The Climate Hub at the UN Climate Meetings SB60 held in June in Bonn, Germany brought together policymakers, NGOs and business leaders to advance the climate agenda ahead of the UN climate conference COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November.
Hosted by the Exponential Roadmap Initiative and climate media agency We Don’t Have Time, the Climate Hub led discussions on COP28 outcomes, such as phasing out fossil fuels, tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency, as well as negotiations on finance that will be concluded at COP29.
Speaking with We Don’t Have Time’s Caterina Rolfsdotter-Jansson, CEO and Co-founder of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, Johan Falk presented how the Exponential Roadmap Initiative works with companies to achieve its mission of halving emissions by 2030.
Catarina Rolfsdotter-Jansson: Johan, the Exponential Roadmap Initiative gathers together companies that are innovators, transformers and disruptors to halve missions by 2030. Some of your members are big companies like Apple, IKEA and Scania, to mention just a few. All of these companies are working with you to meet the 1.5°C climate target. What does it really mean to set a target and take action in line with the 1.5°C climate goal?
Johan: The 1.5°C goal aims to keep global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible. To achieve that on the global level, we need to halve emissions by 2030, then again by 2040, and again by 2050, while protecting and restoring nature.
So how do we translate that to businesses and company’s strategies? Well, the framework that we developed for the last five years is based on four pillars.
First, companies must cut their own emissions by half by 2030 and aim for net zero by the latest by 2040. Second, they must address emissions across their entire value chain. Third, they should scale up climate solutions and transform their portfolios accordingly. Finally, they need to contribute to broader climate action in society. We assess companies against these four pillars and we provide strong strategic recommendations.
Catarina: Your work focuses on scaling solutions exponentially. Why is this important?
Johan: In 2018, we published the first global Exponential Roadmap, showing that we do have the solutions to halve emissions if we implement them in parallel. It’s about the energy transformation, it’s about the material transformation, land and food transformation, all this has to happen in parallel. It won’t happen automatically, they need to be accelerated exponentially and we do that through climate leadership, finance, technology and policy.
So far, companies have mainly been focused on reducing emissions. It’s now essential that companies also set targets, plans and actions for scaling up the solutions. That is why we developed the Climate Solution Framework together with Oxford Net Zero and in partnership with the Race to Zero to help qualify climate solutions and climate solution companies.
Catarina: You emphasise the importance of net zero value chains. Why is that?
Johan: Initially, companies talked about setting and halving net zero targets based on their own strategy. But it’s clear you can’t achieve net zero without working in partnership with your complete value chain. Leading companies like IKEA, Apple, Ericsson and so on, are working across their value chains to achieve this halving towards net zero.
One example is personal mobility. How should we cut 90% of emissions? Well, of course, electrify all the vehicles. That’s one part of it, but they also need to run on renewable energy. And even that is not sufficient. Vehicles also need to be produced by circulated material, fossil free material. And then, we need to share the vehicles, integrate them in mobility as a service. So that’s a complete new way of thinking.
Catarina: And what is that makes you talk about the Exponential Race to the Top?
Johan: We’re in a climate emergency and we need to have a laser focus on cutting emissions. But we will not succeed in cutting emissions by only focussing on cutting emissions. We also need to scale up the clean solutions to replace the dirty, fossil economy. As en example, the landline phone didn’t disappear because we wanted to get rid of it, it was because we scaled up the use of mobile phones.
So, that is the reason why we need to accelerate the build up of solutions, shift the solutions curves to the left – and this is a tremendous opportunity, both for businesses to be aligned with the future to be able to grow and prosper, but also for regions, for cities, as well as for countries to build wealth in the new economy.
So far, the climate conversation has very much been about burden sharing, but we want to shift the narrative to one of tremendous opportunity for all actors. That is what the Exponential Race to the Top is about.
Catarina: Thank you so much for joining us and sharing these insights.
