Newscasts - WEF panel discusses state of climate 10 yrs since Paris Agreement 1

Arc Funds

22/01/2025 18:55

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Source: 'Reuters - Business videos'

Description: A panel at the World Economic Forum, including former U.S.
Vice-President Al Gore, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Bangladesh's
interim leader Muhammad Yunus discuss the state of climate and nature, almost
10 years since the Paris Agreement.
Short Link: https://refini.tv/40u49AJ

Video Transcript:

>> Warm welcome to all of you who are with us here this afternoon and welcome
to all the audiences online. The theme of this year's annual meeting is
collaboration in the intelligent age. But there is no intelligent age to speak
about without a healthy planet. Last year was the hottest year on record, 1.54
degrees C, ocean heat uptake at an all time high. Nature is losing its
resilience to sequester carbon. Extreme weather is increasing in frequency and
intensity, wildfires, heat stress, drought, floods, and other catastrophic
natural disasters, destroying homes, destroying jobs, and destroying places we
love. In a recent study, only 10% of global corporates are taking meaningful
and tangible action on climate and nature. There is positive momentum, yes,
but certainly not at the scale and the speed that is needed to address the
unfolding environmental disaster. The focus of today's session is really
around technologies, capabilities, solutions, partnerships that can enable
governments and corporates to deliver a much more robust and much more timely
response to the unfolding crisis in the face of all the complexities that
they're facing in the face of all the uncertainties that we're facing. To kick
off today's session, I would like to welcome Vice President Al Gore he's going
to share with you a very successful collaboration across more than 100
organizations around the world, non-profits, technology companies,
universities, researchers, climate experts. These individuals have been
working together over the last five years, many on a voluntary basis, donating
code, software code, time, and expertise to harness the power of technology as
a force for good for climate and nature. So on that note, may I welcome Vice
President Al gore. >> Thank you, Gimwei and thank you for the wonderful
leadership you provide here at the forum. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great
privilege to be a part of this panel that will start after this short
presentation. The first image here is a picture from the space station that
illustrates how thin the atmosphere around the Earth is, the part that has the
oxygen. It's blue because that's where the oxygen is. But unfortunately, that
thin blue shell is also what we're using as an open sewer for all of the
global warming pollution that we spew into every single day and it comes from
a variety of sources, including agriculture and farce, land clearing and
farce, burning and mining and all of the different industrial operations and
it mounts up 175 million tons every day, and the accumulated amount now traps
as much extra heat as would be released by 750,000 first generation atomic
bombs exploding every day on the Earth. That's insane for us to allow that to
continue. By far, the largest source is from the burning of fossil fuels. You
can see from this image that it really started increasing dramatically after
World War Two, and that notch in the upper right hand corner is the pandemic,
by the way, and the next notch down is the financial crisis of 08. Ninety
three percent of this goes into the oceans, but the atmospheric temperatures
are reaching record levels every single year. Last year, as Gimwei said, was
the hottest year ever measured by a lot. And that's the second year in a row.
It's been the hottest ever measured. The hottest 10 years have been the last
10 years. And I said most of it goes into the oceans and it makes the
hurricanes and cyclonic storms stronger, and it feeds the atmospheric rivers
that are getting much bigger. One of them, Mr. Prime Minister, came over Spain
from the heated Mediterranean at the end of October and dropped a whole year's
worth of rain on Valencia in eight hours, and the result was a catastrophe. My
condolences to those who suffered such terrible losses. And six weeks earlier,
an even larger event in Central and West Africa killed 1,000 people and
destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. In the United States, we had a huge
storm. It affected my home state, but North Carolina got the brunt of it. It
dropped as much water as the entire full flow of Niagara Falls over 600 days
in just a couple of days. Really incredible. The same week, by the way, a
similar event killed hundreds of people in Kathmandu in Nepal. The heat is
killing a lot of people. In the Hajj last summer, 1,300 people killed and the
combination of heat and humidity is making more of the Earth physiologically
unlivable for human beings. Relatively small areas are in the unlivable
category now, but they're growing. And if we do not start reducing emissions,
we could see within 50 years very heavily populated areas becoming
physiologically unlivable with a huge increase in the flow of climate
migration across international borders. We're already seeing in Southwest
Africa, Namibia has a huge drought and they're killing animals, including
elephants to feed the hungry during this drought. We're seeing river basins
dry up. The Amazon River system in Colombia and in Brazil, of course, is at
the lowest levels ever recorded. It really is a catastrophe. And of course,
the drought and the heat makes the fires more common and more prevalent. We've
seen it in Australia and Greece. I could go around the world and show you
these, but two weeks ago in Los Angeles, we had dozens of people killed.
They're still searching for the bodies. Twelve thousand properties in Los
Angeles were burned up. It's going to take years for them to recover. This was
a hydroclimate whiplash. The previous two winters had heavy rainfalls that
surge the vegetative growth, but then in March, the rain stopped, and they
have had hardly any rain for the last 10 months. And so that was fuel for the
fires, and the Santa Ana winds 160 kilometers/hour, fed this fire. Globally,
the extreme weather events related to climate have cost $3.5 trillion over the
last decade. That's an increase of almost $800 billion over the previous
decade. And the increase is not linear, it's exponential. Last week, just six
days ago, the Financial Stability Board in Bosl warned of financial panics
being triggered by the loss of property values. Two thirds of wealth in the
world is property. The economists back in April had this cover story warning
of $25 trillion of losses in the world housing market, 15% of the total over
the next 25 years. How long is it going to take us to wake up and say, we have
got to get this under control. How do we control it? Well, the old saying you
can only manage what you measure is the reason that we formed climate trace,
which now measures exactly where all of the global warming pollution is coming
from. We now measure the specific point source solution sites for 660 million,
the most virtually all of the global warming pollution sites in the world. We
have every nation, every sector and sub-sector of the economy, every state and
province, every county, 9,000 cities, 80% of them is the first inventory
they've ever had. Twenty five percent of the pollution comes from those
cities. We update this monthly, starting in March. It's on the site now, but
we'll have monthly updates starting in March at climatetrace.org. It's all
free. You can go to the site right now. A lot of people are using it. Here's
how we do it. We get data constantly from 300 satellites and 30,000 ground
truthing data sources, ARC and based sensors. We feed that into these machine
learning algorithms and use artificial intelligence to identify all of the
polluting sites. Our coalition has 13 organizations. My partner, Gavin
McCormick heads up WattTime and is the chief operating guy of all this, and
it's been a wonderful coalition because we work with 160 data contributors.
Some of them are here. Will Marshall from Planet Labs. Thank you, Planet Labs,
and Farnam Jahanian for the president of Carnegie Mellon is here. Carnegie
Mellon is one of our coalition members. NASA is now using it to improve their
climate models. They're getting better results at JPL from using it. The World
Bank, IMF, UNDP, UNEP, a lot of nations and NGOs are using it, and we're
seeing a lot of corporates begin to use it in order to reduce carbon emissions
in their supply chains. Here's an example with steel. You can get steel from a
blast furnace mill or an electric arc mill, and the difference in pollution
may be 16 times greater per ton if it's blast furnace. If we converted the
blast furnace mills to electric arc, which are more efficient and better
anyway, we could reduce emissions by a huge amount. Here are two mills both
operated by Nippon Steel. They get an 88% reduction by going to electric arc
furnaces. And by the way, the blast furnace mills, they have to be relined
every 20 years. More than a third of them are coming up for relining in the
next five years. Why don't we organize ourselves to convert those blast
furnace mills to electric arc while they're shut down. Anyway, we could save
an enormous amount of 21 billion tons by 2050 if we just made that change. And
artificial intelligence, of course, is now increasing electricity demand. Some
are this user of AI is using climate trace data to move their operations to
less carbon intensive grids, and they've had a huge 28% reduction in their
emissions just from that. But it's not all high tech in fact, the emissions
from landfills around the world is 14 times greater than all of the AI data
centers, four times greater than all the data centers of any kind. By the way,
Andrew Forrest Minderoo Foundation is our partner in getting this landfill
data. If you just cover the landfills, it's not high tech, you can reduce the
emissions by 70%. That's the difference between this uncovered landfill in
Nigeria and this covered landfill in Los Angeles. We're finding a lot of data
that's been hidden from view in the past, shipping, for example, and fishing.
They have these automatic identification systems, but some unsavory types turn
them off and try to hide. We see them, we track them. We include that data
along with all the rest. We're also finding previously hidden data from the
fossil fuel industry. We're seeing this is the only sector where this has been
such a persistent problem. Here's what has been reported to the UN and here's
what we've actually measured four times more emissions than are being
reported, only sector where that's the case. So we're also now, for the first
time, able to measure the particulate pollution, which comes in this
combustion process and kills 8.7 million people a year just from the burning
of fossil fuels. This is Cancer Alley, an 85 mile stretch from Baton Rouge to
New Orleans. Here's one of these sites. The areas color coded to show where
the majority Black population is in green. See where the emissions are going,
there are a lot of reasons for this, but environmental justice has to be at
the heart of the energy transition and the sustainability revolution. Here's
the whole of Cancer Alley. All of the polluting sites, you see these
particulate emissions and coming over the majority Black areas. It's horrible,
really. They call this a sacrifice zone. Right in the middle of Cancer Alley
is the community of Reserve, Louisiana. They have a cancer rate 50 times
higher than the national average, highest cancer risk in the United States of
America. The same disparities can be found in the developing world. This is
South Africa. The cape has very few particulate emissions. The cold country of
Mpumalanga, the Zulu area has a lot. We ought to be putting more renewable
energy on an urgent basis in developing countries. Amazon and Apple, two
companies that use our data are using it to cite renewable energy in places
where they can offset the most emissions. But the world needs to do a better
job of doing this because, for example, the single state of Florida has more
solar panels than the entire continent of Africa. That's a disgrace for the
global system for allocating capital, and at the same time, we're seeing three
times as many fossil fuel pipelines under construction and proposed for
construction in Africa as in all of North America. This needs to change. We're
seeing also fossil fuel facilities all over with refineries and LNG terminals,
extraction sites, even new coal mines. This needs to change. Now, the cost of
borrowing money in places like Nigeria can be seven times higher than the cost
in wealthy countries. >> And the energy transition, 85% of the money has come
from private capital, but most of it goes to the US, Europe, and China and
developing countries have been walled off from access to it because of the
high interest rates. And you see globally, 85% of the money has come from
private capital, and that's true in the advanced countries. In Africa, only
18%. The government can't make up the difference, and that's why there's this
persistent demand for more government to government money, which is a
political challenge to say the least. One of the many benefits, we create
three times as many jobs in clean energy, and we now have three million more
clean energy jobs than fossil energy jobs. So that's true in the US, as well,
which may make it a little bit more difficult than some believe to get rid of
former President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. I hope that is the case. And
it's all over the world. It's not just about the US, never has been. The IEA
says that we have all the technology and the proven deployment models we need
to cut emissions 50% in this decade and we have line of sight to the rest. If
we get to true net zero, temperatures will stop going up almost immediately,
lag time of only 3-5 years. And if we stay at true net zero, approximately
half of the anthropogenic CO_2 will fall out of the atmosphere in as little as
25-30 years. So it's up to us to get this done, and young people around the
world are demanding it. The only thing that we may lack in the view of some
people is political will. But please always remember that political will is
itself a renewable resource. Thank you very much.  APPLAUSE  >> Thank you,
Vice President Al Gore. Can I invite you to take a seat on the panel, and I'll
invite the rest of the panel to come on stage, as well to join us. >> Any
seat? >> Here. >> I sit on this? >> Vice President. >> Thank you. >> Prime
Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, Muhammad Yunus, chief advisor and interim
head of the Bangladeshi government, Andrew Forrest, chairman and founder of
Fortescue, Katherine Gao, co-chair of Trina Solar, and Salil Parekh, CEO of
Infosys. First, I would like to thank you Al Gore. You've been very
instrumental to what Climate TRACE has achieved today. >> Thank you. >> I know
it started off as an idea to just monitor, measure emissions from the power
industry. And you had pushed a team to dream big, to look at emissions across
all sectors beyond power to rice farms, landfills, industrial activity,
everywhere. And today, we can look at emissions in all sectors, all locations,
and obtain data in a comprehensive, timely, free to access, and easy to access
manner. Big dreams can lead to big things. And today we witness this dream in
reality. And please join me in thanking Al Gore and the Climate TRACE team.
Many of them are here, many of them are not here with us in giving them a big
round of applause. Thank you. >> Thank you very much.  APPLAUSE  >> I want to
start with Salil. You run in forces, one of the largest technology services
companies in the world, 300,000 employees and growing, 50 countries, a sizable
footprint. But you have also been leading by example on the climate front, how
to leverage technology to build some of the most efficient buildings and
campuses globally. You're also working with your clients to scale technology
led solutions to tackle climate change. You have seen Al Gore's presentation.
And in your view, how can a company like Infosys help to translate data like
this that is freely available into actionable insights, strategy, and plans
for your clients? In what ways are you also investing into capabilities that
can support companies in their sustainability journeys as we move towards an
intelligent age? >> Thank you for having me on this panel. First, an
incredible insightful session Vice President Gore, as always, humbling to see
what is happening and what hopefully we can do here. It's actually great to
see that some of the points I share build upon what you've said by coincidence
or design. There are four areas that I want to talk about building on
technology and data. So first, the use of data. And I think what you've seen
with climatetrace.org, and everything that has been going on around the world
in tracking what is going on with emissions is incredible in the way it's
being used, and also as Vice President Gore shared, the use of artificial
intelligence to model what is going on with the impact of climate change and
how potentially we can address it. So first, we're using data to track
emissions, not just around the world, but in enterprises. And we see that with
our clients. Three broad focus areas here, energy intensity, that's the use of
energy that we see in everyday activities. Some of this, for example, what you
saw here in the oil and gas sector, where some of the self-reported versus
what's actually happening is quite different. Water usage, we see a lot of
that going around where water usage, especially in the way that it's
efficiently driven can be changed. Water regeneration through different
methods on campuses. We've seen that on our campus, we see that with our
client campuses. And then waste optimization, especially what we see in India,
on our campuses, but what we see across the world with our clients and how
they work to it. Then we've looked at data for carbon footprint in the supply
chain itself. Again, something that was referenced in the session Vice
President Gore mentioned. That's very critical because there are ways we can
see that large enterprises can control what's going on in carbon footprint in
the suppliers by changing some of their policies. And then the way it's being
tracked, the sensors that were talked about, but there's real-time insights
and ways to control it much more right now than something that happens three
and six months later. And then we built software solutions. I'll talk a little
bit about that, energy efficient software solutions that can be used by large
enterprises. Second, is really building holistic solutions. So there's a lot
of technology that is absolutely required and is useful. But what is the human
usage, and there's many things we can do, for example, with behavior as we
work to what each of us are doing. Many things not done knowingly, so
something that we can do with change in behavior. What is the climate impact
and the changes that can be driven through this holistic solution and then the
technology support that comes from it? Third, we do see resistance to change,
and resistance to change is not simply because of expense or cost, it's more
also because of education and sometimes not understanding the real impact or
benefit that is potentially possible with the changes. We also do have an
investment required, but that's not a constraint in the way we see
sustainability impact that can come about. And the fourth is really the usage
of technology for solutions, analytical software, the cloud around the world
where we can leverage this blockchain technologies. And a lot was discussed on
artificial intelligence where machine learning algorithms can track through
what the current patterns are, what the patterns will evolve to, and how even
solutions can be developed, especially on weather by using artificial
intelligence. So in summary, we see a tremendous potential improvement in the
transition outcomes by using data, behavior, and technology. Thank you. >>
Thank you. In fact, I know Infosys is investing in your employees in learning
AI. Can you just share a little bit about that? >> Yes. So AI has become
absolutely critical for our clients also in this domain, but in many other
domains. And so we have from our 320,000 employees, 270,000 employees have
gone through AI training, and this is more in how they can use AI to benefit
our clients across a variety of areas, including in financial transactions,
including in risk management, and including climate change. >> Excellent.
Thank you very much. If I may now turn to Katherine Gao. You have recently
assumed co-chairmanship of Trina Solar. Is a global manufacturing solar
technology leader, and you've been at the leading edge of powering the
transformation of the energy industry. In fact, I know earlier this month,
Trina Solar broke the world record for the conversion efficiency of a solar
module. Higher efficiencies, lower costs, and solar costs. Solar is now one of
the lowest forms of energy right now, as what Vice President Al Gore has
mentioned. But he's also pointed out that solar deployment remains very slow,
especially in emerging developing economies where there is growing energy
demand. In fact, nearly half of the continents still do not have access to
energy. So the market opportunity for players like yourself is actually
substantial. And what are you doing to enable more access to renewable energy?
And what kinds of partnership do you need to really power this forward? How
can we get that speed and scale that's needed? >> Thank you very much for the
question. It's such an honor to be here today, especially to share this panel
with Vice President Gore, because I was just telling Mr. Gore in the
backstage, actually, my journey with renewable energy started when I first
watched the An Inconvenient Truth when I was a 13-year-old. And 18 years
later, I'm sitting here leading one of the largest solar companies globally. I
think when I first watched that movie, that's when I realized that climate
change is not just an environmental crisis, it's a task for the entire human
civilization. And I think being in this industry for almost eight years now, I
know for sure that this is not only an energy transition. It has to be a
beginning of a new era. So I'd like to share a few points. First, I think
definitely formed the foundation as economics. I think for decades, we had
difficulties solving the energy trilemma, the balance between being secure,
affordability, and also sustainability. And I think that era is over. So
through technological development, the cost for solar has dropped from $0.30
per kilowatt hour to $0.03 per kilowatt hour. And some of the projects that we
do in the Middle East, for example, the energy cost is $0.01 per kilowatt
hour. That is the lowest energy price in human history. So I think with that
economic foundation, it really resets the entire logic for energy transition.
I think it really combine economic return with social progress. I think that's
a really fundamental foundation to have. But with economic foundation is not
enough. Like Mr. Gore just mentioned, why is there an imbalance in the world
of how solar is implemented? I think the reason is that a green transition
it's not simply that we install as many solar or as many wind as possible,
it's a transition of the entire system. So we know that every revolution, the
foundation must be a revolution in the infrastructure. We saw that in
Internet, we saw that in the first revolution for electricity. So
infrastructure is really the key for implementing more renewable energies. So
what we need today is not only to invest more in solar energy or wind energy,
we need to invest more in grids. We need a more intelligent grid, we need a
more decentralized grid, we need a more steady grid in order for all those
renewable energy to be consumed. We need more energy storage to make renewable
energy more stable and more reliable. We need to use more AI in order to
balance out all those fluctuating, even more fluctuating energy supply and
demand on the grid. So I think it's a question of whether we have the courage
and we have the will to reform entirely, not just invest in certain parts, but
a total reformation. And the third, I think I would like to share from some
human notes is that I think a green transition is not only a technology story
or economic story. I think it always come down to people. So for example,
because Trina Solar, we operate in over 170 countries globally, during the
energy crisis in Europe, when the energy price went up to 10 times of normal,
solar energy was able to keep the home warm in the winter and keep business
running. And in many of the war zones that we're seeing, when the grids are
entirely destructured, solar is able to provide power for hospital and also
for refugee camps. And in some of the remote areas, even though we're not
doing enough yet, where the grid is not connected, we offer off-grid solar and
storage solutions and for those people who have never used power or
electricity before. So I think energy transition is not about energy. It's
also human dignity, it's also security, it's also opportunities. So I think in
conclusion, we have done something, but we haven't done enough. So as a
private sector, as a leader in the solar industry, we would really like to
work more closely with governments, with private and public entities to drive
this energy transition even further. >> Thank you, Catherine. Indeed.
 APPLAUSE  >> We need a holistic approach. We need the different parts of the
value chain to talk to each other. We need the ecosystem of different
stakeholders to work together to make this ambition into reality. I want to
turn to prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez. And I want to talk about
finance because yes, the cost of solar has come down, but there is still a
lack and maybe a gap in finance for infrastructure, for finance in emerging
developing economies. And under your leadership, Spain is actually at the
forefront of Europe's energy transition. You have an ambitious target, 80% of
energy from renewable sources in five years, 2030. Spain is now also a hub for
clean tech innovation, accounting for 20% of green hydrogen projects. Finance,
policy, public-private collaboration. And it's also very timely that Spain
will this year host the fourth International Conference on financing for
development in June in Seville this year, a conference that seeks to align
financing flows and policies with the transformation that Catherine has
highlighted, economic, social, environmental transformation. The COPs have not
had a lot of luck with financing. Last year, there were three COPs. All three
were not able to meet expectations where finance is concerned. What is your
strategy for this year's conference? What are the focus areas? And what would
success look like for you? >> Well, thank you very much for this question and
as you said, we have the honor to host the fourth International Conference on
financing for development in the beautiful city of Seville. I think this
conference will have to address important challenges that are all of them
deeply interconnected: climate change, sustainable development, poverty and
inequality, and, of course, conflict. The all-demand response grounded in
multilateralism, collaboration, and shared responsibility. We're still far
from meeting the sustainable development goals. So I think that there's a
political goal, which is that we must ensure that they remain on track.
Second, Seville represents once in a decade opportunity, the last before 2030.
So, I believe that finance for development is much more than an economic term.
It's about domestic resources. It is about official development assistance and
innovative mechanisms, debt relief, and of course, private investment and
demobilization of capital. So it is at the end, after talking with a lot of
leaders from across the world, I think is becoming the backbone of trust in
the multilateral system. So we have to act now, and I believe that Seville is
our chance to do it. So our strategy is that we are fully committed to
building bridge. So we need the maximum participation in the conference to
agree on bold yet realistic measures, and to have the necessary buy-in from
all sides. So we must come together in Seville with a clear focus on our
common interest and sense of responsibility. >> Thank you, Prime Minister. We
look forward to supporting you in your endeavor to bring together that
multilateral collaboration with focus on financing for the SDGs. As you've
said, is once-in-a-decade conference, and we should not miss this opportunity
to really give this a good push. If I may turn to Andrew Forrest, Founder and
Executive chairman of Fortescue, a global mining company. And the prime
minister also spoke about not just debt issues for governments, public
finance, but also mobilizing private capital. And you have been making
significant investments into green technologies. In fact, you have committed
to the Real Zero, that your business will stop using fossil fuels by the end
of this decade. Again, that's in five years. No carbon offsets, no carbon
capture and storage. And if you succeed, you could potentially be very
transformational for the mining industry and its supply chains. How do you
make the economics work? Because many people talk about the need to think
about growth, the need to think about profits, jobs, business continuity,
stability, and they see that tension with sustainability outcomes, but
obviously, you're seeing something that many people are not yet realizing. Can
you just tell us a little bit more how you've been able to mobilize, convince
your shareholders, and work with your partners in this bold ambition of yours.
>> Thank you. I'm really delighted to be here with such esteemed company, Vice
President, Prime Minister, dignitaries. So let's just acknowledge I'm an
economic pragmatist, I'm a hard core businessman, I'm an international miner,
I'm very practical. I cannot do anything unless there's a hard economic basis
for it. And I can say if we kicked off with this attitude, say, with the COPs
we've had, Prime Minister, where we have not succeeded in raising the capital
despite the pledges from the international community, that is simply because
and fully understandable, there's no economic model behind it. We're going to
rely on philanthropy. Philanthropy just cannot address the scale of what even
one company needs. If I add up the philanthropic pledges, it's less than 500
million, we're going to spend at least $6.5 billion to decarbonize our
operations, but before anyone scratches their heads and thinks, "That's a lot
of capital [inaudible 00:41:34], well, hold the phone." They save a billion
dollars a year by doing that. How do we do that? We simply stop burning fossil
fuel. That is what we call Real Zero. I do want to say that I think this word
net is causing more damage to the ability of the world to finance the economic
and energy transition than most fossil fuel producers combined. That word net
gives you an outlaw to do nothing. When you go to a bank and say, "I want to
borrow X billion, we raised capital only this morning of 9.2 billion," that's
because our economic model is simple. This is the amount of money we don't
spend each year, times the loan period, 10 years. That tranche of capital is
now available, it's called savings to be borrowed against. This is a financial
model. We're not relying on carbon sequestration. I'll switch quickly to being
a scientist, that I can assure you fails consistently. We're not relying on
carbon offsets or carbon credits where professionals in this sector say 95%
are going to be found to not give the carbon benefits they were purchased for.
Not relying on any of that, that could be court cases which will mean your
loan if you've lent into a company relying on carbon credits or carbon
sequestration or carbon offsets could well be in jeopardy. No, we're not
relying on any of that. We're just stopping burning fossil fuel, addressing
the elephant in the room. And that is fully financeable. Let me just walk you
through how. When you have a very large operation with control centers around
your sphere of operations around the world, and you've indicated to a
workforce in our case, 25,000 that you're going to stop burning fossil fuel by
the end of this decade, the workforce gets very interested. When they ask you
how are you going to do that, you say, you're going to resolve it. You work
out how to do it. You work out how to pull all the carbon out of our trains,
out of our trucks. Our trucks are somewhat taller than this room. You work out
how to do it out of our fixed plant. You work out how to do it even out of
making metal, the green steel and then you put a timeline on it. It's not
2050. Who's going to be around in 2050 making decisions here? We say it's
going to be in your career, so we put 2030. And then, of course, the leaders
say, "What happens if we don't?" We'll say that simple. At the end of 2028, a
full year or two before the deadline, we're going to come through the
operation centers, ask to see the energy flow part of the control panels, and
if any of it's connected to fossil fuel, we switch off that operational plant.
Literally send that plant and the workforce back. Now, instead of being met
with despair and unionism, that was met with triumphant and challenge. We're
saying to our workforce, you can do this. And out of that has come a series of
inventions. For instance, the ability to charge cars in 23 seconds, the
ability to put 6,000 kilowatts an hour into our truck, so we charge our huge
trucks for the next six hours of operation inside 30 minutes. The ability to
run trains on green electricity or green ammonia, the ability to run trucks
fully on green electricity, the ability to put out solar panels and wind farms
and storage. I just want to talk to you about storage. Once you say we're
going to step away from fossil fuel, we're not going back, then the workforce
and the accountants get very interested. [inaudible 00:45:56] was saying and
many of you others have pointed out, it comes back to storage. Now, the prime
minister of Spain says, for instance, "I need storage to run my entire grid
24/7 green." No fossil fuel, then you're not going to get out of a battery.
I'll turn to my favorite European prime minister and say, "You will get that
out of a new form of hydrogen." This is where we have an impurity in the
hydrogen called oxygen, where that, as you probably before recognized, isn't
an environmental liability, is highly flammable, creates a huge amount of heat
and feeds into [inaudible 00:46:44] cycle power stations exactly like the
power stations in Madrid. Now, we've developed this tech, we're challenging
Europe to accept it from Northern Africa, and we're ready to roll with it. So
all I'm saying to everyone out there, including those in the media who have
challenged me all day because everyone seems to be led out of the White House
with all these ideas that the climate's suddenly going to forgive us. It's not
going to matter anymore, that we can just burn as much fossil fuel as we like.
And I do say that I've been challenged on this. I've just said, "Well, walk in
my shoes. Don't throw mud from your podiums. Come down to Australia and see
how we're doing it, and we will retain our title." I just want to put it out
there. The company I represent is the highest performing company and Shell
returns in Australia's history. We are the last cost [inaudible 00:47:39]
producer in the world. We're not going to lose that mantle. We're going to
increase our competitive edge by going fully green. Thank you. >> Thank you,
Andrew. We had the inconvenient truth, and now we have change that is
inconvenient, but it's very possible as what you've just highlighted. I'll
come back to this human dimension shortly with Vice President Al Gore. I would
like to move on to Professor Yunus. This conversation that Catherine had
raised earlier around the new era, the need to forge new pathways, new
businesses, new ways of doing things. In fact, you won the Nobel Prize in 2006
for your pioneering work on microfinance and microcredit to alleviate poverty.
Incidentally, Vice President Al Gore actually won the Nobel Peace Prize one
year later in 2007 for his work around climate. And you have spoken at length,
Professor Yunus, in your various capacities about how the current civilization
is unsustainable and self-destructive. And we might, unfortunately, be the
generation to witness that. And there's a need for a new world , a new era, as
what Catherine says, but how do we make this happen? We're stuck. Can I tap on
you for some advice? >> Well, thank you very much. You already said everything
I was supposed to say. Thank you for introducing this subject for me. First, I
want to mention that every time I hear Al Gore speaking, he creates trouble
for me. I get so inspired. I have to do something about it. I don't know how
to do it. I'm not an expert in renewable energy or anything. All I know how to
work with the poor people and bring financial services and so on. So I keep
thinking, what can I do? So one idea came, why don't I bring solar energy in
the rural areas to the poor households? >> At that time, it was not as cheap
as today, but we thought we can provide the credit from the main bank that we
created. And make a deal with the people. So at the moment, you are using
kerosene, the lamp because there's no electricity in the villages of
Bangladesh at that time. Today we have, but at that time, there was no
electricity. So you are using kerosene. Simply we ask a question to the family
how much money you spend on kerosene? And everybody has a ready answer because
they know every month, every week, they have to spend this money. So deal is
you give us the kerosene money and we give you electricity. That's a deal. And
when the money that we collected from you is done, it's covered, it's free,
it's yours. People didn't believe that such a deal can be possible. I said,
try us. If you don't like it, we'll take it back. So nothing to lose. That was
the beginning. Without knowing how the response of the families of the poor
families will do, they started trying us. They said can they keep their words?
And they liked it and became a big nationwide business for that. We created
gramin solar energy to bring solar energy in the poorest people. So I
translated the idea that you are promoting, so how we translate in my context.
And that gives us a tremendous amount of hope. Yes, it's possible. You don't
have to submit to the fossil fuel every time you said, how can you do with the
kerosene replacement is impossible task? So we tried to redesign it in a way.
It makes sense to them, and it makes sense to everybody else. So that became a
national program. Many other people copied it. But I ran into problem with our
government. You know it very well. So every time I do something, government
has come and attack me, condemn me, whatever I do. So I ran into problem.
Again, Gore comes up. He makes a big global statement, supporting me and have
all the friends who signed up, joined a statement in the newspapers and so on
so that I can be saved from going into jail. Because I'm always one courthouse
to another courthouse. The government had 190 cases against me and people
gathered around him to make sure that the government doesn't really put me
into jail. So I was about to get into jail. Something happened in Bangladesh
at that time. Suddenly, young people of Bangladesh rebelled against the
government and challenge the government out of nowhere. They were not planning
anything. They were not preparing for that. One little thing to another little
thing, it became an explosion. And suddenly, uprising of the young people and
the people of Bangladesh pushed the regime, collapse, and the prime minister
flee the country. What happened? Young people looks at me. You are the one who
running the country. I said, No, not me. So instead of going to jail, I'm now
running the country. So again and again this trouble. I hope this time I can
do something more concrete. There's nobody to push me into jail. So young
people love these ideas of creating a world that they can live, they can feel
comfortable with their life. And I've been encouraging young people to see the
world they want to build. I said, civilization that we have created now, is a
civilization which is self destructive. We have put everything inside that
civilization, which will ultimately destroy the whole existence of human
being. So we have to enter the whole civilization part. It's not about fossil
fuel or something, one individual. These are important items, but the whole
thing is about the way we live. The way we think that created the world, no
matter what we do now, within that framework, nobody can save the world. So I
said very loudly, clearly. I said, in order to survive and let the planet
survive, we have to create a new civilization. And that civilization has to be
defined right away. Whether you are doing it today or tomorrow, you have to
very fast get there. Within the framework of the present civilization, there
is no escape route. So it sounds very rude to say that, but that's the way I
think all of us will come to the conclusion, we can't do that. So what I'm
suggesting and people responding to it, saying we have to create a new
civilization. The features of the new civilization will be very clear. It will
be world of three zeros. So I define these Three Zeros. Once is zero carbon
emission. You cannot keep the carbon emission and save the planet at the same
time. You have to come to that. No matter what technology you have, you have a
lot of other ideas, what you can do, you have to do that. The next zero is
zero wealth concentration. The system that we built around the world today
that we practice every day, always pushing the wealth to the top. So you
report to the world, what kind of progress you are making, growth taking
place, technology is helping us to make more money and so on. Ultimately,
where does this money go to? To the top. So contrast concentration becomes
heavier and heavier. Bottom becomes emptier and emptier. Little bit sips into
the bottom, but very little compared to what you got in the top. Almost 90% of
the wealth is concentrated in the hands of very few people. And it's getting
worse every day. We see it, but we say that's the way world works. That's not
the way world works. That's the way we made the world work. We are the
responsible people. So that's attention I try to bring. Is there a solution?
So there a solution. If you look for solutions, solutions are here. So in
order to do that, to make it simple for young people to understand, we try to
start, make it easy for them by saying, Let's create Three Zero clubs. Five
young people get together, create a club. What do they do? They discuss about
the problems of environment, problems of wealth concentration, all the issues
that we raise among themselves. It's easy now with the technology, you can get
into the Internet, you find all those things and say, what do we do? I said,
it's very simple. Don't worry about the whole world. The world is too big.
Just look at yourself. The whole problem starts with us as individuals. I
said, all you have to do promise in the Three Zero club a commitment that you
made. I will not personally contribute to global warming. I'm not responsible,
others are, but I'm not. How do we contribute? So all the things that we talk
about, how I contribute as global warming, I find out. See if I'm using fossil
fuel every day and didn't realize that I'm contributing to the global warming.
Now, I'm careful. I will not use fossil fuel. That's my commitment joining the
club. I cannot do it in day 1, but I'll make a schedule when I'll do that. I
said, if I'm using seven days a day fossil fuel, this is just one item. I'll
make it six days a week rather than seven days. One day will be fossil fuel
free. I can do that. And if I'm successful, I share with my friends in the
club, I've done it. I'm now six days. Then somebody says, I'm on five days
now. Two days I don't. I said, ultimately, everybody will be trying to make it
seven days a week and celebrate. We don't use fossil fuel anymore. We've got
all the alternatives. Young people know how to find alternatives because all
the speeches you are making, all the things are available. So people go there
and say, declare and they communicate with each other. One club communicates
with other club. Thousands of clubs around the world grow up. >> Thank you. >>
Even 5% of those clubs are serious about something, something specific
happens. The reason I'm saying that root cause of all the problem is a
lifestyle issue, the way we live. Unless we change our lifestyle, we cannot
change the planet the way it is. So we have to go to the lifestyle.
Ultimately, for the three zero clubs, we're saying when you make it happen,
you declare that you are a Three Zero person. >> Thank you, Professor Yunus.
>> That's it. So this is the way to do. Start this step by step do that. If
you can become a Three Zero person, we'll create a Three Zero world as simple
as that. Thank you. >> Thank you. One idea a day, a step at a time, a day a
week. And if you can move faster, start running. We have come to the close of
the segment, but I really would like to invite the panelists because you've
heard from each other. The technology, the data is there. Economics work.
Financing investments can be made possible. But we need leadership and human
will. We need to also organize ourselves so that we can move in concert. What
can we do to inspire more global leadership, more collaboration? This year's
annual meeting, the theme is around the intelligent age. How can we harness
the wisdom of our forefathers? How can we harness the wisdom from nature? How
can we harness that inner wisdom within ourselves to make the right choices
for our children, for ourselves, and for all future generations to come? So if
I could just invite you to share your reflections before we close this panel.
Vice President Gore, would you like to start first? >> I was president of the
Senate, so it's okay. Well, thank you. I'm inspired by this panel, and it's an
honor to be a part of this panel, and thank you, [inaudible 01:01:25] We are
going to win this, in my opinion. Question is whether we will win it quickly
enough. The crisis is getting worse faster than we are deploying solutions.
But there's a famous economic law, so to speak, named after the late economist
Rudy Dornbush. He said, things take longer to happen than you think they will,
but then they happen faster than you thought they could. We have seen that
play out in business and technology, and we have seen it in political and
spiritual revolutions, the civil rights movement in my country, anti
apartheid, and you can go through a lot of the morally based movements. In all
of those movements, there were times when the advocates felt despair. The
antidote to climate despair is climate action because in those previous
revolutions, when the central issue was revealed as a choice between what's
right and what's wrong, then at a very deep level, the outcome became for
ordained. We are very close to that tipping point in the sustainability
revolution. How will we get there? We have the technology, we have the
deployment models. Trina Solar has demonstrated how that can be done so
effectively. We've heard Andrew Fars, I'm not going to go through the panel,
but all of them have been so inspiring. For those who are interested in
becoming advocates, please turn your attention and your energies to this. On
Monday when our forum began this week, in my country, it was also Martin
Luther King Day. During one of the moments of trial and struggle in the civil
rights movement, Dr. King said, if you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk.
If you can't walk, crawl. But keep going forward. That's where we are. Don't
get discouraged. We are going to prevail. We must prevail. I believe that we
will prevail. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> If I may go to Catherine Salil,
Andrew, and then we'll close with Professor Yunus and the prime minister of
Spain, you have the last word. >> I think I like to share a sentence I always
say to my team. Inspire, not lead. So I think speaking about leadership at
this age about green transformation, we should focus more on inspiration. I
was inspired by Vice President Gore when I was 13-year-old and when I was
15-year-old, I started a nonprofit organization in China, focusing on
education about climate change for the younger generation. And I am inspired
each year that I come to doubles and hear so many people talking about energy
transition and see people around the world devoting themselves into energy
transition. Then I feel more powerful than ever and go back to my own work
despite all the challenges that we see. So I think when people are told or
commanded to do something, they might do it. But probably with minimum work.
But when people are inspired, when people really are touched, they truly
devote to whatever they believe in. So I think inspiration is the key in green
transformation. >> Thank you, Catherine Salil. >> Well, first, this has been
an absolutely incredibly inspiring panel and the discussion from everyone. I'm
a huge believer in technology and people, and my sense is we have everything
that we need in terms of technology to make this change happen. And there's
more technology being developed today that will further enhance it. So I'm an
absolute optimist in that coming through. And I'm also a huge believer in the
view that the next generation is even more keen to do this than the prior
generation, that we are absolutely driven in many ways by what the people
want. So with the technology and the people, my sense is this is going to
happen much faster than we think it is really possible and therefore, huge
optimism in where we end up. >> Thank you, Andrew. >> Thank you. I've drawing
inspiration from all these speakers. And I just want to say that we have a
large technology development center. It's called Fortescue Zero, and I love so
many parts, Dr. Eunice of what you described. But all these speakers, I just
really want to thank you for how you've helped me with your own knowledge.
Just to say this, I'm totally with Vice President Gore. We are so going to win
this it is just a matter of time. The economics are overwhelmingly going in
our favor. If you look at the oil and gas sector, yes, it's the largest sector
which has ever existed, and yes, it has a technology curve which is typical
for all industries, but it's up here. It's on its plateau. I've introduced you
to technologies which are still here. We've got this part of the curve yet to
go. I would not bet ever against technology, no matter where you're from, we
the people are going to win this because we cannot afford to lose in any
event. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Well, thank you. >> Sometimes we ignore, we
don't notice things, but it's right in front of us. And one of such things
suddenly drew my attention. I've started looking at it, sports. Sports world
is so big. Such an excitement. Nothing thrills people like sports. They commit
themselves for their dearest player and so on, celebrate them. So I said, "Why
sports should remain just an entertainment?" It has so much social power in
it. It brings the whole world together, people together. That's a social
power. Why don't we change it? So that idea started spinning out in raw
details and somebody asked, "Can you design an Olympic as a social business?"
I said, why not? It should be helping people to solve their problem, just not
entertainment of Olympic. Olympic is a great entertainment, excitement, but
it's power can be used for changing people's life. Paris challenged me. We are
going to hold the Paris Olympic 2024. This was in 2018. They invited me. Can
you help us to design it like this, address the social issues into Olympic? I
said, of course, we can do that. All you have to do is to think about it. So
we thought about it, came out with lots of details how it can be a socially
oriented thing. And finally, Olympic took place. It was designed as a social
Olympic. I'm not giving into all the details, but it excited rest of the world
that yes, sports world without sacrificing their fun part of it, entertainment
part of it, this had another dimension to it, which is remain unutilized and
you're utilizing it for nothing because you are enjoying it already. Milan
Winter Olympic is coming up. Now they are contacting us. Can you help us to do
the Winter Olympics as a social Olympic? I said, Why not? But condition, it
has to be better than the Paris Olympic. I said, well, try, look together. So
people see the result. They got excitement. They had no idea that sports has a
social dimension. Now that dimension can be explored. We just laid the first
layer of it. There's so many layers you can do that. So all I'm saying, there
are many things right in front of us. We never tried it in a different way.
We're not sacrificing anything, we're adding something to it. Thank you very
much. >> Thank you, Professor Yunus. And you might be delighted to know that
tomorrow we do have a session called Sports for People and Planets. Please
join us. Prime Minister Sanchez, you've been waiting patiently. >> No, we're
running out of time, so I will be very brief. I would say that or I would add
that in order to win this political battle, and in order to have the majority
of our societies on board, the transition must be fair. So we cannot forget
the social justice dimension of this transition. >> Thank you. Please join me
in a big round of applause for a very inspiring panel. Thank you. We have come
to the last and most inspiring part of this program, which is to celebrate
social entrepreneurs. If I may, we will be presenting the Schwab Foundation
Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. This has been ongoing for the last 25
years. The foundation has been recognizing individuals, organizations who are
harnessing the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to serve people and
planet. And I would like to specially acknowledge, Professor Yunus, you've
been personally very involved in this as well as Vice President Al Gore to
support the work of the Short Foundation and the social entrepreneurs. So if I
could just invite you to just stay with us for the next few minutes, and I'll
welcome on stage, Mrs. Hilda Schwab, chairperson and co founder of the Schwab
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. She had the foresight to set this up
25 years ago to present the winners for 2025. Mrs. Schwab. >> Thank you, Kim
and thank you to this panel for a fantastic session. Thank you very much. But
here come the real doers who will try to change the world. Since 1998, when
Klaus and I created the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and
here I want to acknowledge, particularly Professor Muhammad Yunus who was one
of our first board members. It has provided a global platform for social
entrepreneurs and innovators to drive systemic change and influence policy and
stakeholders for transformative solutions. In partnership with the World
Economic Forum, the Schwab Foundation has brought together the foremost global
community of over 500 pioneering social entrepreneurs and innovators.
Together, they have directly improved the lives of over 900 million people.
The 2025 Schwab Foundation Awardees are using innovative models to transform
healthcare and education, support refugees and migrants, create livelihoods
for those excluded from mainstream economies, and demonstrate real climate
action hand in hand with communities. The Schwab Foundation Awards are hosted
in a longstanding partnership together with the Motsepe Foundation, founded on
the philosophy of Ubuntu, the African concept of giving and caring for your
neighbor and your community. Our sincere thanks go to Patrice and Precious
Motsepe co founders of the Motsepe Foundation, for their belief in this
community. Now I am pleased to announce the leading social entrepreneurs and
innovators of the year 2025. We recognize them in four categories, social
entrepreneurs, founder of profit or non profit social enterprise, pioneering
systemic, and impactful models addressing social inequalities and vulnerable
ecosystems. They are Cecilia Corral, Care Message, USA, Mawuse Christina
Gyisun, Sommalife, Ghana, Muzalema Mwanza, Safe Motherhood Alliance, Zambia,
Valmir Gabriel Ortega, Belterra Agroflorestas, Brazil, Manuel Rosemberg, ANA
Care, Mexico, Aline Sara NaTakallam Lebanon, Akshay Saxena, Avanti Fellows,
India, Vineet Singal, Care Message, USA. Corporate Social Innovators, leaders
within multinational or regional companies who drive the development of new
products, services, initiatives, or business models that address societal and
environmental challenges. Caitlyn Juhong Chen, Tencent Holdings Limited,
People's Republic of China, Eric Cioe-Pena, Northwell Health, USA, Fred
Hersch, Google Health, Singapore. Public Social Innovators, leaders in the
public sector in government or in international organizations who harness the
power of social innovation to create public good through policy, regulation,
or public initiatives. Islam Alijaj, Member of Parliament of Switzerland and
founder of Tatkraft, Switzerland, Trinh Thi Huong, Agency for Enterprise
Development, Minister of Planning and Investment, Vietnam. Collective Social
Innovators, an award to recognize organizations coming together to address
complex problems that cannot be tackled by individual actors using shared
knowledge, human capital, networks, and innovations to achieve a common social
or environmental goal. Africa Sustainable Commodities Initiative led by
Abraham Baffoe. Community Health Impact Coalition led by Madeleine Ballard.
Responsible Coalition for Resilient Communities led by Ved Arya, Poonam
Muttreja, and Apoorva Oza. Please join me in celebrating these courageous
leaders and congratulate them as they join us on stage to be recognized as the
social entrepreneurs and innovators of the year 2025. Please join us on stage.
Don't forget your Diploma. Thank you