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Climate Change & COP26 – Making Sense of The Noise
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 46 seconds
In this series of blog posts, Brainnwave CEO Steve Coates reflects on his attendance at COP26, the impacts on our industry and the implications for other business leaders who are thinking about the practicalities of decarbonization.
COP26 represents a historic opportunity for businesses to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, equality and human rights and to help build a sustainable future. Climate action will likely be the most potent force of change in our generation, and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in such a historic global event.
How businesses can take action is of most interest to me, including net-zero transitions, building responsible value chains, talent and culture, ESG analysis and reporting, sustainable technology and customer and brand growth, among other topics to scale climate action.
It was my friends at Accenture, who invited me to participate in a series of discussions, meetings and presentations held in Glasgow. During COP26, I have had the opportunity to listen to business leaders, CEOs and activists to help my understanding of what needs to be done and the true scale of the challenge that lies ahead.
I am convinced that the work we do at Brainnwave is part of the solution, we are passionate about data-driven decisions at speed, and if we are to meet our ambitious climate targets, then this is what is needed.
In this blog series, I will summarize what I discover across the various sessions attended.
Scaling Climate Action through Carbon Data & Intelligence
The decade of action is underway. Businesses that have set targets to decarbonize their assets and portfolios must now manage their enterprise for carbon, just as they do in the financial and physical domains. In short, business intelligence must be infused with carbon intelligence. This phrase piqued my interest as I have been talking about augmented intelligence at Brainnwave for years as the next wave of business intelligence.
This session explored this increasingly business-critical capability, followed by a panel discussion with Accenture’s global lead for carbon intelligence and selected business and technology leaders, who shared their perspectives on:
- The value case for integrating higher granularity emissions data into enterprise decision making systems and processes
- Barriers and Enablers
- Priority use cases
- Carbon intelligence within the Digital transformation
The Speakers:
- Rachael Bartels, Senior Managing Director, Accenture
- Mauricio Bermudez Neubauer, Managing Director, Global Carbon Strategy Lead, Accenture
- Laurent-David Charbit, VP Global Climate and Compass Sustainability Program, Unilever
- Dexter Galvin, Global Director of Corporations & Supply Chains, CDP
- Ahmed Hashmi, Senior Vice President Digital, Production & Business Services, BP
- Pierre Herben, Group Head of Carbon Neutrality, Anglo American
Carbon intelligence discussion panel at COP26
Rachel Bartels kicked off today’s session by focusing our minds on some key numbers: 50, 2.7, 1.5, 16 and 2131 (plus some others that I was not fast enough to capture):
- 50% reduction in emissions is needed by 2030 to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees
- 2.7 degrees is the trajectory we are currently on
- 1.5 degrees is the widely accepted need for us to target to stop catastrophic events
- 16% increase in emissions is the current forecast
- 2,131 is the number of workdays left between now and 2030; there is a lot to be done, so it’s time to start doing!
One of the main themes that jumped out today was the notion of Carbon Intelligence as a new form of Business Intelligence, The core concept being that carbon counting is no longer enough. Businesses must integrate carbon accounting throughout their operations and understand the end to end picture. This must be done now, not in a few years. Without understanding this complete picture, you cannot make progress towards any target.
Rachel’s analogy about how businesses responded to the Covid-19 pandemic was helpful. She referred to the fact that within two weeks, the NHS went digital. Whilst this might feel like a bit of a headline, I do suspect there is substance behind the remark and it goes to show what’s possible if the right focus and investment is given to a problem.
The panel discussion was the most interesting part of the session with senior representatives from BP (Ahmed Ashmi), Anglo American (Pierre Herben), Unilever (Laurent-David Charbit) and CDP (Dexter Galvin). Between them, they cover a large majority of the challenge that faces us since most things are either extracted, mined or grown!
Each gave a robust defence of what they were doing in each of their organizations, and the common thread was the idea of moving from woolly targets and ambitions to concrete actions. Pierre from Anglo presented an excellent case study highlighting their approach to “just get moving with things and not wait around”. He explained that they created a detailed stakeholder map, roadmap, and action plan in just four months and have now moved on to implementation on an ambitious project across the African continent to create a renewable power grid for their 20+ mining operations across the continent.
My final reflection for this session has to go to Laurent-David from Unilever, who summed up nicely the seven elements needed to deliver organizational climate change:
- Targets and delivery metrics
- Data-centric with data pipes delivering real-time or near real-time analytics
- Transparency both internally and externally
- Understanding of the technology that is delivering solutions to encourage more thoughtful internal debates
- All decisions throughout an organization must be carbon informed
- Need to develop ecosystems of collaborations across companies and supply chains
- Internal transformation of company culture
With trillions about to be spent, it goes without saying that having the right data to make informed decisions is more important than ever. Brainnwave is developing new partnerships with climate change specialists to deliver innovative tech that helps organizations make confident, prioritized and impactful investment decisions to help achieve those important numbers.
