The Road to COP26

Dominique Barker: Welcome to the Sustainability Agenda, a podcast series focussing on the evolving complexities of the sustainability landscape with a view on addressing current issues in a concise format to help you navigate and take action. I’m your host, Dominique Barker. Please join me as we explore today’s most pressing matters with special guests that will give you some new perspective and help you make sense of what really matters. 

Dominique Barker: Microsoft alone has more demand for carbon credits than are available today, and I guess that’s verified carbon credits. So for them, they are very incented for companies to produce carbon removals because those are the ones that they want to buy. To make an impact. On today’s episode, I’m pleased to have my colleague, Susan Rimmer, the head of global corporate banking, join me to discuss some key takeaways from our recent sustainability conference. Good morning, Susan.

Susan Rimmer: Good morning, Dominique, and thank you and congratulations on a really successful conference event. It was terrific to have over 450 people participate live. Yeah, we’re

Dominique Barker: Really we’re really pleased with that. So for this episode, we’re going to switch up the normal format, and we’ve asked Susan to take the lead as interviewer, and I’m going to take the role as interviewee. So Susan, why don’t I pass the mic over to you to lead the questioning this morning?

Susan Rimmer: All right. Yeah, thanks very much, Dominique. And I would say that what really struck me in the conference before we get into the questions was just a burning sense of urgency around climate. Again, climate in the lead up to COP26 is a really big priority. You know, in the sustainability agenda and I was really struck all of our participants, that sense of urgency around what’s next, how can we make this happen? How can we manage carbon better really came through in all of the presentations. So anyway, perhaps I’ll ask my first question to you. What were some of the key takeaways for you from the conference?

Dominique Barker: Yeah. So I think there’s such a broad range of topics, but I did want to pick up on three highlights for me. One is the general comment, and maybe it’s a bit obvious, but it’s how engaged everyone is. And I think Victor DODIG, our CEO, captured it really well when he said that no matter who you are, whether it’s an energy company, a user or renewable energy company, everybody is engaged on the topic of decarbonisation. The second takeaway from me was NatWest and NatWest featured fairly prominently in our conference with Victor’s conversation with the CEO of NatWest up front. And then we had a guest from NatWest who was a buyer of carbon credits. And it just figured over the course of the day, and I just I just want to give some highlights on NatWest because I just thought the CEO, Alison Rose, was tremendous. She really spoke about their purpose strategy, and I loved how she talked about how they think of themselves as a learning organisation or having a culture of learning is another thing that she said and offering those tools to colleagues and customers and how climate has been such a core part of their enterprise and their strategy. And the other thing from NatWest perspective, in preparation for this conference, I was researching what they’ve done and it’s amazing they have a goal to do 600 charging spots by 2023.

Dominique Barker: And Susan, I looked up in Canada, how many charging stations we have. We have about 1100 across Canada and so, or sorry, eleven thousand. And so if NatWest were in Canada, they would be about five percent of our charging stations and they’re a bank. So I just thought that was really cool. And they talked about how they’re partnering with a company called Octopus Energy to install chargers at their customers locations at their homes. So, so I just think that NatWest is is really been someone to look at. The third takeaway that I would say is this concept of science based targets we heard over the course of the day I took a look. Alison Rose spoke about science based targets. So did Generation Investment Management. Both Edward Mason, who is part of the engagement team at generation and that’s Al Gore’s and David Bloods fund. They’re a leader in sustainability. Colin Leduc as well on the asset manager panel, spoke about science based target and so did Microsoft Marley Grey. So this concept of science based targets is, I think, going to continue to grow in importance, especially as we move into COP26.

Susan Rimmer: Yeah, those are some great conclusions and lots of learning for all of us, right? Establishing science based targets and then being able to actually speak about them in layman’s terms is a really, really important part of, you know, getting the ideas across and actually enabling change. So, yeah, so OK. So question number two for you, Dominique.

Dominique Barker: Ok.

Susan Rimmer: So decarbonisation.

Dominique Barker: Yeah.

Susan Rimmer: It really struck me that decarbonisation figured prominently. It makes sense. We’re all thinking about this COP26 conference, this big global climate conference that’s taking place in Glasgow in November. So what were the themes that you saw actually related to decarbonisation at the conference?

Dominique Barker: Well, you’ll know that the conference title was on the road to COP26. So. So I guess it’s not really a surprise. I’m happy that you noticed that decarbonisation and carbon did figure prominently and was pervasive throughout the day. I think I really I would recommend people take a listen to the replay of Marley Grey from Microsoft because I just think that they’ve been a real leader in terms of carbon removal and incenting carbon removal. So he spoke about how Microsoft has a goal of being carbon negative by 2030 and then an additional goal to remove all of their historical carbon emissions. So everything they’ve done through the 1970s and 80s by the year 2050. I really liked how he defined. Carbon removal, and he talked about the Kyoto Protocol and how that was really focussed on carbon reduction and avoidance. And that would include things like renewables, reforestation or switching from coal to natural gas. This is all carbon reduction initiatives. But what he really stressed on his panel was the importance of carbon removal, and he talked about how mathematically Microsoft alone has more demand for carbon credits than are available today. And I guess that’s verified carbon credits. So for them, they are very incented for companies to produce carbon removals because those are the ones that they want to buy. To make an impact. And he talked about how last year they bought 1.3 million tonnes of carbon removal, and they’ve spent quite a bit of time on their request for proposal. They had over 170 responses to their RFP, and they’re just they’re really, really keen to get more carbon removal, and I would really recommend for our clients who have the replay available. I would really listen to that carefully because it’s quite impressive what they’re trying to do and his explanation of the importance of carbon removal, I thought was was really worthwhile to listen to.

Susan Rimmer: Absolutely. I really enjoyed that part of the event as well. It was a great panel. So lastly, from my side, any surprises or anything else, you wanted to highlight anything you learnt Dominique that you wanted to share with the group.

Dominique Barker: I’m in the back end listening to this conference and what I thought was really interesting, which just to give a bit of a colour for everyone is we had a nuclear panel, so we had a panel speaking about small modular reactor technologies and the reason we hosted that panel. The timing is is very good because we’ve got OPG in Ontario, Ontario power generators who will be coming out with a decision on a technology for SMRs. And so the timing is really good to start talking about SMRs or small modular reactors, and we can’t get to net zero without nuclear and that came across on the panel. But what’s surprising that I did want to share with you, Susan, is the number of questions and follow up actually on that panel. That was probably the panel that garnered the most questions from the audience. And there were quite a few emails afterwards asking for some introductions. So that was a surprise to me. The other thing that I just wanted to highlight was Edward Mason from Generation Investment Management. So he’s been doing engagement with companies for over a decade. And I thought it was interesting. I asked him about the future trends, and he mentioned biodiversity. And so that was, you know, really enlightening to me. That’s an area that I think I’d like to do more work on the concept of natural capital and biodiversity as being an area of interest.

Susan Rimmer: Oh, that’s that’s really interesting. Yeah, I would say I wanted to add to your list.

Dominique Barker: Yeah, of course. Please do.

Susan Rimmer: Yeah, if I again, I sort of mentioned the sense of urgency up front. The other thing that I really took away from the whole event was the need for collaboration, collaboration across business and government, you know, particularly in carbon markets, particularly in global supply chains. This idea of managing emissions, you know, through the lifecycle of a product or a service, and also some global standards and approaches on financing emissions and financing energy transition. We’re going to have to see collaboration, you know, globally, we’re going to have to see collaboration across businesses and governments locally in terms of priorities and policy. There’s a lot of coordination ahead, and that’s really perhaps what some of the innovation is going to look like. It’s going to be in the form of collaboration collaboration across many different groups of of engaged people, which is which is really kind of the sort of the look and feel of how we’re going to manage these issues in the future.

Dominique Barker: And Susan, you know, you and I both have kids and I know your husband is quite engaged in terms of sustainability and nature. And I think it’s easy. This concept of collaboration is easier when you have that purpose of climate change and helping to to mitigate the impact of it. And so that’s insightful because I do believe collaboration is really important if we’re going to to solve this global crisis. Absolutely. Thank you so much for playing the role of interviewer today. That was really fun to be an interviewee.

Susan Rimmer: It’s my pleasure, Dominique, and thanks again for hosting a great conference. All the best.

Dominique Barker: Thank you. Please join us next time as we tackle some of sustainability biggest questions providing different perspectives to help you move forward. I’m your host, Dominique Barker, and this is the sustainability agenda.

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