Alumni Panel: The Role of Business Leaders in Climate Action
foreign thank you all for joining us we know it's really early in the reunion there's so many exciting people to connect with it's been really fun to be on campus already I'm Jane Woodward and [Applause] and thank you a few months ago I someone reached out to me someone really quite remarkable from another class who was organizing this panel and asked me if I would be on it and then that person had to step out of organizing the panel and I found myself stepping into the role of bringing this marvelous group of people in front of you together and part of the reason I jumped at the opportunity to fill the void that was created is that I have found as we explore the topic of climate risk and climate leadership that a very powerful thing for me has been the power of narrative to hear people's stories I personally believe everyone in this audience is thinking about climate risk and probably in one way shape or form is a climate leader in their own way and in many ways I wish we could share all of our stories with each other when I was asked to step in and Host this panel maybe some of you have noticed that I stacked the deck a little bit and that there's a bias for the class of of 87 so there are many people from my class but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean there are not all kinds of wonderful narratives from many classes besides besides my own besides our own so let's let's start with this program so a fundamental premise is that climate risk is real narrative is important and that one of the things that has been occurring to me if you ask my children what did they learn in school about the evolution of humankind and the economy what was the greatest revolution in human history what they still get taught in school is the greatest Revolution was the Industrial Revolution and I want to argue to you that the greatest revolution of our lifetimes is the climate risk Revolution and the understanding of that risk is causing Innovation like I have never seen in my life before and part of it is because we are decarbonizing everything and we'll talk more about it as we go through and you see the wonderful Antonio is going to talk about decarbonizing orange juice okay so that gives you a sense of everything and you're going to hear from a really broad range of panelists about the extent to which we are Reinventing our whole economy and the great opportunities and challenges that faces for all of us I'm going to click there we go you're already looking at me so part of the reason I'm here is I have the privilege of living a block from Stanford and my side get side gig for the last 32 years has been to teach at Stanford in the school of Earth in this in the uh and what is now the door school which we'll talk about in a moment and in the School of Engineering and I've taught a class at Stanford called understand energy for 32 years and I have the privilege of helping teach a class called Stanford climate Ventures which actually gives me enormous hope out of this class 38 companies have been launched out of over the last five years we get mbas and MSX students paired with phds and Masters students largely from across the university launching decarbonizing companies it's a very exciting opportunity to be part of so why did we ask you to come here why did I get excited about this this opportunity to present these remarkable people to you inspiration is the foremost word in my mind and then context and thinking about you're going to hear from uh Alexis and Peggy who come from senior executive roles in big public companies and their role in addressing climate risk you're going to hear from Debbie and Adam who lead very important ngos and their role thinking about climate risk which is very very different from each other this is a big Revolution going across pretty much every space right and then you're going to hear Linda talking about what it's like on two very different boards that she serves on and she's been thinking about board leadership and thinking about climate risk and then Antonio is in a role of being a very prominent CEO and a European CEO who's looking at consumer products that are delivered around the world and so those different perspectives was part of what I wanted to curate for our audience finally when you leave today John dorr's office was kind enough to agree to make possible our ability to distribute free copies of his book speed and scale and as you know I think all of you know John is the principal donor to the school of sustainability at Stanford he's chairman of Kleiner Perkins and just a huge leader in the space of decarbonization and so I hope you'll enjoy the book and Peggy will talk a little bit about the fact that LinkedIn is actually going to be making an interview with John possible for you to easily access as well so just a moment about the new school the the sustainability school and I think my colleague Noah is going to address it a bit as well I wanted you to know it's real it's alive it has a heartbeat a vibrant one there's been a series of opening events there was a vibrant one last week that included student protests around fossil fuel investment in the new school from companies that may have fossil fuel routes that are really engaged in decarbonizing and that student voice was held gracefully at the event we have incredible leadership at the new school the president of the university all the Deans of all the schools are supporting including Dean Levin who you'll hear from this afternoon are all coordinating and collaborating with the new school of sustainability uh it's a it's a it's the birth of the new school has been a long process the public has not necessarily heard about it but Noah and I have been hearing about it for a long time but the reason it had a long birthing process was to make sure it had the right birthing process and it had the ownership and participation of students of staff and importantly faculty across the entire University so Arun majum bar is the inaugural Dean he is a phenomenal human being with great academic credentials but has also been a huge public servant in our department of energy and the words Earth climate and Society are core to what the new school is about this is a complex diagram but I want to share with you some ideas around it which is there are four departments highlighted in the pillars shown in brown and there are four institutes that cross-cut across those departments and all of it cross-cuts to all the other schools as you see and to external partners and the symbol of the Earth all around the world so there really is a global agenda for interaction of the new school of sustainability at Stanford and there's already been for a for a school that is just coming alive and and is newly born what's really important to understand is there are enormous assets that Stanford already had that are being folded into the new school and so it is launching quite gracefully so far and I encourage you Noah and I are happy to answer questions later and I encourage you to Google door school there's a lot on the website and there will be more and because I'm an energy nerd I had to stick this slide in to remind everybody that when you think of the fact we are decarbonizing everything uh everything energy is not the full story but many people don't realize that about three quarters of all our greenhouse gases are rooted in our Energy System and so this is just this is from a great resource called the visual capitalist to help you put that in context before I hand off to Noah I'll just highlight you know I lead a very privileged life in terms of how I have been able to devote time and energy to climate risk both in the classroom and in the investment World in a few other Arenas and this is just highlighting three areas that I'm very proud of and I love you to discover more about as time goes by but I have helped build out a platform as more and more students at Stanford are interested in climate because of that three-quarters rule of where the greenhouse gases come from they're interested in energy and we've really tried to build out essentially a concierge service to match students from all over the university with aspects of what's going on around energy and climate at Stanford through this explore energy program the class I teach called understand energy all of a sudden there's a huge appetite for literacy around the topic of energy because of people's interest in climate and we are moving this class to basically a Khan Academy like website where within the next few months we'll launch it we'll share it through the GSB with you and you can help us make it even better and more useful portal for everyone to learn about energy and understand it and I think one of the things I'm most proud of is when George Floyd impacted so much so many of us in so many ways the students at Stanford really hollered for curriculum around energy equity and just transition activity and I had the privilege of recruiting back one of my most remarkable students from over 20 years ago to lead a program in this area at Stanford and connect to many other faculty who have a have one ore in the water but wanted more of a centerpiece of activity in this area and so this area is really taking off so just to give you a sense of little things going on and now I'd like to pass to Noah thank you thanks so much Jane and and to the panel and I really have um and first of all just Echo what Jane said about the new school so um Arun and I co-chaired the uh committee that the president of the University um assembled to make recommendations about what Stanford could do and our our committee report uh led to the decision about the schools so uh Arun and I got to know each other well um just before covid a report was due March 20th I think something like that 2020. so it has been a long process but it's been a as Jane said it's been a really invigorating process and to see it open on September 1st it's been been really incredible um so I really uh really just want to say three things that I hope you leave uh here with in terms of the climate Challenge and uh so the same the same three things I I tell my class at the the beginning of every quarter um you know really really the climate challenge is is really uh three interlocking Grand challenges we we do not supply enough energy globally and uh really really not enough access right so first challenge is to um at least double Global energy Supply and broaden access and this double this double I might get some debate on um on that uh the scale of the challenge you know if you if you look at the what the US government says uh the Baseline projections are for a 50 increase in in total Global energy demand um by the mid-century but if you you know take a world of 10 billion people and take the most energy efficient countries in the oecd that's more than double uh our our current total energy that we're supplying globally and if you take a world of 10 billion all living like I do um as an average American then that's more than a than quadruple what we're supplying now globally so the scale the energy challenge is is really really big and then uh Jane mentioned uh decarbonizing everything so why are we why are we decarbonizing everything uh this is really just the fundamental physics of planet Earth so the energy balance of of planet Earth and Mars and Venus and all the other planets uh is is uh is pretty straightforward in you know in my in my frosh class you know we can derive it uh in in one class session and and come back in the next session and and and and uh solve some some actual uh climate problems with it it's that it's that straightforward it's been known for um you know more than 100 years uh and and is very consistent so the fact is is that as long as we're emitting greenhouse gases we're going to keep getting more global warming and so the fundamental physics of planet Earth are such that stabilizing the global temperature requires reaching net zero emissions and that's why you see all of these uh Net Zero goals um you know Stanford has uh a a goal of of 2050 uh to be in line with with the Paris agreements that's the announcement for the Board of Trustees a couple years ago California we have um even more ambitious goals Biden Administration has the Net Zero by 2050 China 2060 India 2070. so that's where those Net Zero goals come from is that just the reality that if we if we want to stabilize the climate system whether it's 1.5 degrees 2 degrees 3 degrees at any level we're going to have to get to Net Zero emissions the reality is is that our Energy System right now is more than 80 percent fossil fuels so think about doubling the scale of global energy Supply dramatically broadening access so that the literally billions of people that don't have access to the benefits of modern energy resources that they also have access while simultaneously going from 80 or more fossil fuel globally to Net Zero and for stabilizing holding holding Global ring below two degrees C you know that we have to do that uh you know in the mid-century time frame so two grand challenges I told you there's three so the reality is we're already being impacted by global warming and climate change right now and this is what a lot of my research is focused on um you know I think when I was in graduate school in the early 2000s and even at the time of the Copenhagen agreement um you know in 2009 there was a sense that two degrees of warming staying below two degrees would avoid dangerous interference in the climate system to use the UN treaty language the reality is we now know that we're already being impacted by global warming right now and it's it's uh you know it's impacting people it's impacting communities it's impacting ecosystems and uh it's costing us it's costing us quite a bit so just a couple of examples from from my own research flood damages in the U.S right so the
actual money that that flooding is costing in Us in the U.S our work suggests about a third of that at over the last three decades has been contributed By changes in precipitation and particularly intensifying extreme precipitation events so this is billions of dollars a year that we're paying out likewise U.S crop insurance program where we as as taxpayers are supporting this crop insurance program that's on the order of a billion dollars a year from global warming right it's only about 20 percent of the total insured crop losses but it's you know it's it's again billion dollars a year if we look globally at the impacts of long-term warming on uh the economic growth the just aggregate economic growth at the country level country level GDP we find that there's a whole lot of people living in in countries that are already very warm that have had their economic growth dragged down by long-term warming so for example India our calculation Central estimate on the order uh 30 percent lower per capita GDP today than if global warming hadn't happened Brazil about 25 percent lower per capita GDP today than than if global warming hadn't happened Nigeria about 30 percent lower and what that means is that an aggregate economic inequality is substantially larger today than if global warming hadn't happened about uh depending on your metric 25 to 40 percent greater economic inequality uh at the country level today than without global warming now I want to be clear I'm not saying global warming caused economic inequality but it has it has clearly exacerbated economic inequality by dragging down growth in countries that are already warm already poor have large relations so this is not about uh how do we prepare for 2100 this is about how do we build resilience to the climate change that not only has already happened is already impacting us but is guaranteed to happen even if we solve these other two challenges so I'll leave it there thank you Noah and Peggy thank you um so now I'm going to invite each of you to pretend that you are me director of Global Environmental sustainability at LinkedIn and what you would do you know we know that in the past businesses were viewed as the villains and they were the producers of all of the problematic emissions and pollutions but now increasingly are stepping into a role to be really important parts of the solution so how does someone in my role approach that and these are three areas that I wanted to highlight for you because I think they really illustrate how my daily routine has changed in the last decade and it's really reflective of how the whole field of sustainability has changed really expanding the scope and the ambition of what people in a corporate sustainability role can do so the first thing that every company has to do if they say they're really committed to environmental sustainability is have a strategy and take some commitments take some pledges and I'm going to tell you in a moment a little bit more about ours the second thing really is to look at your company what are the particular assets that your company has that no other company has and therefore what's the unique contribution that you can make that nobody else can and I'll take you through how I thought about that and how I'm working across our productive engineering team and then finally if you think of the classic definition of sustainability it's got three pillars right ESG environmental societal and governance and traditionally we've all kind of operated in those silos but increasingly we're realizing that that's not appropriate it's not fair and it's not as effective as if we really integrated all of those factors together so when I approach initiatives or programs or Investments I'm always looking at not just what are the environmental impacts but what are the societal impacts what are the diversity Equity inclusion impacts how are we reaching out to marginalized communities how are we addressing environmental justice and environmental equity and so how what kinds of Partnerships are we forming to you know beyond our own four walls impact the broader community so I'm going to you know just spend another second on that that middle pillar you know how many of you have a profile on LinkedIn yeah so we have 850 million people with profiles we have you know tens of millions of jobs posted every day on LinkedIn we have lots of conversation happening and connectivity so that's what I think about when I say what are LinkedIn superpowers so I'm going to show you some examples of how in our three marketplaces we're trying to connect employers and job Seekers so they can do green work we're using all of that Mega data that's anonymized about all of us to really provide insights to governments and Business Leaders and all of us about where's the green Economic Opportunity where are the gaps that need to be addressed and then our North Star is in our more nascent products and services Marketplace but how can we connect buyers and investors with green choices suppliers so let's um let's dig a little more deeply into our commitments and and I'll just get a little more personal now I joined LinkedIn in uh September of 2016 and in December Microsoft purchased us so my friend said well you probably have about a year and then they'll decide that the whole thing is redundant because they have a team of a hundred at Microsoft working on including bill out there in the audience but happily the exact opposite happened and and actually bill and I did work quite a bit on some water stuff together I think it's been the greatest thing for LinkedIn to become part of Microsoft because Microsoft really was ready from the CFO to the CEO to the chief legal officer to step up in 2020 with some really ambitious goals we want to be carbon negative water positive and zero waste by 2030. not by 2040 not by 2050 and that's important because this is the decisive decade so stepped out in the stage and made those commitments but not really knowing exactly how we were going to do it just knowing that that's what had to happen so we were going to do our damn best to to make it happen why do we say carbon negative instead of carbon neutral is because we want to go beyond just you know minimizing our carbon emissions and offsetting we want to go reduce you know by 50 percent our scope 3 emissions in the next decade which is you know it's very inclusive of every activity in the company but also we want to offset our historic carbon so we're going to invest in now for LinkedIn it's relatively easier you know because we were found in 2003 for from Microsoft that's 50 years of carbon so um interesting and the reason why do that is because we're in a position that some other companies aren't so we should do more zero waste is probably obvious and how important that is to move to circularity and then in terms of water positive the same thought replenish more than we withdraw now Jade made a point earlier that I want to Echo we can't do that without engaged employees in our company and I'm wanting to keep a small essential team and make sure that we have embedded sustainability functionality and responsibility across all of our our business and then the second strategy pillar really is looking beyond our own four walls what I mentioned before how can we leverage everything about our platform to drive the you know growth of green companies green jobs green insights environmental justice so what we've been doing is really trying to get smart about what do companies have to do in order to take a climate action Journey they have to be able to measure their impacts report them they've got to transform from their business if we're going to achieve what Noah was talking about redesign how they manufacture how they design products distribute them they have to hire and train people with particular green skills they have to Green their supply chain they have to be able to communicate and Advocate to the world and then individuals in order to remain marketable right are going to increasingly need to have green skills so we're thinking about all that and here's how I'm trying to operationalize it working very closely with a lot of people across our company and these are just a few things but maybe you saw on our platform last well April for Earth month we created a green jobs collection so if you're interested in doing green work it's not just for people with titles like mine what we did is we said of all the job postings on our um you know on our site at any given time which ones are calling for a you know a set amount of green skills we're going to call that green work because if you're in sales but the job posting says you've got to do that in a green way that's screen work and I'd love to have all of you think about that in terms of your function it's green if you take the actions and make the decisions in that way so that that's still there the green jobs collection and then we have top voices there's amazing people around the world that are thought leaders we want to elevate them we're a social media platform we can do that we can get you know better visibility for them and you can you know look up top green voices on LinkedIn and follow them we produced a global green skills report recently basically because we have more data than anybody in the world about the global Marketplace and and Workforce and where are the green jobs emerging what skills are they requiring in what geographies do they have a gap they have the job postings but not the the workers so how do we need to reskill people and then finally as Jane mentioned we have LinkedIn learning and maybe some of you have taken courses but I want to build out a really robust catalog of green skills greenhouse gas accounting Greening your supply chain Environmental Justice you know the whole range and so it's early days but you can check those out and John doors course will be launching soon thank you Peggy so here you go Peggy clearly I need to get a LinkedIn account I think I'm in this room yeah so I'm Alexis limbarakis and I'm really happy to be back on campus and hear about this new sustainability School sustainability wasn't even a a term we talked about back in the day in 92 it's it's crazy how times have changed so much and share a little bit about the work I've been doing related to climate at Clorox so a little bit about me I've been at Clorox for my whole career since the GSB so 30 years this the September and I started in marketing roles so a variety of marketing roles and then I got the temporary tap do you want to do a rotation into our newly formed sustainability team I'm like sure they sure why not I don't know what it means exactly Butcher and uh short long story short I never looked back I I was like I'm not going back to marketing I can have a much greater societal impact which is my personal MO if I stay in this role and lead the charge in in driving sustainability into our business so it's been quite a journey so today I want to cover kind of three examples of the the kind of more recent work we've been doing to reduce our own emissions from a kind of a manufacturing cpg company so you get a feel for the kind of work and the challenge that we're facing and before I get into these three different areas I wanted to First give you a little bit of a backdrop a little context for our climate journey and this is rather an eye chart it's more meant more for studying but it really Maps our climate Journey past present and future we've been at this since 2008 when we set our first sustainability strategy and I'm pleased to say that we've exceeded all of our greenhouse gas reduction goals through our past decade and two consecutive uh goal periods um but we met those primarily through efficiency measures so things like changing out equipment to more energy efficient equipment changing processes optimizing our distribution and Logistics networks reducing the amount of materials in our products and packaging you know kind of the block and tackle kinds of things you'd expect from a company like Clorox who's very focused on cost reduction cost reduction equals Greener right so it was pretty easy and natural for us but dial forward the climate crisis is accelerating and so too we realize we have to have much deeper goals much more challenging goals that are really going to require transformation of our entire value chain much of which we don't have direct control over so we too have set you know Net Zero by 2050 targets as well as you know aggressive reduction Targets in line with client Simon science for 2030 and are you know on the way for much more greater degree of change so three of these areas I'll talk about um let's start with renewable electricity okay so Noah said it's a and and that both of you guys said it's an energy problem so when it comes to renewable elect but when it comes to energy at a company like us who primarily uses electricity to power our operations you really have two choices for reducing your emissions you can either use less of it or you can get Renewables cleaner energy sources so I told you we've been focused on efficiency measures for over a decade and there's not lot a lot left there to make meaningful gains in efficiency so we've now switched our Focus to Renewables and sourcing Renewables which sounds kind of easy right but not if you live in the United States of America where the grid is not green or much of the globe or it's not green I can't call the utility provider in our location and say I want Renewables most of the uh the uh the regions in which we operate are regulated and this there are not options for you and we have small facilities we're not huge actually so we can't put big enough solar panels on site to to you know to power our energy so we're forced to get into very complex financial instruments called virtual power purchase agreements so we're not an energy expert we had to get really smart about how are we going to procure this through these things that essentially Clorox guarantees a developer a fixed price for the energy coming off of newly built facilities over a 12-year Horizon wind solar and in return we get to keep the renewable energy attributes of that energy as it's produced so it's a very complex Financial instrument exposes the company to all kinds of Market volatility and energy markets again not our expertise and when we went to our former CEO of several years back you know the eyes rolled back in the head and it was like what no dial forward though investors are pushing they started to recognize the only way we could get renewable energy at scale was to do this kind of thing and our new CFO is really really supportive and I'm pleased to say we now have two vppas executed that are covering a hundred percent of our North American Energy which is the vast majority of our emissions so huge huge win for us the next area is Plastics and circularity so I'm sure you've all heard about the Plastics crisis but I'm sure you've heard it in terms of plastics pollution right the plastic's getting to the oceans the microplastics in the air and in our soils and the pollution aspect and the waste aspects of plastics is really significant but what you don't hear as much is the carbon footprint of plastics right carbon is I mean Plastics are a pretty carbon intensive material it's particularly virgin Plastics coming from petroleum feedstocks now sometimes Plastics can actually have a lower end-to-end carbon footprint than some alternative materials because they can be pretty lightweight but yet and still we have a lot of Plastics in our packaging so for Clarks to get to Net Zero or reach our goals we've got to reduce the emissions associated with our plastic packaging so we're doing some kind of closer in things with recyclability and recycled content which is a little bit better but really the trans more transformational work we're doing is trying to change consumption models the way consumers consume and use our packaging so closer in we're doing things like concentrated refills where a consumer will buy a starter kit with a trigger sprayer and a little cap with concentrated chemicals you know screw it on and then add water and you've you know you've got your solution and then over the life of that trigger you save 80 percent of the plastic that you had before so you can get a big cut if this takes off consumer Behavior change is not easy though they want more value from this right so this one is a big Challenge from a consumer standpoint but logistically it's pretty straightforward more transformative though are refill models that are requiring that re that package to be used completely over and over again and we're participating in terracycle Loops program both e-commerce and brick and mortar versions of this where for example our wipes container stainless steel container consumer puts a deposit on it so they're sort of renting it in a way they put a deposit on it it comes with its wipes they return it either to the brick and mortar store or it gets picked up in the e-commerce model terracycle washes them and ships them back to us to refill them and get them back out so you can imagine the reverse Logistics and the economics and the environmental footprint of that uh that reverse Logistics like you need scale and massive infrastructure changes to make this happen but we're participating with a number of other peer companies to try to learn our way into how we can make this functional and ultimately Net Zero at the end of the day the third model is refill stations so rather than having all this reverse Logistics consumer goes to a refill station purchases the very first unit package fills it up takes it home and every time they want new product they bring their own package which they know they've controlled it for cleanliness Etc so there's no risk of having to wash it and use all the energy to wash it bring it back refill it huge Behavior change there and huge infrastructure imagine retail environments with all that Capital installed so these are not easy to solve for but we are trying to work on how we're going to transform consumption and uh in in the globe last but not least and I've hit my limit here I'm going to touch on this really quickly but supplier engagement it doesn't sound sexy but it's really critical to us achieving our our goals because more than 90 percent of our missions more than 90 percent sit outside the four walls of Clorox mostly Upstream in the raw material supply chains we use for our products and our Packaging a lot Downstream too with our distribution networks so for us to achieve our goals our suppliers have to change we can certainly change materials we can change suppliers if they're not playing ball but they also have to come on this journey and we as a cpg company get a lot of the pressure right because campaigns go after brands um but the reality is way upstream and these Supply chains is where a lot of these emissions go so we're trying to put our you know our voice but we're only a seven billion dollar company we so this is related to my final call to action to you guys is if you have influence on a board if you have influence on a trade group if you are still working in a company if you uh can call policy makers we all have to be pressuring the system because we're never going to get to where we need to go and solve this as existential crisis without all of our action so thanks that's a great message Alexis thank you [Music] uh okay uh we're gonna pivot thank you uh I I want to say at one point we're only seven billion dollars I appreciate that um your man um I'm the president and CEO of the green lining Institute and thank you Jane and everybody for inviting me uh to share a unique perspective my growth as a woman of color doing climate and economic equity has been layered and quite complex oddly enough uh I was the only black woman in the class the GSB class of 1987. so I hope to sprinkle in
bits of my personal and professional life that informs uh my leadership in addressing climate risk and economic prosperity I hope you might see some grit and Grace and gratitude in my talk so let me start with the practice of equity and I appreciate that you all have already mentioned Equity Equity ensures that wherever you participate from that you'll be allowed to prosper and each reach your full potential recognizing that the path for different people start at different points um at my work at greenlining Institute we have five core Equity strategies first a just and healthy economy this perspective comes from my early career I worked on Wall Street for an investment Bank on the fixed income Capital markets trading desk it's a lot of debt being moved around the globe I then went from Wall Street to working at the largest construction company in the U.S you can probably figure that out where I got a passport and combined my undergrad engineering degree with my MBA and worked on big International infrastructure projects from an in-house Boutique financing Equity Division I felt I got a front row seat deep deeply immersed experience in a global how Global and U.S capital markets work second we focus on economic equity here we look to build household wealth family by family we work to close the wealth Gap that too many Americans experience this is where my years of non-profit work come in working with Workforce and Community Development here is where I've learned the disparities between communities was dark and Stark and devastating so third you see there our commitment to climate Equity comes directly from evaluating the economy and the pursuit of Building intergenerational Wealth quite frankly climate change is a threat multiplier all inequities that communities are facing whether economic social or health climate change significant clean compounds each of them separately and together four intersectional leadership this is where lots of policy and legislative work comes in and Adam's going to talk about ab530 25 which we also helped pass um so Amen brother uh there are too many Community Voices that were silenced for decades so we're able to see both sides the private sector and the public sector to build the power across these issues as the the quote goes there is no such thing as single issue struggle because we don't live single issue lives so we create intersectionality plus I'm a Title IX baby I played D1 basketball I was that first generation to get a full ride scholarship all due to policy of gender inequality in education and ultimately in sports besides having played ball for so many years allowing me to bond with some of my male classmates who welcomed me to play in the regular pickup game and lastly five we are expanding and building new leaders I've made a lifetime commitment of working with young people to pour into them confidence and self-assurance and let them know on some days their shoulders would be burdened with service but nonetheless they will lead and it was young people who had Clarity on better ways of doing things and unapologetically kept me honest inevitably when I was in a season where my valleys seem much more frequent than my Peaks it was always a youthful voice that gave me courage to accept the humanity of others and the humility to understand that we are not immune to pain let me Define climate equity for you now just really quickly everything converges to climate equity for us and as it really is repeating everything you heard so that as an NGO we're like right on we were on the same path um in working with the climate risk that determinants though the determinants present themselves clearly and loudly as redlining so what you're looking at here is redlining which was coined from how the federal government the federal government and Bank lenders would draw red lines on maps and exclude people from owning homes based on race so we could have a whole nother talk about redlining and how it works in our society but redlining was a banking and real estate strategy so let me go over this these Maps really quickly but they tell you one thing the map in the center is the 1937 Red Line map of my hometown Oakland California all the other maps are indicators so to to my right your left the health indicators align with covid is the same red lighting map if you look at digital divide where does Broadband get to where does the technology go to same Red Line map if you look at the carbon footprint if you look at traffic and air pollution and the the one near the bottom of the Cal Enviro screen is a tool that the the ngos working with the elected agencies take 21 in indicators and put a footprint onto the impact same Red Line map so it becomes evident that the climate risk continue to follow these red line Maps but redlining was banned in 1968 with the fair housing act so why is it that these maps are so closely still aligned that's because the policies the markets and the behaviors reflect in Equitable access to resources investment here is where you have to ask the question of the Integrity of the markets the markets need to evolve now we also have so much access to data and that's mentioned here by everybody we have data science we have Predictive Analytics we have twinning we have Smart data and we have GIS that allows us to organize visualize and analyze different layers of data from different paths Equity my three key leadership uh and I'm almost out of time here my three key leadership climate leadership Equity is not ESG Equity is not Dei Equity is the practice is a practice is multifaceted stretches across policy movements industry Capital markets Community Development it may be the most effective tool we have to address climate risk with an all-encompassing long lasting outcome I wish I could have been trained on how to understand and use equity in my career but as we built out climate Equity we identified the same Solutions and that the others have identified which is deep decarbonization at Green lining we are leading by acknowledging this profound moment of transportation we are driving policies and laws we are establishing standards all the stuff that you see with the in the ira the chips in science um the Justice 40. all of that is policy that is grounded in equity and we are strongly in solidarity with movements and one of the key movements is electric vehicles there's a Tipping Point and there's no going back on EVS uh lastly we will not create the New Frontiers of redlining instead we seek economic solidarity together with Innovative perspectives coming from all corners of our community regardless of status thank you [Applause] thank you Debbie it's a it's a privilege to be sitting next to you and all my friends from environmental work across the decades I want to start with a question for the audience how many of you were here in California on September 6th do you remember what happened did you get a flex Alert in your phone and did you respond to and turn down your appliances okay so so how many times would you be willing to do that over the next few Summers do you think well I'm here to make the case for one new clean energy resource that I think would help balance out the grid develop the increase in our clean energy Supply that Noah described before and also provide a greater level of environmental justice and that new resource is offshore wind a little over three years ago I was approached by some developers who were starting a new trade group called offshore wind California to bring a remarkable new technology that is enabling the winds from the sea to become part of the power for our daily needs our industry our home life all the things that we use electricity for and starting with an initial group of six companies we've now over the last three years expanded this to 47 companies in the entire ecosystem of offshore wind including some oil Majors wind blade manufacturers technology firms and others we have become an important voice for advancing offshore wind as a new resource for the state and I would submit to you for the world because the opportunity for offshore wind is not just here in California but it's pretty much across the globe where there are strong winds that among the most appealing aspects of this is that just at the time when you were getting that Flex alert here in California is the time when the winds are the strongest and complement the other on the other resources that we have solar onshore wind hydro and other Renewables we need a complementary resource like offshore wind to balance out our requirements and offshore wind has been shown in Europe and starting very soon on the east coast and hopefully not too long from now here in California will be one of the key pieces of the puzzle to help expand the use of renewable energy across the globe uh as Debbie uh mentioned one of the early things our trade group was able to do working in Coalition with environmental justice organizations labor unions environmental groups was to advance a bill in California called ab525. it sets out requirements for the
state agencies to develop a strategic plan for offshore wind and to set goals over two key Milestones 2030 and 2045 and just two months ago the state of California approved the first of these schools setting a Target by 2030 of five gigawatts of offshore wind a gigawatt is enough power to support depending on where you live in California between half a million and a million homes so five gigawatts by 2030 and 25 gigawatts which is Nation leading goal by 20 45 and this ties in with the state's objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2045 and having all of its energy supplied by renewable or zero carbon sources so that was a big victory for all of us and thanks to Debbie and her allies who helped on the campaign and then just a couple of weeks ago the Biden Administration announced a very important floating offshore wind initiative to help bring down the cost of floating offshore wind this is the technology that will be used here in California because our waters are so deep that you can't actually have fixed foundations you have to have floating platforms which is technology that was perfected in the oil and gas industry 20 years ago and the big milestone that we're all looking forward to in our world of offshore wind is this December when the federal government will auction off the first set of lease areas off California and I have a map here showing the two locations that are the focus of at least one in the far north in Humboldt and then a second one in the Central Coast of Morro Bay now if you were following this back in February there was a similar lease auction for six sites off New York and New Jersey and the combined bids that were eventually accepted and approved by the federal government totaled four billion dollars so there's a lot of money at stake and capital that's being invested in this new approach to generating renewable energy we're hopeful that these auctions will go successfully some of our member companies will be among the bidders in the auction which will happen live online probably in the first two weeks of December our organization has been trying over these last three years to educate the public about the value of offshore wind to engage with stakeholders across a wide spectrum to also be the hub for information through conferences through our website through testimony to a variety of public settings and I'd say another dimension to this that I have found particularly exciting is the passion that people feel who work in this industry of being part of something that is one solution to climate change there are dozens of companies that are hiring people Engineers environmental technicians Capital Market experts a whole range of job functions that are needed to make offshore wind succeed um and here's an image actually from Denmark of what these marvelous machines look like one of the great advantages of them is that they can be so located 15 to 20 miles offshore so basically outside of the view shed and through a system of cables and transmission lines bring the power of the Winds offshore to the grid this is what we hope to see here in California in eight to ten years I want to just leave you with with one thought which is that um all my professional life I've been working on climate change and I've never had a opportunity where I felt like I could use the skills I learned here at the GSB to build an organization to Rally a coalition of supporters to set in motion the policy framework for a state as influential as California and with the support of our businesses with the support of an Administration that is very jazzed about this and is doing all the right things both at the federal and the state level to enable this to advance we're making remarkable progress and I encourage all of you at whatever stage you are in your career or to young people that you may be advising if you're looking for something that's the next big thing in renewable energy offshore wind is one of them so thank you very much [Applause] thank you um well I'm humbled to be here with this amazing group of leaders and Debbie I I didn't realize you were the only black one in the inner class so um what an amazing leader you are and uh field hockey lacrosse player appreciate it Jane wants us to tell stories so um I think uh I I serve 25 years was really a specialist in markets around Global Research equity and fixed in sometimes also the chief Talent officer called a lot about leadership and my journey through there and since then has been about markets transformation and Leadership and I unlike Adam Michael career has not been required I find myself immersive finder piece and in boardrooms so I want to talk about the stories of how that happened to kind of share a little bit you know what I'm seeing and I'll start with msci as a business so what has transformed the board leaders as well as our CEO is both top-down things that are happening as well as bottom-up energy not only from our kids but from our employees you know the the uh businesses of MCI do people know what msci is is that familiar to people okay so msci is the s p of the globe so people are familiar with the S P 500 so if you talk to any investor either an asset owner or a hedge fund or a money manager and you ask them what how they measure their returns and their Investments and their risk they use msci indices and msci tools in the global environment and um you know the mscai acqui index covers over 10 000 companies globally representing most of the investable capital on the equity side and we've been building data sets and tools to help investors understand risk and return for forever and as we have grown as a business we continue to bring investors into our boardroom and say you know what's on your mind how are we doing and I would say only five years ago most of those investors were not interested in climate they thought it was impact investing lower returns and traditional Investments their fiduciary responsibility you know somebody investing teachers Pension funds they have to make sure they earn the highest return for teachers it wasn't out of being ugly or bad it was they had to earn the best returns and I remember Fidelity came in their two top funds five years ago and all of a sudden we asked that question and they said um that they were really morally feeling uncomfortable because of their kids that something was changing something was amiss this this the capitalism the way we thought about it was not really creating a better Earth and better world but it was just cracking the window open they didn't know how to you know manage that well roll forward we had a lot of people building lots of businesses at msci we gave them agency to do that one of the businesses that took off was ESG which is not one thing but research around these areas and the one that just blew the doors off all the others is is climate and we started making a lot of money and all of a sudden the people in our climate areas the the uh the research people were at dava closed captioning not available since 2012 and letters he writes to people about stewardship and what that looks like and where climate and Dei Equity social justice you know rank but the the transformation this is the largest as Jane said change in the economic infrastructure of the world and businesses have been one of the best at solving for efficient you know outcomes of um of Transformations right we need government's help we need certain things you know regulated and policies put in place but businesses must be at the table driving these changes so msci has in this period of time over five years our business has grown dramatically we're talking to investors all the time they are buying all the data they can around risk related to climate as well as diversity you know Equity inclusion data we we promoted a our our Peggy and Alexis equivalent we decided we needed one of our top c-suite people we took the president of the biggest business we have and we put her into that role that shows you know how complicated it is to figure out your own footprint and you're not only working with your internal constituents your employees you know your costs you're working with your supply chain as has been referenced and you have to go out and influence them and basically encourage them to change so you can get green together and let them know that they're not going to be part of your ecosystem if they don't change right so it's it takes huge diplomacy and uh you know force of oil we've we we acquired the board supported the acquisition of something called carbon Delta which are climate scientists now I am not a climate scientist I do have to oversee and you know support the allocation of capital and make sure I'm asking various dude questions these guys built it this is a very hard problem if you don't know how you can have impact right so even if businesses have to make the change how and where do you work well right now we have a suite of tools that it enables any investor to look at any company any portfolio globally and based on both information the couple the company releases which hopefully is as much a scope one scope two and scope three but it isn't always complete and uses Ai and other data scraping sources to understand it and we create products that you could look at and you could understand what your portfolio looks like or what your stock looks like in terms of risk what the green opportunities are in your companies what the transition strategies need to be what the physical risk of every plant in every company's portfolio is it's a heat map that shows in India or in Florida or in you know Germany where your plants are and which ones what they look like in terms of risk right now to climate change and what they look like in 2050 so you can plan and then importantly we have a tool which is trying to help companies align with net zero that's simple it basically looks at the budget the world has how much more we can pollute uh to not go above 1.5 degrees Celsius and then at budgets who what sectors get a certain amount what you as a company get and then we do the analytics to say based on what you've reported in terms of scope one scope two and scope three and what you're intending to do and then what we know for mother's great data where we think you are in a temperature range so msci just got science-based Target approval that we we are at 1.3 by 2050 but you will see you know energy companies at six degrees right so it's a simple idea are you contributing your fair share or not and that helps the investment industry figure out you know how and where to invest um so you know we become better at being governors of this and at promote it again through top down and bottoms up at CSX this is you know the railroads are three times as efficient and green as are trains and railroads because they've been in the business of understanding stakeholders for a long period of time have been doing materiality analysis which only companies are beginning to think about what do all your stakeholders think where do they want you to move where are the risks emerging we've been doing it I don't know since 2005. so I walk into the CSX board room
and the teams have created you know a carbon strategy that is aligned with science-based targets we're the first in the industry because it's been Bottoms Up driven fundamentally based on the nature of our business for a long time but it wasn't top down driven and really the work of the board I chair the governance and now called governance and sustainability committee is to say okay how does this relate to our overall strategy are we funding it properly are we marketing it properly and as we start to walk into the this we find that our supply chain wants to do business with us because we're green so Amazon wants to do business with us they do a ton of business with trucks so we have to be efficient enough to deliver to their needs so they can choose us so so the ecosystem is in the middle of helping each other you know transform um so CSX has won a ton of awards but most importantly will be our role going forward can we convert a lot of transportation business that's currently on trucks and on roads from dirtier to cleaner ways of doing it while being extremely efficient with our customers and my last area of work has been with Stanford women on boards does anybody know what Stanford women on boards is a few members in the audience okay so I got asked a couple years ago to join the team to really think about how do we get Elevate women into the boardroom and by the way we want men too and we want any minority but but we have so many grads across the whole Stanford Campus of women that are amazingly qualified but they're just not in the networks to get into the boardroom so our job is to cultivate the Next Generation and so I've recently authored a piece with another woman on Stanford women Outboards Mary Clark it's called Leading Edge stewardship and it defines what Leading Edge stewards do in boardrooms so that they can create long-term sustainable value and climate is a huge input into that it has changed the amount of uncertainty that boards are dealing with requires boards to be an asset to their management teams have skills that augment the management team skills they don't do the business but they are able to see around corners and help manage risk and the Leading Edge stewardship talks about the esos which is a Stanford ethos it starts with you have to be a high performing team not you just walk in as an individual in the boardroom and meet once every four years the second is a growth mindset that you're learning constantly all the time around what matters most the third is you build trust with your colleagues and with the management team so you can talk about as Jim Collins would say the brutal facts The Good Bad and the Ugly so you can learn to lead forward differently and transform outcomes and then the and then the um we create a rubric that goes through 14 areas of respon
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