Davos 2023: Keeping the pace on climate change

This transcript, generated from speech recognition technology, has been edited for web readers, condensed for clarity, and may differ slightly from the audio.

Julia Chatterley: Welcome, everybody, once again to the panel Keeping the pace on climate change action. If you're following on social media, please tweet, talk about this. We want to make sure the conversation is heard — #wef23. Let's begin. Gasping for breath. That's how the UN Secretary General described the Paris climate targets to me this week. Gasping for breath. We've had seven years since the deal was agreed to limit global warming in Paris and we are four years on from when we were all warned here in Davos that our house is on fire. Prescient, too, because since 2022 is the hottest year on record, we saw heat waves in Europe. Droughts in Latin America and wildfires in North Africa.

Many villages in Pakistan remain submerged from flooding and the search continues for a five-year-old child in California torn from his mother's arms in a raging creek that followed record storms there, too.

You know, I watched my colleague Larry Medawar, who was here in Davos, actually reporting from Nigeria and he was waist deep in water. There's too many episodes to recount, but suffice to say, an estimated 3.3 billion people live in areas of high vulnerability to climate change.

Yet it took a war in Ukraine, raging inflation and then a dramatic energy security crisis and fears to kick start a global response that suddenly seemed to galvanise decent growth in renewable energy investment. But the truth is, and I think we all know it, we need to dramatically raise the pace and the scale of that money. We need to focus investment in emerging and developing nations that will dominate energy demand in the future. And in Secretary Kerry speak, if he doesn't mind me using his words, we need money, money, money. And that's not to say that big nations like the United States, China, Japan, regions like the EU haven't stepped up with tangible support. But the IEA chief reminded me again this week, we need to quadruple current investment in renewables to $4 trillion a year by 2030. It feels like a lot, but what if I told you there's $120 trillion sitting in pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance funds globally, our own money in many respects, searching for returns. If the risks can be minimised or shared if the opportunities can be clarified. Surely we can just harness a fraction more of that. It does mean profound change from business, from governments, from us as consumers too and requires diverse forms of scientific, indigenous and local knowledge. And we have it, by the way. We just need to listen harder. Then there’s the question of sincerity. There are businesses out there that are simply not walking the walk, even as they enthusiastically talk the talk. How do we wash away the greenwashing that too many firms still hide behind? And when it comes to energy, how do we decarbonise sectors like the oil and gas sector faster?

Finally, we as consumers, we have to use less energy. And rich nations have proved that when prices are high, we do that. We have to continue to do that even as prices continue to come down. The challenges are daunting, but there are vast opportunities. And you're going to hear about this too, for innovation, entrepreneurism, collaboration and yes, even profits. We are in Davos, of course. Get it right, and we could address energy security and sustainable development for many generations to come.

Enough from me. Far smarter minds here have all the answers, I promise. Let me introduce our panel: Hello to Helena Gualinga: co-founder of the Indigenous Youth Collective of Amazon Defenders; Secretary John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate in the United States; Jennifer Morgan, Special Envoy for International Climate Action in Germany; Anna Borg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vattenfall and Jesper Brodin, Chief Executive Officer, Ingka Group. Welcome to our panel.

I want to start by just getting a show of hands and hopefully we'll see what happens. But we'll come back to this question at the end of the panel. Who thinks we will hit the Paris targets to limit global warming to one and a half degrees C by 2030? And just to be clear, that means peak emissions and then virtually halving them by 2030. Hands up, if we will, hit those targets.

Okay. I sort of make that six and a half people. Okay. Remember that number. Comments on that, Secretary Kerry? Six and a half people in the room. Do you understand the concern? I think you share it.

John F. Kerry: Well, I think the question strips away the possibilities. We can hit 1.5. We're not on track to do it now. And it's not clear, absolutely clear, that we will get on track. I don't know, Jennifer, when she raised her hand, is talking about Germany alone for the globe? I have more confidence in Germany probably being able to do it. Yes. But globally, we're heading towards 2.5, somewhere in the high twos right now. And we really must turn that around. But to turn it around is, as you said, think about it. You have $1 trillion approximately being spent right now in venture capital and new investment, etc. But we have to get it up to four and a half every year for the next 30 years.

We have to right now be deploying the largest solar field in the world every day for the next years in order to hit the 1.5. We have to be deploying renewables six times faster than we are today.

I know that in our country we've got to pass a permitting bill before we can do that, because you can't make a siting and can't take ten years to distribute this stuff. So yes, we can do this, but there is not yet the kind of commitment broadly that is necessary to make it happen amounts to collective will, as if we were at war and ready to turn factories into solar panel producers and so forth. I think some of that is what we need.

And but I am hugely encouraged, much more so than I did at any time in the last years by what is happening right now, which opens up an even greater possibility of achieving this, because so much energy, human energy, is going into the new technologies. The innovations that are occurring are going to multiply and magnify on themselves. And so I really think the fact that the IEA came out and said if we fulfil all the promises that were made in Glasgow, we would be at 1.8 degrees by 2050. And if we fulfil all the promises added on in Sharm el-Sheikh, we would be at 1.7.

So it's heading in the right direction. When we began this exercise, it was going from 3 to 3.5, 3.7. So we have turned this corner. We have moved in the right direction. And now the question is, will we do the things we need to do to abate emissions? This is not complicated. Our enemy is emissions and we have to go after the emissions. And therefore we cannot afford to build out a whole new infrastructure of one fossil fuel or another that is going to be with us for 20, 30, 40 years unless they are able to capture those emissions. We don't have that indication yet or even that full capacity.

Julia Chatterley: And there are a lot of ifs in there as well. As we look ahead to some of the plans. Jesper your hand was down despite your efforts.

Jesper Brodin: My hand was up. I felt so lonely.

Julia Chatterley: Go on.

Jesper Brodin: I thought to myself, what have I done raising my hand to that question? I think it's a lovely question to ask, but I thought about getting married when the question was, 'will you love each other for the rest of your life?' And the answer has to be yes at the moment. It would feel wrong from a leadership perspective. But if you ask me what the question is. I'm fully with you as commissioner Kerry. The optimism is that we have started to close the gap. There is optimism in so many movements that I see and I wish I could share with all of us because I truly see the solution coming. Are we there? No, we're not there. But I think the question is, rather, how do we get to it? Because 1.5 is not the target. Many people think it's a target. It's a planetary limit. So therefore, I think the question in itself almost invites to doubting it. Right now, we need to commit to it and we need to commit to the gaps and closing them. It's a matter of existentialism for humankind. So therefore, I raised my hand.

Julia Chatterley: Sorry. Yeah. No, you didn't have to apologise. You have to tell the truth, though. Anna, come in here because you believe this can be done in one generation. That's what you're committed to. And you've said, look, we can do this, but we have to jump start investment. And I think the crux of all of this, and it goes back to the point about money, money, money. Talk to me about your thoughts here.

Anna Borg: I think that with the effects of global warming and the need to reduce CO2, but also with all the fossil free technology development that is now happening, I think that as a leader of a business, you clearly see how the market prerequisites have changed massively. And I think that's a driving force that we have not sort of untapped the potential of yet. And that is also why I clearly state that our sort of business strategy to enable a fossil free living within one generation is exactly that. It's our business strategy. Because if we are going to be competitive and be able to capture these business opportunities, we have to move there. And in in addition, it's actually much more risky or costly to not move than to move in this direction. And I think that if you really look at this from a business prerequisite perspective, you clearly see that and that movement has not fully developed yet.

Julia Chatterley: I love the idea. The costs actually are far greater than what we're arguing with and not willing to spend or do today. Jennifer, to me about your position.

Jennifer Morgan: You noted all of the horrific impacts that happen and are happening. That's not going to go away. Right. And so, the pressure on companies, on governments, also from youth (we have a very active youth movement in Germany and around the world who are incredibly important). That's not going away. So, the technology is there. The recognition of the science is there. The costs are slowly getting incorporated in. And I just think, you know, even if you want to wish that it's, you know, those that don't want to go in that direction, I don't think there's going to be much choice because I think the instability that will continue to be created by these impacts, real instability for people, deaths for people and ecosystems are going to keep that pressure up. And I think and that's needed to have that pressure up. Is it immensely challenging? Will we get there? I don't know. Am I petrified that we won't? Absolutely, because of what it means. And therefore we're doing everything that we can to keep it in sight. But I just think this question always is about the course of action and all of these other things and it's not taking into account the national security implications, the instability that are there, the impacts, the lives that are just going to make it harder to not take the decisions that need to be made.

Julia Chatterley: Helena, I left you to last on purpose, primarily because you created a flood behind us on purpose. And perhaps I think you have to give us the perspective, the reality, the fear, I think, and the life cost, the human cost, of what we're fighting here. How concerned are you and how sure are you that will either this or not these targets? And what does it mean from a human perspective?

Helena Gualinga: I think that first of all, it's really important to address and Secretary Kerry just addressed this in the beginning, we are not on pace on climate. We have to pick up the pace on climate. We're going completely in the wrong direction and it's something that we are feeling on the ground. My community was washed away by floods only two, two and a half years ago. Devastating impacts on my community. And I come from an indigenous community in the Amazon rainforest.

And I think many times when we're in these spaces, we're talking about cutting emissions, we're talking about how, you know, all these clever calculations of how we are going to cut carbon emissions. But really Indigenous people have been on the front line of the extractive industries for decades now. I have neighbouring communities that have oil in the water because of what the oil industry did in their communities. And now we have them causing this global issue of climate change.

Emissions are not going to be cut if we don't actually keep fossil fuel underground. Let's begin with actually attacking the root cause of it. We can talk about cutting emissions all we want and come up with clever calculations and do it on paper, but if we don't keep fossil fuel underground, we will not meet 1.5. And if we look at the state of the world, what is at one point around 1.2 right now, it's already devastating. Look at what happened in Pakistan, an entire country that's been washed away.

I kind of hear a lot of talking about the “green hushing” instead of greenwashing and I found that a really interesting conversation here, how companies are now kind of taking back their commitments or holding their tongue because they don't want to commit too much because of the state of the world, right? But we are not treating the crisis as, for example, the energy crisis in Europe that is now making countries justify a new coal mine in Germany. We're not treating that crisis in Pakistan equivalently to what's happening in Europe. And if you think about it, our communities have been facing natural disasters for decades, and it's only been exacerbated in the last couple of years.

Julia Chatterley: You know what? You've given me so much material there. I can go to Secretary Kerry on keeping oil and gas in the ground rather than talking perhaps emissions, because I think part of the reality is and the IEA said this, even if we hit the Paris climate targets, around half of our energy needs are still going to come from fossil fuels even by 2040. That's the reality we face. Or I could go to Germany and talk about coal, and I know Germany said that, look, we're still going to hit the targets for 2025, but it's tough to say to other nations, hey, you know, get your house in order when things are going in the wrong direction, energy security, irrespective.

So let's go there. Let's talk about this, but also with a prism, I think, as well of what's just been done in the United States with subsidies to fuel the technology to tackle this and the sort of concerted concerned response in Europe. Secretary Kerry?

John F. Kerry: Which one?

Julia Chatterley: Good question, my friend. You get to choose. You can talk about the IRA afterwards.

John F. Kerry: Fatih Birol of the IEA makes it very clear that if we wanted to, we can achieve the 45% minimum reduction the scientists have told us we must achieve by 2030. We could achieve it just by deploying renewables, not by opening up new fossil fuel projects. So, there is a fair amount of momentum, obviously, in the marketplace and in some very powerful businesses to continue business as usual. I also think we have to be honest about the other side of that ledger, which is we will continue to have gas particularly, some oil, because they're used in different kinds of products and therefore they will be drilled. And the issue is how do we use them? Gas per se, sitting in a tank is not a problem as long as the process of extracting it was green, which it isn't usually. But if it is, it's not the gas alone sitting there. That's the problem. It's how we use it. It's the burning of it, it's the by-product of it. And until we can capture those by-products, there's a certain responsibility that will fall on that industry to live up to the obligations that we've all agreed on.

Julia Chatterley: They need pushing harder?

John F. Kerry: They absolutely need to come to the table and be partners in this effort because we can't get there if those practices aren't changed as part of the doubt about where we're going. Will we capture emissions? You know, gas is an automatic 30 to 50% reduction in emissions just because it's gas. It's cleaner than oil and coal particularly. But once you burn it, you're still putting emissions up, which if we're going to get to net negative by 2050, even after the 2030, which we could achieve with only the renewables, you're still going to have to be reducing emissions at a fairly steep curve. Now there's a lot of work being done in CCUS: carbon capture utilisation and storage. There's a lot of work happening in battery longer term storage, in green hydrogen. And it may well be here the gas and oil industry better watch out in the sense that the marketplace is going to decide this. And if the price keeps going where it's going and these new technologies, they're going to be priced out of it. And that's why a lot of them are now doing R&D and developing in alternative, renewable and other possibilities. So it's just not a simple kind of answer except to say that we could be doing a much better job of holding people to a tough standard on the emissions, because the emissions are what are taking us in the wrong path.

Julia Chatterley: Target the emissions.

John F. Kerry: That and coal. Coal in Asia particularly, there's too much coal. Some new coal is being brought online today. That just shouldn’t be allowed. It is going to happen in a number of countries because that's all they have. It's the only way they keep their economies going. So we have to have an accelerated effort to guarantee we're abating and moving. We cut the deal with Indonesia last year, the JETP. We will be closing down some coal. We will be deploying additional renewables, but there's still too much coal. And to meet the curve, we got to go on a decline in emissions. We've got to be reducing coal at a faster rate.

Julia Chatterley: When do you cut the deal with China?

John F. Kerry: We're working on it. Right now.

Julia Chatterley: Okay. Just checking. Jesper, you were giving me the look. Do you want to make a comment?

Jesper Brodin: First of all, I think it's really not a race against technology. I would even argue not against finding capital. It's against the clock. So, we were late in realising what we have done. Back to what Helena was telling us, witnessing that whatever we do, even in the best scenario, we will have paid the price for previous generations’, ignorance and our own generation as well. So I think it's all about race against time.

I see with optimism from our own values chain in IKEA, where we have invested billions more than 3 billion to renewable wind, solar and a few years ago it was debated if that was smart. Today, I don't think anybody's debating that. And I wish we would have been even faster in deploying our plants. So there is a lot of, I think, really affirming of that. We are on the right track. We have the medicine and we can free ourselves from carbon. But as much as I would love to come back to the discussion on how do we address the issue of bringing up more carbon from the ground, how do we deal with that and how do we at the same time double up on investments for renewables? Because we know what the recipe is. And then, of course, to Helena's point, we need to spend much more time in realising the cost and the actions connecting to, you know, basically dealing with the consequences of adapting.

Julia Chatterley: Yeah. I have to say though, listening to that, I don't worry about the ignorance in our generation and generations past when these guys are in charge. I don't worry about that. We've just got to protect the planet and improve the situation until they get there.

Anna Borg: You know, but I very much agree with Jesper that both the technology, the knowledge and the capital is actually there. The question is, what do we do with it and how can we work in several dimensions at the same time. And maybe just to give a few examples on how we do that from a business perspective. I mean, first of all, we of course, transform our own business and our own asset portfolio, phasing out the fossil part of our business and making sure that we increase the investments into fossil-free technologies.

And we're mainly doing that by being one of the main offshore developers of wind in Europe. But we're also looking into investments of nuclear. And I think we need all the fossil free technologies to sort of manage this. But then I think it's important to look at it from a business sustainability point of view, because as a business you need to be sustainable financially, you need to be profitable in order to do good business, but you also need to be sustainable from a climate perspective. To me, it's not, you know, either or. So we are committed to be in line with the one and a half degree trajectory of the Paris Agreement. We have committed to be net-zero by 2040, not only in our own business, but in all parts of the value chain, scope one, two and three. And I think that that also, of course, includes biodiversity and other aspects of sustainability.

And I think the third thing that I would like to spend just one minute on is that we are looking into how to develop new business models together with industries that are emitting a lot of CO2 today, because I think that if you look at the business models and trend and maybe not the way they look today, you can actually accomplish a lot. We do for example, Fossil Free Steel, together with SSAB and LKAB, it's already there. It's working, it's on the market, but it needs scaling up. We do a pilot project on sustainable aviation fuel together with Shell, Scandinavian Airlines and LanzaTech, where we use captured carbon and green hydrogen in order to produce electric fuels. And we do similar things in cement and plastic. And I think then you can sort of unleash entire value chains rather than only looking at your other business, but do profitable business growth at the same time.

Julia Chatterley: It's such a great point. It can't be the core business. This cannot overtake the core business because you have to be a viable business first and this has to be adopted and almost automatic.

Anna Borg: It has to be integrated with the core business.

Julia Chatterley: Yeah, it does. It has to be synonymous, but it that's what I hear from the business community all the time. It's like, how do we balance the two and make them synonymous in that respect? I was going to ask you a question. Did they come to you very briefly or are you going to them? Are they coming to you and saying, 'look, help us, we need to fix this?' The clients that you're talking about.

Anna Borg: It differs in different areas. So when it comes to the steel, it was the steel company who had an idea and they sort of research sparring partners in order how to make that work in reality. And when it came to the sustainable aviation fuel, it was more on our initiatives. It differs. That's what happens when you meet the end for us like this and can have good conversations.

Julia Chatterley: People get ideas and those things grow. Jennifer you wanted to come in, so we have the coal situation. We have the coal question.

Jennifer Morgan: Lots of different things. I'm happy to talk about that. I also was kind of responding to this. You know, we can we can rest easy because we have people, young people who are now active and for me, it's our generation that has to take the action.

Julia Chatterley: Not rest easy, but, you know, give them a few years. Know over the decades. But we have to give them a planet to hand over. Sorry, I wasn't suggesting that we could rest on our laurels. Far from it, just to clarify.

Jennifer Morgan: So, I mean, I think just on what's happening in Germany, I think look, what the Russian war of aggression did was it was a huge wakeup call about, number one, dependency on one country for so many of your energy. And number two, a dependency on fossil fuels and the risks that come with that. And so what Germany has been doing is phasing out our imports of Russian fossil fuels. And in order to then meet our energy needs, we started with the largest renewable energy bill in our history. 80% renewables by 2030 will come online. And not only that, but also looking at these questions that Secretary Kerry was raising about permitting. So also moving from 7 to 2 years so that you can actually move that forward. Those are tough questions and the implementation of the renewable energy future.

We also are working on energy efficiency law. We've had to find other partners like Norway and certainly the Netherlands in importing gas. We will import less gas at the end of this and have an earlier phase out of fossil fuels than before the Russian war of aggression.

We also because of the war, had to have some coal-fired power plants in reserve, which is an incredibly painful decision to make. But our coal phaseout, North Rhine-Westphalia, will be 2030 working on 2030 in the east four villages were saved. One was not. Incredibly difficult situation, incredibly difficult. Understand completely the frustration and of youth and for me it's a signal I think not just for Germany but if you have that level of engagement from young people, that's not going away either. And to me as a decision maker, right, those voices, we talk about vulnerable communities. We talk about that, in our country, that's often youth. And we actually have a Supreme Court finding in Germany that found in favour of youth that we had to reduce emissions sooner. Therefore, the 2045 greenhouse gas binding target. So we're on the case. We've had to make some very difficult decisions. I have confidence, I think Minister Habeck has that we will get there also on climate.

I think what Germany has been through in the middle of this crisis on energy and what we thought we might be seeing last summer and where we are now, which is in a stable situation, working on climate and energy security, gives me some security that we can also do that as a society on climate because we have to take care of the low-income population. We had to make sure that that is there. And that's a societal conversation that we need to be having with business, but also with youth, with elderly, with the whole society. That's the conversation that's needed.

Julia Chatterley: Concerted industrial policy, government policy matching and working together. Jesper?

Jesper Brodin: No, I just wanted to build on what Jennifer was speaking about. I think one of the challenges and maybe the myths also that we need to bust this when it comes to people, the amount of people out there. So we know from our research in the key and it's been verified by other institutes as well, that the concern which is a good thing, the global concern, is on a very high level. It doesn't matter if you go to China, if you go to Sweden, if you go to the US. The concern for climate is out there. Seven out of ten in our statistics are deeply concerned. Then comes an interesting and sometimes maybe worrying fact how many are prepared to pay for the shift we need to do. And in our research it's 3%. I heard BCG referred 3 to 9%. So maybe that reflects also our customer group.

And the common misunderstanding here is that people don't care. That is wrong. People simply don’t have the money. So they expect us as government leaders, as corporate leaders, of course, to solve it. If you're a single mother living in 55 square metres trying to figure out life, maybe you work double shifts, etc. Obviously it's the wrong thinking for us to invite you to be part of the to pay a premium. And here I think comes even if it's difficult in reality, in certain aspects in general, we have to believe that wasteful use of resources is costly, smart use of resources, whether it's energy, whether it's material, it must be smart from a cost perspective. So I think what I'm trying to really work with is in order to get there in time, which was your first question, we need to tie it to the new economy. We need to transform the economy. And we know today we can do a lot, the corporate community, we can do a lot, you do a lot. But to a certain extent, we also need a totally different collaboration with the leaders of policymakers basically around the world. Help us shift subsidies to the right places, incentivise and make us move faster. And it will happen.

Julia Chatterley: I mean, we know the demand growth in the coming decades is all going to be in emerging developed markets. The Western world, the rich nations, may be saying in certain cases they don't have the money. Well, we need to flood them with money, too. Jennifer, I know you just wanted to make a point that very quickly, just a quick one.

Jennifer Morgan: I mean, I totally agree. And I think that is why we need a social ecological transformation. And I think that there are very real conversations now with countries, developing countries. That's where the finance question comes in: reforming the international financial institutions to create a different alternative economic pathway there. And countries who are here from developing countries are open. They want it. They don't want an extractivist economy anymore.

Julia Chatterley: Secretary Kerry, we just talked about this on television about the idea of, and it's got to come down to the IMF and the World Bank ultimately, just on this point and the idea that the shareholders need to have a conversation and an understanding that they have to perhaps accept more risk, they have to accept with that risk comes loss in order to work with the private sector and get more private sector money in to emerging markets, to developing nations to develop technologies. And the upside there is profits to, let's be clear, start-ups the technologies that we've been talking about are the biggest shareholders at the likes of the World Bank and the IMF. To Jennifer's point, ready to take a little bit more risk and accept that that might mean some losses and also some profits. Let's be clear, too. Are they ready?

John F. Kerry: Absolutely. I think they're hungry, impatient, and I think there will be considerable dialogue about this and effort made over the course of the next few months. The spring meetings of the bank are in April, the World Bank and the banks come together in Washington. We are the largest shareholder, the United States, but our other sister and brother shareholders are critical — Germany, France, Britain, UK, Italy, Spain and so forth. I think every single one of them that I've talked to is really impatient to get reform because that reform, which will not require profound change in the charter, will not take away their triple-A rating, has the ability, if you follow the rules, but do it the right way to significantly increase the amount of money that is available. Concessional lending. But let me just point out something here so people understand this connection. When I say money, money, money, money. I heard by something quoted yesterday as I got to sound like Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.

Julia Chatterley: I actually sang it today like an Abba song.

John F. Kerry: But look, here's the reality. You have big financial institutions. They play by rules all around the world. Different in some place, but they play by rules.

They also have clients. I mean, the money BlackRock has, for instance, is the vast majority is owned by individuals, by entities, and they want that money treated in a certain way. And everybody has a fiduciary responsibility, those who manage money or invest money. And you can't just throw it away. And nor will they allow that to happen competitively between them. So you have to find a way to be able to motivate that money to see the virtue of investing in one of these slightly riskier conceivably, but not altogether.

So let's look at the other side of the ledger. You have countries in Africa that desperately want to be able to do better by their citizens, and they want to be able to provide them energy. They want to create jobs. But to do that, they have to develop. And this is a fundamental development challenge, which is historically understandable. You don't have a revenue stream. You can't go to the market. So you have to find cheap money. You have to find money that's either giveaway money, philanthropy, money or budget money from Germany, which is quite incredible, put amazing money last year into the deal with Egypt, couldn't have done it without Germany saying we're going to put up know €100 billion — not a hundred billion excuse me, it was 100 million. That combined with others to get to about 500 and that leverage, that gives you the ability to de-risk the deal because those entities can take the first losses which allows the people managing the money or owners of the money to say, okay, we can do this now. We're not going to be last in line for repayment. We may even be first in line depending on how you structure it. So this is the magic that we need is to unleash those trillions of dollars that are looking for good investments, but they're looking for bankable investments. And there's a distinction here. So with the combination of blended finance, you have public money, philanthropy money, money that may be concessionary and we talk about that like the World Bank, etcetera. And you add that to the larger sum of money that will actually make the deal happen, which can make money. And so if you have a 25 year PPA, a power purchase agreement, at a certain tariff that may increase with inflation or whatever, you can invest in that and pension funds can feel safe investing in that.

And there are plenty of kinds of deals that produce that. Revenue producing transportation, for instance, you pay for transportation, water treatment facilities, you pay for the water in certain places, electricity, you pay for the electricity. So any of those revenue streams that we could now harness the energy of that motive to make some money to feel safe, that’s how we will accelerate this this operation. And we're trying very, very hard to find ways to augment that pool of money that can leverage the other money. You get $1,000,000,000, let's say leveraged. That can be six, seven to ten billion dollars, which you then are investing to create this transformation. So, this is doable. No question in my mind. We're working on a new structure where we've called the ETA, which is an emissions transition accelerator, which would allow a company to actually buy a credit. Particularly important right now, because some companies have been really good actors and they've gotten to about 80, 85, 90% of scope one, but they can't do the last 10%. Why? Because there aren't enough electric vehicles to purchase. So there isn't a smart grid to be able to take part in.

So, until that happens, you don't want to lose those people from being able to be part of this transition. So if you to let them buy a credit temporarily for a number of years only for the purpose of reducing those coal emissions or the fossil fuel emissions and deploying renewables, that's virtuous. I've been an environmentalist all my life. I opposed them when they were not thought out and there weren't any guardrails. But it's possible to do this in a way that gets you some cash, which you then use to leverage further reductions while you're bringing the other things online that help those companies to be, you know, fully performing.

Julia Chatterley: This is the hallelujah moment because this is how you get from A to B in my mind, because you scale the money that is available. And I hope we get to the point where there's too much money and too few products and we're like, where can we put this money? Because I think that would be the ultimate first class problem. We're going to come back to this in a second because Helena, I want to ask you what you think, because this is something that could be incredibly transformative. Does this give you more hope and confidence? And be honest, if the answer is no, it's okay.

Helena Gualinga: I think that when I hear a lot of these conversations, I think, you know, it's very business first and then we'll deal with climate and then we'll deal with biodiversity loss. And as a secondary consequence, we might save the planet. And that needs to be reversed. First comes life, first comes planet. You can do whatever you want after that.

Julia Chatterley: Can they come all together? Because the world flows on money.

Helena Gualinga: I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that yet. I've only seen profit being prioritised above a healthy planet and the well-being of people. And I think it's something that the head of the UN said this morning was that, you know, the business model is not inclined with the survival of humanity and that's something that he said in this very forum this, this morning. And, you know, putting business first is exactly what has led us to the point that where we are right now.

And I think that, you know, especially coming from the Amazon rainforest, we have thousands of hectares of pristine rainforest. And the only ask that we have is to let the forest stay up, right? Let the forest stay standing. That is the most simple solution that we can find. We find that solution in nature. It's already there. And the technology, it's great, but it's not a priority. It's not what's going to solve the climate crisis, not what's going to solve all these issues that we're facing on the ground.

And I think that in this very building, we have people that are enabling those crimes against humanity and against planet. And, you know, let's not get confused here. We’re talking about not expanding on fossil fuels. We're talking about not continuing to enable new fossil fuel development. That's what we were asking. We don't want any new oil wells. We don't want any new coal mines. We don't want anything any new fossil fuel development. I mean, the existing reservoirs, they are there and there is not much we can do about it. But for myself and for the next generation, we cannot allow to see decisions being made that is furthering the development of the fossil fuel industry. And this is going to lead to huge consequences on the ground. And we're already seeing that. When I walk in these hallways, when I'm sitting in these spaces, we really lack the sense of urgency on the ground. We really, really, really need to see it that way. It really comes up to, you know, really strong and ambitious leadership and decision making. Boldness.

Julia Chatterley: I'll defend business in one respect, in that I know a lot of CEOs who and this entire panel, quite frankly as well who care deeply and put a lot of money into philanthropy in trying to continue to hire more people and create jobs. And business has responsibilities in ways that they don't fulfil, but they also do a lot of good things and keep the economy moving. I did have one CEO, I will say, say to me today the biggest and best technology ever formed for carbon capture is a tree. Please protect the Amazon rainforest. To your point there. And I think it's an important point.

Helena Gualinga: It doesn't it doesn't solve the entire problem, though, because what we need is standing forest. Planting trees is a good initiative, but what we need to do is keeping, you know, pristine rainforest that has entire ecosystems alive. And we're talking about biodiversity. And that's what needs to be at the centre of the agenda. I think these conversations are really important. They are really, you know, essential. But we really need to be targeting and we need to be talking, looking at the bigger picture of the main issues and what we actually need to be solving.

Julia Chatterley: I'm going to take you at your word and say, okay, let's put all the focus now on renewable technologies, renewable energies. Secretary Kerry you and I talked the last time in Davos in May, and said promise me you'll get a deal done and you couldn’t make a promise, but you did it. And I think the United States needs congratulating for that to such an extent that the Europeans are complaining. And there is an irony there in that they were complaining about Donald Trump four years ago pulling the United States out of the Paris treaty and now they’re complaining when you actually do something about it.

Jesper Brodin: We’re complainers.

John F. Kerry: I understand. Honestly, I think Jennifer would tell you and President Biden would tell you where there are some concerns, we want to try to work with our friends to work through those concerns. But writ large, taking out one provision here or there that may affect automobiles or one thing or another, the basics of the legislation are exactly what we need. And it's going to have a profound and it's already having a profound impact because it's providing incentives to go out and do the discovery and do the R&D and deploy these new technologies. And, you know, I think our point of view is we need more of it. Europe already spends an enormous amount of money, but let's go, folks. All of us need to be doing even more. Frankly, we wanted to do more than what we've already done in the Inflation Act, which is extraordinary. President Biden started at a trillion plus. That's at 369. It's actually going to be a lot more than that because it's not it's not amount-conscribed. It's how many how many people qualify for the tax credit. So, you could go up to 800 billion, conceivably. That's going to kick things into gear.

Julia Chatterley: Jennifer, very quickly, Europe do more. Stop complaining, to Jasper’s point?

Jennifer Morgan: Well first of all, we have US legislation on climate. Congratulations. It's incredibly important. And that is something to celebrate in a major way. And I think I fully share- we're working it through. And I think you see also a lot of collaboration on technology and standards between Europe and the US. And yeah, game on.

Julia Chatterley: We talked about a race to the bottom, though, in terms of emissions rather than anything else.

Jennifer Morgan: Seriously, I think Ursula don der Leyen made an important speech yesterday. Moving. I think that's this issue of needing collaboration and ways of collaborating also on things like a bio ecological bio economy, which, you know, that is good for indigenous peoples and local communities. But then also the competition that drives things forward, the pace and scale of change. But we need it.

Julia Chatterley: Healthy competition. Anna?

Jennifer Morgan: It needs to be fair, but it will be.

Anna Borg: Yeah, I would like to emphasise three things, because I think that a lot of the solutions are there and a lot of things are in motion and I think that we are sometimes forgetting that. So, the question is how can we get the pace up? Because the pace is definitely not where it needs to be. And I think in order to do that, we need to be both short term and long term at the same time. And I would like to take the European energy crisis as an example here, because of course we are in the situation where we need to make sure that people can afford to heat their homes or run their store or their bakery or their business. But we also need to be long term in terms of the transformation that we need to do, because the root cause of the problem is a fundamental gap between demand and supply.

And there is a demand for a lot of fossil free technologies. And the First Movers Coalition that Secretary Kerry is one of the initiators of is one very clear example of that. But what we need is now a lot more supply of fossil free energy production in order to be able to be competitive going forward. And I think there's a lot of good ideas. In the European Union, but also on national level. But I don't think that the implementation is fast enough. So, I think that there needs to be a stimulation of investments, a regulatory stimulation, of investments, rather than sort of hampering them, because we need a lot more of these fossil free technologies. I mean, we are we are building additional offshore wind power, additional nuclear, additional battery storages etc. And we need more of that. But we need it much, much faster.

Julia Chatterley: Are you saying too much red tape?

Anna Borg: Way too much red tape. And it doesn't only go for energy generation, it goes for distribution of energy and it goes for industry decarbonisation. and I think that it's not about, for me, it's very important but it's not about being profitable or sustainable. I think it's impossible as a company in the future to be competitive unless you are sustainable from a climate perspective. And I think that it's perfectly possible to live a modern and comfortable life with a sustainable footprint. And I think it's up to us in the business community to really offer attractive and affordable customer propositions to enable that.

Julia Chatterley: That turns it on its head to go from a conversation where it's like it's going to make me less profitable, to be more sustainable, to being an essential tool, to be profitable and to be a viable business if you're not doing this. Jesper, you're one of the chairs of the Climate Alliance, and you were asked several years ago to do this and you said no, despite your morals, your views. And then it changed. Talk to me about the evolution of the conversations that you are having with the private sector, because I do want to talk about greenwashing. Greenwashing, tree hugging, actually, we'll come back to that.

Jesper Brodin: So I told you that in private.

Julia Chatterley: Sorry, was the off the record?

Jesper Brodin: I have to say one thing, I think you shared Helena is what's right. So, until we close the gap to 1.5 degrees, you're right. You're right. Also, after because, of course, we are learning as we go along, that is not enough only to address energy. It's about materials, it's about nature. It is about people. As we are progressing, of course, there are new insights, new hindrance, new surprises along the way, and I'm sure that's going to continue. But then so the story in my case I will say I was curious to learn from the WEF Climate Alliance, and I decided not to be part of it because there was no commitment and there was no agenda. These are this is a couple of years ago. And then the question was if we would change that, would that be interesting? And then, of course, it is hard to say no.

It's an incredible source of inspiration to me to see a group of CEOs that are today 127 CEOs. If you bonded the carbon footprint of that group of leaders, would it be a country, it would be the third biggest in the world. So then you say, of course, that's an issue but here it is. This is a group of voluntary leaders that have decided to be climate leaders who are either committed to Paris, on the way, not only to make a commitment, but actually to do the plans. And today we had the discussions around how, nothing else. Only on how do we break through, what are the barriers we need to move? How do we meet up with policymakers? What type of investments do we need to make? So that gives me a lot of hope that we haven't yet seen the momentum of all the things that are actually being planned.

And I would say the general sentiment is the biggest risk today is not to jump on the train of the transformation, which is, of course, risky for any mention. The biggest risk is to be left on the platform because you will not only lose out of the economic benefits, you will lose out from a taxation point of view, I'm sure. But you're going to lose out from a brand, from a recruitment of people in the end of the day, looking yourself in the mirror also. So, I think if anyone is still on the platform, it's time to get on the train and doing so you don't have all the answers. So if [inaudible] would ask me questions that would come to point us, I don't know. I don't have the answers, but I'm willing to take the, you know, the challenge and the responsibility to make sure we close the gap and get to 1.5.

Julia Chatterley: A leap of faith, because there has to be a lot of that.

Anna Borg: And that's always the case. It is life. You take risks. That's what businesses and business leaders do.

Julia Chatterley: And also had you said yes without there being any commitment, that would have been greenwashing in my case as well. So I think it's a credit to you to say, what is this going to represent and what is this going to do? And then I'll jump on board and not be left on the platform or vice versa. Once I know we're actually going achieve something. Secretary Kerry, can I ask you about this role of government private sector engaging? It's pacing on this as well, because the message we're hearing is for the most part, I think there are corporates out there that want to do more. It's not an ignorance. It's in some ways, I think, a lack of information, a fear factor of the red tape, the amount of paperwork, the amount of numbers, hiring that we have to do in a slowdown in an economic slowdown kind of environment. How do we get above that concern for the private sector that this is going to represent a huge burden that, quite frankly, I don't have time for because there is still this gap.

John F. Kerry: There is a gap you're absolutely correct. And bureaucracy is the enemy of all of us. We don't have time to do business as usual. So we've got to break through. And good governance has got to step up and provide the framework within which you're certainly protecting the interests of your citizens at large, but you're also facilitating the ability of business to deploy its capital and to make things happen here. As I said earlier, you cannot take ten years with endless litigation to decide whether or not you're going to deploy a wind farm in a place where it obviously makes sense and where other people are deploying in some way. But government, you know, there's a partnership here. I think for the most part in parts of the world, governance has improved in the last 15, 20 or 25 years. There are places where it hasn't and they are being left behind. I mean, that is the problem for them. One of the reasons that certain parts of the world have not been developed is you have a combination of political risk and currency risk and governance risk, regulatory risk, all of which combine to say to somebody who wants to deploy their capital, I'm just not going to do it there. It's too risky. And I know there's a sensitivity in many quarters of an impatience about, you know, that kind of reality. But it is a reality.

Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government except for everything else. And that's kind of the world we look at today. So it's not perfect. It's never really going to be perfect. But you've got to work out the best you can. I think it's remarkable what we're doing today. I think we're moving at a much faster speed, but we need government. I mean, for instance, what the US did with the Inflation Reduction Act was basically create a framework which invited people to use their capital in certain ways, didn't tell them they have to, didn't pick winners, didn't pick losers, but created a production tax credit and investment tax credit. And people could go out and do their thing and compete in the marketplace. But you've got to facilitate that.

On the other hand, I've come to believe after the years I've been in public service and when I left being secretary of state, I was convinced no government is going to solve this problem. Let's understand that. No government has enough money to plug those trillions and do what we have to do. So like it or not, we must find a way to create the incentives that bring the private sector to the table. This is a partnership that must be played out in order to win, and I believe the private sector is ultimately going to do this. I've met a bunch of young entrepreneurs who are doing amazing things in start-ups. They're taking risk, their investors are taking risk and they're producing new batteries that may have a longer life that allows you to balance your entire grid. I've seen the folks who are chasing green hydrogen, people who are putting together I mean, look at the people who've been working on fusion for years. Talk about taking risk. I can remember when I went to the Senate in the 1980s and we have a big fusion program. Massachusetts is still going and is now one of the lead ones. So it’s Commonwealth Fusion at MIT and they've had a breakthrough. But other than some federal money that's been put in there, a lot of people risk their money and put it there because they believe ultimately they're going to have a product that can produce revenue and you make some money.

So the private sector is absolutely key to our ability to be able to win this battle. And the private sector is going to produce green hydrogen and now we've created incentives to help make that happen. So I really feel more confident about the direction we're moving in The marketplace of the world is moving, folks. You’ve gotta get excited about this. This is going to be the biggest transformation economically since the industrial the industrial revolution. Absolutely. Four and a half, five billion users of energy in the world today. That's going to go up to nine to ten billion in the next 30 years, people are going to demand electricity, power, service, heat, comfort. And so, this is a marketplace and it has the ability to be able to move very, very rapidly. I think if we will create the right framework and unleash private sector ingenuity and innovation and capacity to get this done.

Julia Chatterley: And also, this doesn't happen without China being on board, by the way. But you've told me you're working on a deal with them.

John F. Kerry: China is essential. We don't get there without China reducing emissions and being part of this.

Julia Chatterley: You’re going to work on it?

John F. Kerry: I think something is in transition and that might happen.

Julia Chatterley: You've made a promise now, so I'm going to hold you accountable. We have two minutes left, Jennifer, I know you wanted to say something? Can you do it in like 15 seconds?

Jennifer Morgan: I can, because, yes, we need the frameworks and so we need the policy frameworks. And so, I am impatient because I think companies, if they're frustrated with process, they need to engage in fixing it. The policymakers that are there who will testify on the floor of the Senate, who will be in the parliaments, who will get the policies passed to create those frameworks, that is essential to get that working together, because then you can move the money into the space.

Julia Chatterley: Okay, I want a show of hands. Who believes that we will hit the Paris targets or at least kind of is a little bit more optimistic than when we came into the room at the beginning, a show of hands. Even if you're lying to me, I love it. Congratulations, guys.

Jesper Brodin: Give us another hour.

Julia Chatterley: I'm ready for it. We have one, one and a half minutes left. Helena, I say to you, tell us why we should care. Because Secretary Kerry did make a very important point earlier, and that was that talking about this to the outside world, you're a tree hugger, you're a crazy liberal. There's still this perception that somehow too many people in the world aren't on board with the need to tackle this. And I think you're the most passionate of everybody here about doing this. Give us the reason, give the non-believers the reason for why we have to protect our planet. You’ve got one minute.

Helena Gualinga: As the probably only person on this panel born in the 21st century. It's great to have the last word because this generation deserves it. We're talking about solutions right now. I was talking about how the only thing we want is a living forest. The standing forest. And indigenous people have been the people that have been protecting these forests. It's a great contribution that needs to be recognised in every single space because if we ignore that, we will see, you know, continuous human to human rights violations in Indigenous communities, the same communities that are on the front lines of climate change, the same communities that are on the front lines of the extractive industries, the same communities that are making the biggest contribution in climate mitigation.

And what is it that actually makes Indigenous communities do this work? It's not business. It's not investments. It's not everything that we've spoken about here. It's a mindset. It's a relationship with nature. And that conversation is essential in this, because if we don't integrate that into this conversation, then we're losing, you know, direction. In my community, we call it the living forest. We see everything in the forest as a living being. It's a relationship of mutual respect and non-extractive. And this is why we have dedicated our lives to the protection of the Amazon rainforest. And that's why when we're talking about climate, we need to make sure that indigenous people are at the centre of decision making. We need to make sure that we're there from the beginning to the end, not through consultation processes, not through, you know, some vague participation. It needs to be at the centre of a solution and we don't see that today. We don't see that direction to where we should be going today.

John F. Kerry: Can I give you some encouragement?

Helena Gualinga: I mean we're ending right now, but I'll just add this and please do after that. The urgency of the youth, we put it together in the letter, Greta, Vanessa and Luisa and I urging oil CEOs to phase out of fossil fuel, you know, immediately. And we're here at Davos to deliver that. We launched a few days ago. We have over 900,000 signatures that are supporting it in a matter of days. It shows the commitment of civil society, it shows the commitment of youth and where we want to be going.

And I actually want to end this with with an ask of the climate envoys I'm sharing this panel with, you know, the IEA, the IPCC, the Secretary-General has been urging every single decision maker in the world to, you know, to commit to no new fossil fuels, no new fossil fuel exploration. And yet these decisions are being made, you know, and completely ignoring this pleading almost from younger generations. We've been advocating for it for years and we're still going into the wrong direction. Can we walk out with a successful Davos and actually say this is the commitment we have, we will not explore new fossil fuel? Is that a commitment that you can make to this new generation?

Julia Chatterley: Secretary Kerry, we do get lost. It's practicalities versus passion and love and the heart of what we're trying to protect here in the planet. Secretary Kerry, I'm breaking all the rules.

John F. Kerry: No. I want to be really quick. Look, I love and respect your passion. And your voice is really critical in this. But I want you to know that today I met with your environment minister of Brazil, newly appointed by President Lula. We talked with Marina Silva about the forest, how we will have a different a new approach. President Lula is coming to Washington in a few days. I am going down after that. We're going to be going into the forest. We're going to be putting together with Indonesia and with the DRC, which has the Congo Basin, an entirely new approach. Tomorrow, we're having a meeting with all of those players Indonesia, Brazil and my co-chair of a new entity called the Forest, the Forest Protection Partnership.

Helena Gualinga: Make sure to include Ecuador, my country also.

John F. Kerry: And we are we are going to be all inclusive and we are going to try to come up to save all of those great basins with a new approach, an entirely new approach. The minister from Ghana is my co-chair of this new entity, this partnership. And I think you're going to see a renewed effort, which I hope will give people some faith. And by the way, a lot of businesses are stepping up and saying, we're going to put money into this effort to save the forest. We know there are 25 million people there who are indigenous, who don't have a livelihood. It's going to take some money to help provide them. We get it. And I want you to have a sense that if you work at it, sometimes these systems can actually produce something beneficial and we're going to do our best.

Julia Chatterley: We owe you a better planet. We'll work on it. The panel, thank you. Thank you.