The evidence of climate change — from global temperature records to Arctic ice melt, wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding — is accelerating. Climate change risk has arrived as an investment issue. In this session, we explore how investors are addressing the issues of climate and nature while creating new opportunities for green growth. The discussion will also cover how the risks of climate change can be managed and how companies can position themselves for a climate positive future, while building a deeper understanding of how carbon pricing will impact business from both a strategic and operational lens.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other large corporates have made carbon-neutral pledges that have fuelled a record transaction volume of at least 104 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2019, an increase of 6 per cent over 2018. Prices have increased 30 per cent for high quality nature-based emissions projects. This panel explores what is still needed to support the creation of carbon markets, and how technology and digitisation can help enable the monitoring, verification and reporting challenges this fragmented market faces. The discussion will also feature the issues and solutions in building and scaling the voluntary markets for carbon credits.

As decarbonisation takes center stage in the energy transition, the dominance of fossil fuel has shown signs of waning. Yet, issues such as energy density, access and security remain important as we think about the relevance of liquid fuels in a low-carbon energy mix. In this panel, we explore how the liquid fuel value chain is transforming itself to remain relevant, especially for the transport sector.

The world will never reach net zero emissions unless products that don’t emit greenhouse gases can compete with products that do. Some key climate technologies – like wind, solar, and lithium ion batteries – now have real market opportunities to replace their carbon-emitting competitors. However, these technologies by themselves will not be enough to get to net zero emissions by 2050. We need to move even faster to reduce the cost of other technologies, through investments and creative financing structures – in areas such as green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel, direct air capture, and long duration energy storage – to meet our climate goals. How can we accelerate the cycle of innovation? How do we identify technologies to reduce the ‘green premium’?