I'm Suzanne DiBianca at Salesforce.
I'll stand up and say hello.
I want to thank everyone for coming out this morning.
I hope everyone is enjoying
their time so far at the Spring Davos.
I learned last night it's Davos business casual,
which I took advantage of today with my sneakers, and so,
you all have freedom for the rest of the week.
Anyway, it's lovely to have you all here,
and we want this morning to be really conversational
We were all sitting in many presentations
during the day, and so we have some sort of
fire starter conversations
with some incredible folks, and then we're going to ask for
more conversation at the table,
and then sort of a report back to the team.
So really just consider this to be
opportunity to meet each other,
to talk about what you are excited about,
and, you know, we call this sort of the Net Zero breakfast.
This is a big task that we have in front of us, all of us,
and it's going to require a lot of innovation to get there.
It's going to require a lot of hard work.
It's going to require innovation,
and what we'd like to hear from you,
and what we'd like to hear from our panelists also is,
you know, what are we excited about?
So we have a incredible group of entrepreneurs
with us today from UpLink.
UpLink is an initiative of the World Economic Forum
that we helped to co-found with Deloitte,
who has really sourced an incredible group of entrepreneurs
all over the world, working in many, many different areas,
in carbon markets, in restoration, et cetera.
So you'll get to meet some of those eco printers,
as we call them, this morning.
And so without further ado,
I'd like to introduce the panelists,
and now I'm going to sit as we do that.
To my left is Peter Lacy,
who is responsible for sustainability services
within Accenture and corporate responsibility,
To his left is Jessica Fries
who's an incredible executive with A4S,
and she'll tell you a little bit
about what that organization does.
And then our partner Alister from Sylvera,
who again is a incredible entrepreneur
and one of our portfolio companies in our investment fund.
So with that, I'm just going to kind of kick off the conversation
just with the first question being about,
you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, who you are,
what you're up to, how you think about Net Zero,
and we'll just go sort of down the line.
Brilliant, thank you, Suzanne.
Firstly, oh,
Do we have the one mic only?
Oh, I'm the only one with iron mic.
I dunno if that's a, a message.
To be short, that's normally the message to the Brits.
So listen, fantastic to see such a great group
at breakfast at Davos after the first night.
That's the first thing, and fantastic to see
so many friends and also some new faces.
And thank you very much, Suzanne, for putting this together.
It is genuinely a real pleasure to have said
that sustainability cloud was our first partnership
in terms of measuring ESG and really trying to put data
and measurement and insight and tools
at the heart of the way that we think about
managing sustainability, because I think
that's a massive, massive agenda that,
for any of us in large corporates, is still very,
so I think that's a good conversation piece
I'm a member of Accenture's global executive board
and the first executive board member in our industry
because of the importance of the topic.
And I know you said at the same level, it's at Salesforce,
and I think probably some of the folks here
are now sitting at the same level.
And I think that's been a great catalyst
for actually being at the top table and thinking about
how sustainability isn't just an issue
that is about values, which it is,
but is actually increasingly about value
and how you think about competitive advantage
and how you think about strategy.
But also I think, which is what I am,
for my sins, recovering strategist,
the, but also because I think this Davos, in particular,
that actually this whole ESG agenda has moved
onto a new level, which is about
the future of globalization,
the future of stakeholder capitalism,
but all of 'em, even more than that,
a very urgent and pressing set of issues,
particularly around energy, food and commodities
in terms of inflation and prices,
in terms of actually managing
resilience in businesses,
and so that's how I frame it
management committee member as a,
someone who's trying to grow a double digital business
in services and technology,
and as someone who's responsible for looking after
700,000 people across 110 markets,
soon to be a million people within 18 months.
So, you know, it's been a turbulent couple of years, right?
For all of us, so to be back together
and to be able to share thoughts and to compare notes
on what's working and what's not working
is really exciting, but the pandemic,
Afghanistan, Ukraine, you know, I think has put the accent
on the E the S and the G,
and the importance of it in the boardroom.
And I think the, you know, what doesn't get measured
doesn't get managed, and what doesn't get turned into data
and then into insight and then into action
and then into outcomes, doesn't create value
for business and doesn't create impact.
So if you ask me what's my focus,
that's my focus.
Yeah. (laughs)
Thank you, that's quite--
It's not anyone without
the mic, right, that was
Yeah. (laughs)
and it's been incredible partnering with Accenture.
You know, we have solutions we can bring, services.
And Jessica, tell us a little bit about A4S,
and you've been around for
how many years now?
Nearly, nearly two decades.
Okay, really out in front.
So we, we really, yeah,
we're a charity that His Royal Highness,
the Prince of Wales, first set up back in 2004.
So he's really been a front runner on the,
the sustainability agenda.
But one of the things that he spotted was
the essential role that finance played
in a sustainable future and, Peter, you touched on
a few of the kind of themes that are really key there.
Of course, we need the information to drive decisions.
We need the money to invest in the kind of transition.
And so our work is really working end-to-end
with all parts of the finance system.
So we do a lot with investors,
but one of our biggest programs is the CFO community.
And it's been a real pleasure to work with Salesforce
on particularly that agenda.
So we have a CFO leadership network globally and
your former CFO Mark Hawkins helped us to set up
our U.S. chapter, but we've got,
we've got networks really around the world.
And working with that CFO community,
interesting seeing that shift in mindset.
And, Peter, you touched on the difference
between values and value.
One of the, one of the things that we've heard a few
of the CFOs we work with really thinking about
how do you get value from values,
and I think that that point that the values
need to really underpin the action,
and I think with something like Net Zero,
it's really fundamental having that kind of mindset.
We do a lot in terms of shifting
the tools, the approaches
that finance users to support,
whether it's Net Zero or other social
and environmental outcomes and really thinking of Net Zero
in the context of the nature crisis
and the need for a just transition, I think,
is really fundamental, and if you look at
the set of crises that are really starting to bite,
some quite scary outcomes over the next year
from a human perspective, as well as,
of course, environmental and economic.
Last year, I think we found that
a lot of the focus was still on commitments.
So in the build up to COP26,
a lot of organizations, whether the big investors,
the big banks, but also the big corporates we work with
really making those commitments to Net Zero,
now everyone is stepping back and thinking,
"How on earth am I going to get there?"
How do I turn what might be a target,
even if somebody had said a 2030 target,
that's still, from business perspective,
a long way away, so how do you bring that forward
into what needs to happen in the next year,
the next five years, and how do you really make sure
And those kind of things are really
the bread and butter of the finance world.
How do you set strategic plans?
How do you really make sure you've got
the numbers to be able to track progress?
How do you make sure you're aligning your budgets
So that's really the focus of what we are doing now
is that shift from commitment to action
and really making sure that we help to upscale finance
to support the solutions that we need.
Yeah, and I've been incredibly impressed with
the finance and investment community overall.
The chair of our sustainability programs
for sales versus the CFO started under Mark Hawkins,
but now continuing under our new CFO, Amy Weaver,
and when you do this right, it's like a triple win.
You know, you can save money.
You can get to your sustainability goals
and sort of reduce your emissions
and really engage your employees in a holistic way.
So I've been very grateful for the finance community,
especially in a place like the United States,
where our regulatory environment has been lagging.
And Alister, I'd love to hear from your perspective.
Maybe you can tell everyone a little bit
about the work that Sylvera does,
how you're contributing to the Net Zero conversation,
and you know, how they might would think about
partnering with an organization like Sylvera.
Amazing, thanks, and thanks for having me here,
Yeah, I mean, fundamentally we try to help businesses
solve for the net part of the Net Zero equation.
So at our core, we provide
accurate, essentially as close to definitive as possible,
data on the quality of carbon credits.
That's really important if businesses want
to truly be Net Zero, they need to
make sure they do their research on what they're purchasing.
I think it's really interesting
hearing you talk about going from commitment to reality.
this sort of the leadership level,
CEO kind of commitments typically,
to Net Zero before the implications of that are realized.
And then you have the teams underneath the leadership then
finding, looking for tools, looking for solutions
to actually enact that in practice.
And for our users, the first thing is to
make sure that the offsets they're purchasing
as part of a Net Zero journey are legitimate and sound,
but then the horizon very quickly shifts then to
what's their carbon liability and any business
with a meaningful spend on carbon in this year,
maybe some of our users will be spending
tens of millions of dollars by the end of,
by 2030, they're going to be spending hundreds
of millions of dollars, and very often,
that message hasn't got up to the leadership,
but it's amazing to see sustainability represented
that our data helps facilitate those conversations
between sustainability and finance
and the leadership as well because if you don't have
that loop, the transition isn't going to happen,
and it won't be managed properly,
and it will cause all sorts of
sort of undesirable consequences, yeah.
And do you think this is sort of for,
you know, anyone who wants to jump in?
This is a conversation we started last night, but,
you know, if there is a sort of
recessionary environment globally,
do you think that is going to be a barrier
Do you think it's going to, you know, accelerate it?
Do you think it's going to slow it down?
What is your sort of take?
I mean, so I mean, my--
Check question.
I mean, no, no, from my perspective,
I think actually we're at a juncture.
I think it's an interesting juncture.
I mean, if we're really, really honest about it.
Yeah, as I said, my, I'm, you know, sort of
strategy, my background, although I've kind of had
a twin track of sustainability for 26 years
alongside strategy, and I think we are at
a real juncture in time.
Mm-hm.
I think we're at a crossroads
on lots of different fronts.
and I think, unfortunately, most of the,
most of the focus so far has been on energy crisis and,
at least around the world, and that's not the crisis.
The crisis is an energy crisis mixed with a food crisis
mixed with a potential commodities crisis as well.
Both commodities that keep our economies flowing
but also the commodities required for low carbon transition.
So for any one of you who's involved, you know,
lithium is up 480% this year, right?
So, you know, if you were thinking about lithium
as a battery storage technology,
we're going to have to find new ways to innovate lithium,
which fortunately there are ways.
Yeah, but, but it's not easy.
So I think we're facing a really interesting dynamic
just at the time when we're at a major global war.
We've just finished a pandemic
and, you know, it's been a,
it's been a tough couple of years for most executives.
I mean, I know for us closing up, I mean,
personally having closed our Russia business
in the third day of the war and having had to get
450 Ukrainian families out of Ukraine,
you know, there's a lot going on across
the ESG spectrum, right?
Yeah.
We're talking about Net Zero, but it's, you know,
I think we have to sort of take that into context,
and the food crisis is a derivative of the energy crisis
for example, I, I'm a farmer by background in the UK,
and we are paying five times what we were last year
for fertilizer because it's a derivative of petrochemicals,
and that's true around the world.
So I think we have to be realistic.
I think the critical thing
to address what is a very real inflationary environment
and a very costly energy price
that's going to feed through to other parts
of companies' value chains
and also the communities where they do business,
particularly if you're in Middle East or North Africa,
for the Ukraine situation.
It's going to be an incredibly painful summer.
I think what we need to, for me,
the question is how do you create
a compressed transition on Net Zero?
So this needs to be done quickly, effectively,
and across the board, across supply demand and storage.
has to be gathered very quickly,
to your point for the CFO, right?
Because the CFO at the moment is under a lot of pressure
because for a lot of businesses, energy matters.
And actually even the CEO conversations,
it's the first time we've had real CEO conversations
where the CEO is really like, "Whoa,
"that's a big item on my list in terms of cost."
So I think there's a lot of
precision, which I think things like sustainability cloud
help with in going into the energy efficiency space,
where you get very fast paybacks.
And I think the question is how do you create that dynamic,
all working to reinforce each other
but recognize the reality of the next two to three years,
which is going to be an incredibly challenging environment.
So going after energy efficiency,
going after quick paybacks,
going after all of the in-sequence things
that pay off quickly as part of that mix,
and then not losing your values
and north star, which is Net Zero,
and either building up the investment capacity
to make some of the bigger CapX decisions
you know, and some of the tougher decisions,
because it's going to be tough to make those
in the next couple of years,
I think.
I think that's right.
What do you think Jessica or Alister is like sort of,
looking at the global macroeconomic environment,
what are the challenges to getting to net zero?
And what are the opportunities that you see?
Well, you know, definitely I would agree with Peter.
most organizations are facing a really difficult outlook
finding the head space, the time,
I think, for some of the innovation and the change
that is needed, I think, for a lot of organizations
that is going to be difficult as well, but that said,
certainly from the, from the business community
and a lot of the investment community,
we are not seeing at the moment
we are seeing a really strong focus.
some of the regulatory change
that had already started to kick in,
and whether that's around things like
the reporting side of things, and, you know,
that may sound quite a technical kind of area, but actually,
it's the sort of thing that is really starting to
create a shift and really focus the mind of
certainly a lot of the CFOs and the investors
and others in the capital markets.
You've also seen a lot of the financial regulators really
starting to put in place some of the financial
the banking regulatory community,
you've got something called
the Network for Greening the Financial System.
They've started to ask questions about, you know,
Have you got somebody who's climate competent
looking at things like the pricing?
So I think you're starting to see some of that shift
That said, I think you've also got
a cost of living crisis in many economies
around the world, and I think from a policy perspective,
a more challenging policy environment.
So some of the policies that you think you might have seen,
you're not at the national level,
but at the, at the state, at the regional,
at the city level, I think you are still seeing
some of that shift happening.
Thank you.
So driving energy efficiency, amongst other things,
you're not seeing people step back, which is fantastic.
Alister, what are you seeing from a challenge perspective?
We don't see too much momentum being lost,
which is positive, I think, for similar reasons
for listed businesses, in particular,
the SEC proposed disclosure rules,
which basically cover emissions and offsetting.
that's a huge driver (laughs) for the kind of,
for finance or CFOs, in particular,
because we're going to be measuring businesses
and holding them accountable.
And the one thing that's fantastic
about Net Zero versus ESG is
it is fundamentally an accounting equation.
There's a, there's a grade slope of emissions reductions.
There's a ramp up of negative emissions,
and you can, well, right now, it's difficult to see
You can see if they've made a commitment,
but the commitments are difficult to compare.
When you have standardized mandatory disclosures,
then that light is going to be shined equally on everyone
and business is going to be held to account.
And I think that can help to drive
the transition because the asset owners and managers
are going to move their capital to the,
the least exposed for transition risk
and the ones who are head of the curve on Net Zero.
And that's going to have a, drive a virtuous circle
because their cost of capital will be lower
and the laggards, their cost of capital will be higher
and their credit, their credit risk will go up, and so this,
that feedback loop isn't actually
currently active at the moment, but it's,
it will kick in over the next few years.
And I think like the, the entities we engage with
who are kind of on the leading edge of the curve,
they kind of get this, and they want to cash in the benefit,
and, you know, the rest of the crowd is, like,
slowly catching up and it actually increasing
at an increasing rate we'd see, so
it's the economic drivers that will drive Net Zero
rather than the kind of purely, you know,
because it's a good thing in itself.
But, you know, and that's fine
as long as it happens, right?
As long as it happens.
I think, is critical, and whether that's being driven by
a regulatory environment or otherwise,
I think that that is, it builds trust.
It's really critical, and that's one thing
I think, you know, we're all thinking a lot about quality
as it relates to our offset program.
I mean, emissions reduction obviously paramount,
but for that which you can't,
I think we're saying obviously,
Delta and supply and demand
and then a real critical eye on quality.
And I think the work that you're doing
with LiDAR and satellite technology is brilliant
so I'm really excited to see
the innovations happening as well.
So before we sort of turn it back to the tables,
what are you excited about?
What are some of the innovations that are exciting to you?
I was very excited yesterday,
and I was all dressed up in red
and Simon Mulcahy criticized my dress code
and told me to tone it down
so I wore gray shoes and blue today
just to make sure that we kept it on an even level,
but I was really up for it yesterday,
but now today I'm much more realistic.
But on a serious note, and Simon played
a huge role working with me and Suzanne
in fostering our partnership, so credit to him,
you know, we can, we can see
where we are in the world as either,
you know, I'm not sure if this is on the record,
but the road to hell, right? (laughs)
Or we can see it as the greatest opportunity we've ever had
to truly rethink fundamentally systems that support
the Maslowian hierarchy of human needs, right?
And that's everything from food and nutrition to mobility
to, you know, a roof over your head to
a workplace that attracts you.
And, you know, look, if you just take Net Zero in isolation,
which you can't, but if you did, you know,
80% of emissions span buildings
and transport systems, right?
So 40% in buildings, 40% in transport systems,
24% for the end user, 40%, if you include
I think in times of crisis,
I know Jamie Dimon used the term Marshall Plan.
I'm going to be very, very clear that I used it before him,
but the, but it's a Manhattan Plan,
Marshall Plan-esque conversation potentially.
And in that situation where you see governments
through an existential crisis, so to give you in a sense,
it's the average prediction is that
civil unrest and government overturn,
even in a European economy, takes about 18 days
if you can't supply energy or you can't supply food.
I remember talking to Tony Blair about this,
you know, and it was a pretty public setting, you know,
the only time he ever feared losing control
was during the fuel crisis.
And so, you know, this is, if Europe in particular,
but it's going to spread, is existential.
So you have a fork in the road, right?
And you can choose to play short term games
about finding access to fossil fuels
from places you don't really want to go, right?
Or you can do that in the near term
as a necessity while really rethinking fundamentally
the systems upon which we rely
on the basis of Net Zero,
on the basis of low carbon,
on the basis of circular economy.
I mean, I'll just make a shout out for the circular economy.
For those who know me, it won't be a surprise,
54% of getting to the one-and-a-half degree
or two degree target and Net Zero
directly through the energy system,
through supply, demand and storage.
The rest has to come through
tackling biodiversity, oceans, forests,
you know, all of the embedded carbon in nature
and the sort of species loss, so we have to have
a much more integrated approach to thinking through
what it is that sustains us.
there are huge new markets opening up
for the companies that get this right.
On one hand, you know, there are new markets
emerging around mobility.
Look at the European automotive industry,
the number of companies who've committed
to never make another internal combustion engine after,
You look at the cost curves
You look at super concrete measures.
If you remember, when we launched our partnership,
we launched it with the quote with Johnson controls, right?
And the simple measures that you can take in your buildings,
all the simple measures you can take
in your logistics network to optimize it,
to change driver behavior,
to measure and manage the footprint
and drive efficiency, drive funds,
and there are so many new markets opening up in this space.
So to your point, you know, you go back to
the old Alfred Rappaport kind of shareholder value,
and you look at the cost line,
you look at the revenue line,
and then you look at the cost of capital,
and there's a lot to play for here, right?
Particularly, if you've got the precision,
which he just mentioned, of the data.
Yeah.
And the final thing I'll say
that I'm super positive about is that at Glasgow,
I texted, put your hand up if you watched "Hamilton."
Right, so the room where it happened, right?
I texted Julie Arceo and said,
"I think I was just in the room where it happened
IOSCO, which oversees all the securities exchanges
with the exception of the SEC,
but the SEC has to always do its own thing,
but it was broadly aligned.
And then with the European taxonomy, then with the IFRS.
for me in Glasgow, was the gap moment
where we have globally-agreed accounting principles.
And I think that's what happened in Glasgow.
We have started the journey
to globally-agreed ESG measurement principles.
And it came out of all the work that Mark,
that Julie, that, and Brian Moynihan deserves
I dunno if anyone from Bank of America is.
Probably the most humble, down-to-earth leader
you will ever meet, but he started that process really,
and put, you know, people's feet to the fire.
ISSB, make no mistake, is the gap moment
for measurement and transparency
and is going to put enormous pressure
through the organization to replatform,
retool, and reskill decision making.
That is a different economy.
When investors are measuring you
on the basis of your shareholder value
and your ESG, and they have the data behind it,
as a top 500, well, we pretty much only deserve
the top 500 or the top 2000.
Mike's been at the top 500, Tom (indistinct)
the top 2000 corporations in the world.
It'll take a while, but there'll be no excuse
in three years for a CFO to say,
"We decided not to report to the ISSB.
"We didn't really agree with it."
Like, you're like, what, right?
No, come on, so that's what
Yeah.
Growth markets, it's new opportunities,
being allowed to wear red again,
and being positive about sustainability.
There's loads of opportunity and lots of shifts taking place
that I think we can still be
very positive about.
I think that's right.
I'm excited about the standardization as well.
And also to your point about supply chain,
I think, you know, everybody is rethinking
their supply chain, and I think there's just
a lot of opportunity there
in this, in the transition.
What are you excited about?
I think it's really easy,
particularly if you look at the headwinds that we're facing
in fear, and to that, if you look at the scale of the risks
and the consequences of them.
So I think it's really important to focus on, yes,
recognize and be realistic about the scale
of the challenge that we face.
And I think that there is more realism
creeping into the discussion
as people really look at the,
the scale of what it means to try and achieve
the goals that are being set.
But I absolutely agree with Peter that actually,
when you set some clear budgets,
that is one of the things that drives innovation
and drives those leaps forward, and I think
people from every part of an organization,
all of the different functions,
across sector, within sectors,
the kind of radical collaborations
starting to form that we need.
And I think you are really seeing from every key community
that tipping point starting to be reached
in terms of the conversation.
And so I think that that is the thing that
should make us hopeful and excited.
And I do think that that opportunity space,
finding the solutions, is something incredibly energizing
for people, and I think that that is the thing
that we need to really focus on 'cause that innovation
and the acceleration of innovation is the thing
that is going to carry us through.
That's right, and the acceleration,
is really important I think in this moment.
Final word, Alister.
I think for this question,
people expect us to talk about
the science and the technology.
And we do have three teams out in field at the moment
in Mozambique, in Guinea, in
Belize working with the World Bank,
with the government, with NASA,
but improving the science of biomass estimation.
But I would concur that basically accounting
is the main innovation, and we've always said that.
Accounting's in innovation.
If you have accounting, you can have reporting.
If you have reporting, you can have accountability.
And if you have accountability that feeds through
to the share price, then that's how we drive change so
100% accounting is the thing
that will (laughs) make the future better.
It's not the most exciting thing,
but it's the plumbing that's going to make it happen.
It's great, so who knew we would be leaving
with accounting
(laughing)
as the most exciting innovation happening, (laughs)
but I think that's right actually.
And I think, especially as we move into whatever
we move into from an economic perspective,
you know, keeping us true north
to where we have to go, using the power of accounting
to get there from a transparency,
accountability perspective,
I think is going to be really key.