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The First Movers Coalition, launched at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, has garnered an unprecedented $16 billion in aggregated demand for emerging climate technologies and the support of 13 governments which together represent more than 50% of global GDP.
What are the lessons learnt and what lies ahead in the journey to speed up and scale these technologies?
This session is linked to the First Movers Coalition of the World Economic Forum.
This is the full audio from a session at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2024.
Watch the session here: https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024/sessions/first-movers-for-frontiers-clean-technologies
Speakers:
Tan See Leng, Minister for Manpower and Second Minister for Trade and Industry, Singapore
Takeshi Hashimoto, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd
Rachel Kyte, Visiting Professor of Practice, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
John F. Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
Daniel Fisher, Chief Executive Officer, Ball Corporation
Carlos Torres Vila, Chair, BBVA SA
Anna Borg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vattenfall AB
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Podcast transcript
This transcript has been generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio.
Rachel Kyte: Good morning from cold and crisp and future-oriented Davos, World Economic Forum. For my pleasure as the moderator today – my name is Rachel Kyte, I'm a professor of practice at the Blavatnik School at Oxford University – is to introduce a first mover himself, who needs no introduction but Special Envoy John Kerry, to get this conversation going. And then we'll have an extraordinary panel discussion with companies that have really turned a coalition that has had a real ambition, into a coalition which is actually acting and making a real difference. But, from one of the great inspirations of this First Mover Coalition. Please, John, the floor is yours.
John Kerry: Yes, good morning everybody and thanks very, very much for joining us today. Thank you for your stewardship and thank you to the first movers that are here, those of you representing some of the first movers. I begin every session that I engage in here just trying to clarify something, there's a few questions out there. I am not retiring. I want to make it clear and I'm shifting my efforts to where I think they could be best used in an election year in the United States and facing the fact that Congress is not going to obviously grab this by the baton the way we need to get things done.
Let's understand why this is so critical. First of all, you're all experts. There's nobody here in these studies that are fully educated but sometimes we all need to be reminded that we are dangerously close to the precipice. Tipping points that we've been warned about. Climate chaos that comes about because, as we know, this past year is by far the most turbulent in every single respect. Heat, warming, deforestation. People are creating problems and it really is a challenge. But here's the plan.
Now, money. Money is critical to our ability to be able to do that. And kudos, I cannot thank enough the CEOs of First Mover Coalition companies who made the decisions that they're going to be leaders, that they're going to take their companies and do something that takes a little bit of explanation – if you're publicly held to your shareholders and if you don't have to explain to them, privately even the people who have families and otherwise and sometimes challenge the decision, to spend a little more than you have to – to change your bottom line.
But it is only by making that decision that we're going to be in a place where we get to accelerate this transition fast enough. Now we've tried to do our part. One of the reasons why I am comfortable saying I'm not going to lead our team into the next COP, is because I believe we had a historic COP in Dubai. I believe that the fact that we got 195 nations to sign off on language that says we will transition away from fossil fuels is historic.
And it's not a freestanding sentence. It's a sentence that is modified by the phrase in keeping with the science, which means 1.5 degrees is our North Star and we have to keep pushing in that direction. It also says accelerating in this decades and it also says in keeping with net zero by 2050, which means you have to meet a certain curve of reduction and be transparent and accountable in public sector. So this is a major step forward. It's accompanied by other steps.
It's accompanied by the fact that for the first time in a COP, there was a major devoted day to methane. And China and the United States held a joint conference in which China is already now putting out its national plan, which we worked on two years ago. And we had originally agreed to announce in Glasgow we all agreed that all greenhouse gases will now be part of the NDCs [nationally determined contributions]. Imagine that in the year 2023, methane wasn't even included in the NDCs of a whole host of countries.
And if you add to what I just said, adaptation, initiative and the way in which we're now going to move with respect to loss and damage where we created something that a lot of people thought was a showstopper, a COP killer and something that was going to prevent us from ever getting progress.
Well guess what? We worked all summer, all that through the series of meetings, five of them in the end, in order to be able to try to set ourselves up to get that done on the first day. So it didn't become a destructive and counterforce to everything else we needed to do, we won that battle.
So, we are now poised folks to really take this idea of a First Mover Coalition and run with it. And you saw in that video, all the things that are able to be done now. So, we are I think in the midst of one of the most powerful examples of what we can do on the demand side to be able to affect the marketplace. And the fact is that that you know what we've accomplished is really amazing. We've amassed over 110 out of about 100 members, 110 specific purchasing agreements from almost 100 companies.
We have taken together, all of this effort by the FMC represents about $16 billion of commitments that are being made. It's the largest private demand signal for clean technologies in history. And we're already seeing this demand is creating catalytic consequences within the other technologies. And when you pair the necessary policy work that we've been doing on the supply side, the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act], for instance, you have a combination that can change the marketplace much more rapidly than it would be otherwise.
So, what I'm really excited about as this entity the FMC is doing the innovative work, in order to meet their 2030 purchasing agreements. It's happening. And the commitments that First Mover companies have made are obviously fundamentally challenging. But they are commitments that will change the way that we procure our most basic goods – steel, aluminium, concrete, jet fuel, shipping, shipping industry.
Together with the IMO [International Maritime Organization] that changed its rules this year and the shipping industry – you stepped up. And now I am told that the entire shipping fleet will probably be turned over in the course of about 20 years to no-carbon, zero-carbon, low-carbon sources. That's incredible when you think about where we were two years ago. So, this is a great example of the way in which the marketplace can act responsibly. It's truly the upside, the best side, if you will, of capitalism, which brags that it has the ability to be able to allocate capital more effectively than any other methodology. Well, this is proof really in the pudding that you could be responsible in ways way beyond what the normal marketplace is willing to accept.
There are almost 100 offtake agreements different from the commitments that are made with innovative suppliers and they're moving voluntary pledges to real bankable contracts. These offtake agreements represent a coming together of government suppliers, buyers and financiers. And they do something very complicated and difficult but they're doing it and it's going to have an impact on the market.
My bottom line is this. I am convinced now because of what is happening in the marketplace. There are smart CEOs of the biggest companies in the world. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Salesforce, FedEx, Boeing, Ford, Mercedes, automobile dealers, all through the food chain. We are seeing CEOs make the decision that they're committing their companies to maybe pay a little bit of a green premium but, in the end, create a supply chain that is going to provide everybody with the ability to be able to join up and enjoy the benefits here.
So, you're going to hear from a handful of our members today about how they are driving transformation through FMC commitments and it's absolutely critical that we accelerate.
I am convinced beyond any doubt that because of the decisions being made in the marketplace now because you know as well as I do, I don't want this obviously, but if you wound up with a different president who was opposed to climate crisis, I got news for you: no one politician anywhere in the world can undo what is happening now. The marketplace is doing this. And the only issue for all of us is not whether or not we can get or will get to a low carbon economy globally; we will.
The only question is will we get there in time to meet the challenge of the scientists in order to avoid the worst consequences of this crisis? That is what is at stake. So I really look forward to hearing from our folks today who are going to lay out to everybody here the ways in which all can participate in this transformation.
It's the biggest transformation in the economies of the world in all of human history. It's also the greatest business set of opportunities that we've ever known in all of human history. And smart people are seeing that opportunity and I think it's going to be the job creator and the energizer of our economies that are going to really transform the world over the course of these next months and years. So with that, please let's get the panel and learn what everybody is up to. Thank you.
Rachel Kyte: Thank you very much Special Envoy Kerry, John if I may. Thank you for shifting role a little bit. We continue to need your vision and enthusiasm. So, First Mover Coalition, a couple of years ago in Glasgow, started small and is now sending this extraordinary demand signal across all kinds of value chains in what used to be called hard-to-abate sectors. First of all, I'd like to go to one of the early government members of the First Mover Coalition, Minister Tan See Leng, the second minister for trade and industry.
Singapore sits at the hub of global shipping, of logistics, transportation, etc. We're going to hear from CEOs who are doing extraordinary work along their value chains. What more on the public side, on the government side – what more could governments do to respond now to the demand signal that we need to create across the economy?
Tan See Leng: Thank you. First of all, a very good morning to all of you. Always enjoy listening to special adviser John's remarks and a sense of optimism that really gives us the kind of gusto to move forward. I think that for us we are very, very excited by the FMC and the movements moving forward. We believe that fundamentally government can really perform the role of catalyst and an enabler for many of these initiatives and driving systems. Really, in terms of the development of low-carbon technologies and markets and how we can actually achieve partnerships with industry and also to see how we can enable and also channel market demand into areas where it's needed most.
So, as I've said earlier on, beyond the catalysts, the government has to play the role of an enabler. So one of the key things that we have done and perhaps if we share with you some of our experiences, at the end of last year, we did an end-to-end RFP for ammonia, the development of low carbon ammonia solutions. And what we did was: the expressions of interest concluded in October and we will be issuing a closed RFP, request for proposal, to six short-listed consortiums. And when it's done, we will be announcing something towards the end of this month; it would move Singapore another step closer to being one of the first countries in the world to test and deploy a direct ammonia combustion power plant and to support the holistic assessment of ammonia bunkering for shipping.
So we are also working with multiple other ammonia suppliers, shipping lines, storage providers, technology providers and also bunker supplies to ensure that we are able to scale up the required infrastructure to support and to cater for ammonia bunkering for both ocean-going ships and domestic hovercrafts and obviously we're developing procedures, standards and regulations for safe bunkering of ammonia.
Now, for aviation, we set up an international centre for aviation innovation, or ICAI, just last week to facilitate the development and adoption of technologies for the aviation sector, which focuses primarily on the Asia Pacific region. So we partner with governments, industry, partner RIs – the research institutes – to undertake R&D projects in several new key areas, for instance, sustainable aviation, developing new concepts to minimize carbon footprint, to optimizing operations.
We are also working with our partners – the US, Japan – to see how we can develop and implement aviation green lanes throughout the whole of Asia Pacific. This would then provide a pathway for accelerated emissions reductions through fostering value chain collaboration, ensuring credibility and also providing predictability and transparency to consumers.
So, FMC, your focus on private sector resource mobilization can work with us and with multiple governments, like-minded governments in developing low-value, low-carbon value chains and tested solutions and some of the government-led platforms in Singapore, for instance, like our MPA, which is a Maritime Port Authority screen and digital shipping corridors. Their route-based action plans can help to bring together a network of maritime and energy value chain stakeholders to exchange information to catalyze pilot trials and establish a supply chain of zero or near zero greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you.
Rachel Kyte: Thank you, thank you very much. So we're gonna go into rapid-fire CEO segments of this panel now. And Takeshi Hashimoto from Mitsui O.S.K, it's really wonderful to be here and I have to say that every now and again at Davos, you get a sign of how quickly things are moving. The shipping sector, really over the last few years has moved very fast. So we saw one of your incredible new prototype ships on the video at the beginning. You've been involved in advanced market commitments on carbon renewables. You're involved in other innovations in the fuel stock as well. What do you need in order to see this transformation go even faster around the world?
Takeshi Hashimoto: Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Yes, since we joined the FMC two years ago, we have expanded so many activities and actually tried to accelerate low-carbon and zero-carbon transportation. The complication is that the shipping company, we are covering so many different kinds of shipping businesses – containers and bunker and tankers and gas carriers, ferry and cruise businesses – and each segment has a different requirement and nature that it became quite clear that there is no single solution to achieve net zero. So we have a need to establish a combination of various procedures to reduce our emissions for the time being and in the long term that we definitely need for net zero.
So, ammonia, LNG, methane, hydrogen, we couldn't delete any options because there are a very wide variety of 800, 900 persons, all of whom need different solutions. And we are trying to work with many industry players, shipyards, engineering companies and customers, and that is quite an important issue for us in dialogue with other government and international entities. So we need to establish technical achievement, commercial achievement – that kind of political framework.
So, it's quite a gigantic effort we need. We already started and when we started, we did not expect such a very big work. But more and more, it became very clear that we cannot do it alone. We definitely need to set up a quite strong team that will work together to achieve the different targets in the 2020s, 30s and 40s. So, for us, being a member of FMC is quite an important milestone and we really want to accelerate our efforts to take the necessary actions and to organise the many team members in the shipping sectors to materialize our target.
Rachel Kyte: So it's really fascinating to see in this coalition of first movers every aspect of the value chain being squeezed across the membership. From switching out the fuel in the ports through to the composition of the actual vessels themselves, to the fuel vessels are using. So, now I think, maybe come to you Dan. Dan Fisher is CEO of the Ball Cooperation. So, in all of those value chains, the issue of recycling becomes very important. You're leading in the aluminium sector or aluminum as I used to say.
Daniel Fisher: I say that when I'm in London.
Rachel Kyte: Well done. So what's interesting is that you're using your advanced purchasing to pull things forward. So, talk a little bit about the approach that you're taking and how you see this sort of value chain relationship panning out.
Daniel Fisher: I think we're blessed within the FMC to have our largest customers and our largest suppliers. So we've got a common framework and a common language and a common goal. Aluminium is a lot simpler maybe than some of my panellists and the more recycled content and the green energies used to fuel that. You can get to carbon neutral in a very pragmatic and efficient manner.
And I think Special Envoy Kerry made a comment, I think was the real challenge is always sitting in front of a board or public-traded board where $15 billion in revenue or a billion dollars of free cash flow signing a multi-billion-dollar offtake agreement. That's sort of betting that good will equal wealth for your shareholders over time. And we're very, very fortunate that our partners Novellus and ourselves were able to sit down and take the best of today in terms of carbon neutrality and circularity performance in the world and design in infrastructure that they're building the first multi-billion-dollar rolling mill in North America since the late 80s. It will be green energy, it'll be 85% recycled content.
But most important, I think in the manufacturing space, typically you're designing in the most efficient for today in the shortest payback period. That is not at all what we believe you need. We believe you need an innovation centre to be determined to innovate and have engineering capabilities that will unlock future availability and a greener transportation pathway for our product. And so we subsidize that we're not part of the IRA. We don't have subsidies. So this is Ball Corporation paying a little bit more right now. We won't see the first recoil coming off of those lines till 2028.
So that's a very challenging dialogue, obviously, with your shareholders and your board to commit to that big of investment but our belief is that it's a licence to operate in the future and that will be the cheapest energy, excuse me aluminium in the world at the time that comes online. So we're incredibly excited. Very thankful for our partners very thankful for the First Movers Coalition to put us together and help us see the light there. So we're excited to continue to tell the aluminium story and more to come.
Rachel Kyte: Thank you Dan. I think for those watching, there's a real power in this value chain collaboration. And for those policymakers and the people who have to put the frameworks in place that we've gone from there's no demand signal, I'm going to be jumping off a policy cliff, to actually you've got real proof of collaboration and what that can mean. And I think that some of the innovations around the advance purchasing of the advanced offtake agreements give certainty to the policymakers as public policy partners.
Daniel Fisher: It's a bit of a cliff when you got 14-year-old twin girls.
Rachel Kyte: Exactly. But we're just making the cliff a little shallow so there you go. And now to Anna Borg, president and CEO of Vattenfall. So Vattenfall, famously, historically is an energy company. You're involved in value chain collaboration and aviation, cement and concrete, steel and trucking I think in this collaboration. And of course, famously, I think you've probably got more headlines for the collaboration with Volvo and fossil fuel free steel in the last year or so. But could you talk about, again, what you would need from the public policy side to respond and perhaps talk about how you drive this sort of collaboration?
Anna Borg: Yeah, I'll be happy to thank you. And I think first and foremost, it's important to conclude that the business of tomorrow will not be run on fossil fuels. And I think that is the direction that is probably clear for everybody in this room. But I think that if you haven't started to transform your business yet, it's really about time to think about how much can I lag behind without losing my competitiveness. And I think that is the starting point for us when we look at this from a business perspective.
And I think that what is needed now is probably not so much policies or subsidies and I will come back to that. I think what is needed is that leaders in business but also in politics, actually move. So I think that the move part of the First Movers Coalition is going to be even more important going forward. And we've already heard many great examples of that.
I think that when it comes to Vattenfall we set out maybe some eight years ago on a journey where we say that we want to enable fossil freedom and that is our business strategy. And ever since then, we have been transforming our business in three tracks basically. Our own portfolio of assets, which we are working on continuously in everything that we purchase from our suppliers but also everything that we provide to our customers and that they use. We are set out to be net zero by 2014. All those scopes, including the customer usage and we are well on the way and we are, by the way, also meeting our financial targets and have done all the way and I think that is trickier.
When it comes to the First Movers Coalition, we are one of the proud founders of the coalition. And we have committed so far to four sectors – it's steel, cement, aviation and trucking. And we do have initiatives going on in all of them. When it comes to steel the one that's been most talked about is probably the hybrid project together with SSAB, also a First Movers Coalition member, a steel company and also LKAB, a mining company where we jointly built the power plant for producing fossil-free steel in the process where we use green hydrogen made of fossil-free energy.
And the carbon footprint is basically zero from that steel. It is up and producing and is now about to scale massively. The demand is clearly there. That is not the problem. And as you also mentioned, Volvo is one of the first off-takers of this steel. And we're also involved in aviation, so regarding sustainable aviation fuel but also electric fuels together with a number of partners.
We're also doing integrated development with our clients when it comes to fueling their transformation with fossil free energy together with BASF, for example, or with Volvo also outside this sort of hybrid project. We have a number of projects going on where we simply build the energy that they need in order to make their transformation.
I think that many of these bankable agreements mentioned within the coalition are extremely interesting and also a way of fueling this transformation. And maybe just one recent example where I know that Amazon, who is a First Movers Coalition member, are buying trucks from Volvo, who is a First Movers Coalition member. Those trucks are electric and they are driven. They are made out of fossil-free steam, produced by SSAB, who is the First Movers Coalition Member in this hybrid plant where the van was the First Movers Coalition member, provides the green hydrogen, the electricity needed to produce that, and we clearly see the sort of business rationale in all these parts.
So I think that this transformation is only in the beginning and there are a lot of business opportunities out there to grab. But we should also be clear that of course there are challenges. And there will be obstacles and there will be ups and downs but that's why we are here – that's our job as business leaders to manage our businesses through that transformation and be successful also on the other end and I think that First Movers Coalition is a great tool to do that in a business fashion.
Rachel Kyte: So, is what you're all saying that there is a green premium but that that's not an obstacle that that's something that can be cleared.
Anna Borg: I think that the green premium is often exaggerated because you have to put it in relation to other things. If you take the steel, for example, the green premium in the beginning is estimated to be approximately 25%. But once the price for carbon emissions will increase, the relative difference between traditional steel and that will disappear. And I think if you translate that premium into what it means for an end consumer and you put that fossil free steel into a car that you and I would buy, the extra cost for the fossil free steel in that car is equivalent to two USB sockets that you put into the car. So I think it's doable.
Daniel Fisher: If the regulatory environment that is projected, maintains itself, then it's not a premium. If you lapse those, it becomes a significant premium and a big risk in the future. So we just have to continue down the path to sustain what we've all laid out and what governments have laid out and then it's not a premium.
Anna Borg: No and I think the best thing that governments and policymakers can make is not pouring subsidies into this but rather de-risking the scaling of the technologies because the capital is there to fund them.
Rachel Kyte: Well, let's go to the capital lens. Beautiful segue there, thank you Anna. So, Carlos Torres Vila, chairman of BBVA one of the first European banks I think to lead on sustainability and a member of the First Mover Coalition. So, you're financing across the economy. What do you see as exciting from a financial perspective, from a banker's perspective? And what would you like to see from public policy in order to create this certainty going forward that would help?
Carlos Torres Villa: Thank you. What we see is very exciting and the stories we just heard really are building up an immense opportunity. And we're here to finance; we're secondary actors, we're not the ones doing the emitting; we're not the ones that need to do the investment but we're definitely the ones who can and are supporting companies like yourselves in carrying out the projects. Certainly, the First Movers Coalition is helping close the loop and de-risking the project so that they can be easily bankable like Anna was saying and that is all very exciting.
But I would have a much more critical or complimentary viewpoint from what you two just described as regards government policy. I think we're only scratching the surface. As Secretary Kerry was mentioning earlier. We need to go a lot faster, we need to accelerate and we need to get from first movers to all movers. And what I see is that current policy is really a challenge. It's really not helping eliminate the green premiums because there were a lot of ifs in what you described.
So the carbon pricing and all, what I see is that there is excessive focus or maybe at times, a sole focus on the supply side as if the end-user was not the ultimate reason why we are emitting and if we want to move from well-meaning companies that have strategic goals and are forward-looking and are first movers – we want to move from that to a widespread demand signal – we really need to change to a collective set of policies that are coherent, that are consistent, that get the job done and we are far from that.
Even at times, we see how policymakers succumb to short-term pressures to isolate – which is crazy – demand from the consequences of the supply-side policies and it not need be antisocial to make consumers feel the signals; you can balance. And I think if we want not only to deploy faster the existing technologies that make sense but also, if we want to have sufficient investment in developing and scaling the technologies that we need to solve many of the hard-to-solve problems, the hard-to-abate sectors, then we need consumers to feel the signal.
And yes, we can compensate those that are most affected by the transition that's very compatible but we really need to get our act together on the demand side. And certainly carbon pricing is an essential piece of the framework and we're far from carbon pricing to be widespread. There are just so many emissions that are today not taken into account. So again, our role is secondary. We're here to support and we would love to see so much more happening if only we could get policymakers to really bite the bullet.
Rachel Kyte: Can I just push you a little bit? I think that was a very succinct analysis of the sort of short-termism, long-termism, demand-supply conundrum that we find ourselves in but as a First Mover Coalition, a global First Mover Coalition, how can the private sector lean into those politicians who were simply looking at the polling data with a misinterpretation of what's actually going to serve their people better over the long run? Is there anything more that business can say? I don't want to use the word lobby but how does the advocacy become effective?
Carlos Torres Villa: Well, laying out how inconsistent the current set of policies are and how, we can call it a lobby. We're actually, as banks, not very effective at lobbying because everything we say is discounted a lot. And despite the fact that through our financing, we're having a positive impact on society and really the underpinning of social progress and economic progress.
It's the private investment, which is mostly financed through banks, despite that being the reality. We were not heard much in the space and maybe others and other FMC leaders could have more success. We certainly are trying to influence in Europe as much as we can. We did. It's not all negative, don't get me wrong. We have a lot of good things going and the carbon border adjustment mechanism, for example, is a good example, but we're just not doing enough.
We just need to step it up and it's a hard question what you're asking. I don't know what the best way would be to influence policymakers to really get their act together for the long term. Maybe all of us collectively speaking out for this to happen.
Rachel Kyte: So minister, can I put you on the spot for 60 seconds? How do we get the government collaboration to do what is so obvious with the proof points of the First Movers Coalition? A few years ago, people were like "Oh, these are hard-to-abate sectors, we're never going to make any progress. And here we have, you know, tangible proof that there's collaboration on the value chain. And yet we haven't, on the government side, made as much international progress on pricing pollution and getting the kinds of collaboration necessary that needs to happen.
Tan See Leng: Well, I can't speak for all governments.
Rachel Kyte: No, of course not.
Tan See Leng: In our region, we try our best to work with different governments, like-minded partners on a set of interoperable taxonomy and standards. I think once we have a common platform, where we have agreement in terms of how we look at, whether it is in the form of verifiable carbon credits, rules of origin in terms of your green hydrogen and if we make sure that these standards then prevent greenwashing and all those other sorts of untrustworthy types of transactions, I think it would be a very first small but very significant step, a giant leap for all of us.
Having said that, the other part is really working with like-minded partners, for instance, the US – they're working very closely with Singapore in terms of the IPAC framework [OECD International Programme for Action on Climate], we are going to look at the entire ASEAN Regional grid to see how we could work on a feasibility study both from the regulatory, the legal and the social, economic, feasibility framework for the uplifting of about 650 million people living in ASEAN. So those are small steps but actually, each step is a very significant milestone, and I think we need to accelerate that.
A lot of times, you'll find that in terms of governments, continuity of the government, of course, is also very important. That consistency in terms of making sure that trust has been built can actually bring us a lot further. To your point about the carbon premium, we started imposing a carbon tax last year. It's a ratchet-up. I think we're one of the first countries in our region to do so. It's a very bold step. But we have committed to making sure that whatever premiums we collect from the carbon tax itself are ploughed back into the development of renewable energy, research into low-carbon energy and so on and so forth.
Rachel Kyte: I'm going to wrap up now. Thank you so much. I mean the takeaway from this, especially in the year where continuity is on the ballot and for more people than not on the planet, that it can be done. There's no doubt that we can build an economy that can operate at low or zero carbon. There's no doubt that we can do that with smart public policy to make it equitable and fair. The question is, can we go faster to meet the science, as Envoy Kerry said? So from Davos, thank you very much. First movers, ladies and gentlemen.
John Kerry: Rachel, can I just add something? Usually, I'm so over schedule I don't get to hear this. Listening to this, I got to tell you – you guys really are heroic. I mean that. Dan, I'll tell you, I'm confident that Ball Corporation, with Pepsi and Coca-Cola and their members, you guys made a profit. I won't tell everybody what it is. But the reality is you can do this and it's good business. But if we don't do it, if we don't do it, we're gonna pay much higher premiums, much higher price, everything will cost more.
Food chains – the economic food chain will be completely disrupted. There'll be chaos in the marketplace in a sense, whereas this is the orderly transition unfolding right before your eyes. And our goal is not to have everybody join the First Movers Coalition but to have a sufficient number of people in the First Movers Coalition that everyone is a mover and we want to put ourselves out of business in terms of first mover and that's the goal. So thank you all very, very much.
Johan Rockström and Tania Strauss
November 19, 2024