The new top executives do not need any emotionally charged prime ministers who tell them that this is “the world’s moment of truth”
Politicians sit in the back seat and discuss which way we should take. The progressive business community is taking control of the climate roofs, and one does not have to be reminded that it must end with “blah, blah, blah”, writes editor of Shifter, Per-Ivar Nikolaisen.
Copenhagen 12 years ago. It was blowing cold on the surfaces outside the conference center on Amager. Inside, I sit with a hot cup of coffee and smoking engaged – as a climate lobbyist for a Norwegian environmental organization. I do not remember today what commas or prepositions we fought to get into the international climate agreement, but I was convinced that this moment was historic. It had to be, since both Barack Obamaone, Desmond Tutu and Arnold Schwarzenegger Was there.
The negotiations went as always in overtime. The summit ended with the US president crashing into a meeting with the Indian, Chinese and Brazilian top leaders, scraping together the remnants of some sort of agreement.
In the last two weeks, I have put many of the same people as in Copenhagen 12 years ago, where I have taken pictures of myself with international semi-celebrities and full-length celebrities. In the same way as in Copenhagen the activist insists that this is a historic moment and that it is now or never. Once again, top executives with highly developed theatrical abilities give speeches with a lot of pathos, often detached from what they actually do at home. At the last minute, an agreement comes into place once again.
I myself have not been to a single climate summit after the anticlimax in Copenhagen. So maybe I’m both unfair and a little ignorant when I write this. But here outside the bubble I still wonder how I could really believe that someone coming, parents or prepositions here and there in a voluntary agreement came to save the globe – that time in 2009. Well in Glasgow in 2022, it was the question of whether to phase «down» or «out» coal that received the most attention.
For me, it is getting clearer and clearer. Politicians sit in the back seat and discuss which way we should take. Progressive businesses in the business world have taken over the management. They do not need an “emotional charge” Boris Johnson to tell them that this is “the world’s moment of truth”, or to be taught by former BBC star Sir David Attenborough that nature is an unpleasantly healthy change.
I’m not saying that all farms are doing so well. The then Statoil virtually gave up its renewable investment after the climate summit in Copenhagen, and instead invested billions in shale gas and oil sands. It’s not terribly much better today. Only the fire percentage of new investments remains Equinor in renewable energy or low carbon solutions. It is a long way to go before the oil company becomes a broad-based energy company, as is often talked about in the party speeches.
One who seems to understand that the train is leaving soon is Kjell Inge Røkke. Make no mistake, the multibillionaire is still an oil magnate, and will in the years to come contribute to a massive emission of CO2 through his companies. At the same time, he is investing in projects that will surely make the Norwegian economy much greener than today – and is investing money in offshore wind, carbon capture, hydropower, solar, hydrogen, battery technology and plastic recycling. He recently launched Runway FBU, where the Røkke system will invest heavily in new start-up companies. He does not have to deal with the fact that there must be a global consensus of opposing forces before he does anything. Røkke can twist the cash flows all alone – because he sees that it will pay off, both for his wallet and nature, and perhaps also his legacy when he one day leaves this globe. As he himself said in an article here in Shifter recently, he has after all only “200,000 hours left to live”.
“Old” mixing systems such as Aker is one thing. But the flow of new start-ups is ending more unequivocally – the vast majority of them are at least climate neutral and very many are climate positive, thus helping to cut emissions.
Take one of the most well-known growth companies. Kahoot creates billion-dollar values with a climate footprint as large as the Christmas table of a department in Equinor. Easee and Zaptec develops and sells charging boxes which help to change Norway and eventually Europe’s infrastructure for electric cars. The used clothing platform Tise has fetched large sums from some of the hottest capitalists in New York. Gelato has had monster growth with its platform for ordering and short-distance production of wall art, textile prints and eventually also 3D-printed products.
At the same time, there will soon not be a VC fund here in Norway that will not use the UN’s sustainability goals as a basis when it comes to investing its money. This week we wrote about Norselab, who brought in the number crusher Kenza Akallal from the fund giant Black stone. She wrote the first lines of code such as integrated data on environment, social conditions and governance in the technology platform Blackrock uses to assess the ups and downs of investments.
Then someone will probably say that the snowball would not have started to roll without the political guidelines The Paris Agreement (now the Glasgow agreement) or for that matter the EU’s new taxonomy for sustainable finance. However, it is also likely that both this and the next generation of capitalists and founders are fully capable of seeing Of Germany floods fall, America forests burn and of the world glaciers melt down. They feel they have to do something. Then they are fortunately just a short board meeting or a general meeting away from creating historical moments – without nailing a single preposition, or getting a push from an activist who has to tell them that it must end “blah blah blah”.