami. Rob is an assistant director at the the International Monetary Fund. And he wrote a seminal paper, showcasing how to how to value put a monetary value on the carbon sequestration. That's

done by whales in the ocean. Now I know that sounds weird. But carbon or quails in the ocean, are sequestering carbon all day, every day, carbon has a known monetary value. So suddenly, it becomes possible to figure that out. And Ralph worked with scientists to figure out exactly how much they do sequester over their lifetime, the mechanisms

by which they do so. And so being able to quantify the amount of carbon meant it was therefore possible to quantify the carbon sequestration services performed by those whales, you could put a monetary value on it. And they quickly figured out that a live whale, sequestering carbon is worth far

more than a dead whale. And then, a couple of years later, Ralph published another paper again working with scientists this time in Africa to see how much the carbon sequestration services performed by forest elephants are. And it turned out if I remember correctly, that the forest elephants over their lifetime sequester about $2 million worth of carbon. So their their lifetime value. If they live out their full natural life is about 2 million, whereas if they're killed by poachers

and their tusks are sold. The value of that is about four $40,000 compared to the 2 million, they're worth alive. So Ralph is working with a guy called Waleed al Sokoloff. And another chap, they've created an organization called rebalance Earth to actually go about protecting the elephants, ensuring that they reached that $2 million of their lifetime

value. And then getting people to support the lives and the lives of these whales by paying that $2 million, and then taking that 2 million per whale and investing it in the local communities so that the local communities see the actual financial value of the whales to them. Now, this was actually over two episodes, I had a second interview a couple of weeks later, with Walid Alsike, have another one of the

cofounders of rebalance arts. So those are two episodes that you should listen to one after the other, the one with Rob Shami published on October 6, and then the follow up one with olive oil saga, published on October 27. At a couple of other episodes in between, I'd won with James Roby, who's the head of Global Head of sustainability. For Capgemini. For example, that was another cool episode. I had always a fantastic one, in November, with Mark Campanale. And Mark is the founder of the

Carbon Tracker initiative. And we talked about all kinds of interesting things there. But the financial sector, the risk to the financial sector, that things like carbon bubbles cause and the carbon budget, if you're unfamiliar with what a carbon budget is, well, it's a it's a really straightforward idea. But one that, you know, was first put out there by the Carbon Tracker initiative back around

2010. Or so the idea is that, if we are going to stop global warming at one and a half, or two degrees C, well, we know where we are today. So from that, we can work out how much carbon we can emit before we get to one and a half degrees C, and then two degrees C. So if we know that that's our carbon budget, that C mount of carbon we can emit, before we have to stop emitting carbon, because we go beyond the two degrees C or the one and a half degrees, wherever we decide we want to

stop. So that's our carbon budget. Now the issue arises, the big problem arises, because the proven reserves of fossil fuel companies and countries is about three times what our actual carbon budget is. So that means these companies and countries when I say countries, I mean the likes of Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, these companies and countries are going to have to write off two thirds of their proven value, or of their proven reserves, which is what the actual value is

based on. So that's hugely problematic, because they're going to fight tooth and nail to stop that happening. And if they succeed, it's game over. If they don't succeed, it's game over for them. You know, so it's, it's that's a real existential battle that's being fought out every day here as a result. So that's the episode Mark

Campanelli. I strongly urge you if you haven't listened to that one, November 3, that was published an interesting one with Ben Franta, as well, who he published a paper recently about when fossil fuel companies knew about climate change and how much they knew. And it turns out, they've known about climate change from their own scientists, they employed climate scientists back in the

70s. And all of them knew about this, and they just buried the research and then went about telling everyone that climate change isn't real, despite knowing that it was that was a real, there's lots of legal implications to that. So that was an interesting episode as well. Had an episode with Jim's Carter who's on the ability futurist and we talked about the electrification of transportation and whether battery electric or fuel cells are, are the way to go. So if you're interesting that that was

an excellent episode as well. I had a cool episode with Professor Sally EU's talking about cop 26. Sally was there for cop 26 That was the episode that was published a couple of weeks ago, first of December. And then the episode last week with Professor Marcus craft talking about intelligent decarbonisation. That was a fascinating episode as well. So

that brings us up to today. Like I said, that was a highlight I didn't go through all of the episodes, that was a quick romp through some of the better ones, some of the ones that I really loved even more out there as well. You know, there's ones with people from other companies, there's, you know, some really fascinating ones.

So, if you haven't heard the episodes, and you miss me, you miss the podcast over the next couple of weeks while I'm on a break, feel free to go through the back catalogue, if if any of that has, you know, whet your appetite for some of the ones you might not have heard, feel free to go to the back catalogue, they're all there, they're all free to scroll back down through and listen to them some really excellent ones there. And as I said, there's some really excellent ones

coming up as well. So that that's it for me have a have a great holiday break, have a fantastic new year. Be careful, be safe. Omicron is out there it's taking over. So do your celebrations safely and securely for yourself and your family, but have a good time to do have a break and come back fresh in January for these new episodes I

have lined up for you. And please, please, please, as I said at the start, as well do please try and introduce this podcast to new people who haven't come across it before people who are interested in climate. Because some of the episodes here I've been just absolutely humbled and blown away by some of the people who have deemed to come on this podcast, some of the people who have been on it already. And some of the people who have agreed to come out, you know,

it's just it's outstanding. And it's it's because the likes of you are listening to this and that you're asking your friends I hope to listen to it as well that increases the the listener numbers and makes it more interesting for people to want to come on the podcast. So as I said, do please do that as well. So have a great break. And I shall see you all in the New Year tamo. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks

everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about climate 21 Feel free to drop me an email to Tom raftery@sap.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you'd like the show, please don't forget to subscribe to it and your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast it really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.