The news from the US isn’t good. We know the drill (baby, drill) and we know there’s been an inferno in the most beautiful part of that country, already blamed on nefarious globalists and would be green dictators.
There’s the “cancelling” of wind farms and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. No doubt there’s more bad news on climate action to come. Fake news (the truly fake) is infecting the world and the mean, vindictive, greedy genie is out of his bottle.
But we are also out of our bottle.
The clever, wily, green industry is used to dealing with the most obscene obstacles. We’ve seen it all before. In fact it’s core to the work with do – challenging the laws of physics and science to reverse the damage we’ve done over the past 200 years and calming a furious Mother Nature.
There’s been an even tougher opponent: money. Until now the power of money has been stoking up the fossil fuellers.
But we need to remember money is agnostic. It’s just a tool. And if we can seduce it with a juicy risk-return ratio we can swing its power back our way.
Let’s stick our neck out; it’s early in the year and we’re still feeling refreshed and optimistic. (Besides our gun former journalist Willow Aliento has rejoined our encampment, so we’re feeling a bit Volodymyr Zelenskyy right now. Thanks Willow, we missed you!)
In any case our collective necks are already on the line – we’ve got nothing to lose. And please don’t tell us we’ve got “another decade of action”, as if our planetary deadline is a Magic Pudding that can keep pulling another 10 years out of its backside.
There are early signs the pendulum is already shifting. Radical ridiculous action by the new US president will do that. First it will fuel his supporters with Caligula like zeal but it will also unleash an almighty backlash to shut down the crazy and restore order.
Here’s what we see so far:
The climate warriors are mobilised
As one of our favourite global climate warrior Cristiana Figueres noted in the fab podcast she does Outrage and Optimism (that Joe Karten of Built kindly put us onto), the world is far bigger than the US. There are myriad countries doing great work and they’re not going to stop now. Count among them the giants of China and Europe, the African continent, and South America. And Australia of course. As the second biggest producer of carbon emissions in the world per capita, what we do counts and we can lead the world in…leadership.
All these countries want clean green cheap power.
Investors know this and they’re on a roll. No-one is going to tell them to stop making money from the renewables revolution. The tipping point has come and gone. They feel the alchemy seething under their wallets.
China – it’s a giant and it’s doubled down
As Danny Kennedy in Climate and Capital notes, China is moving faster than ever on the energy transition.
“It feels silly to say they’ve had another breakout year on solar, but they’ve had another breakout year with the numbers just coming in for 2024.”
China no longer shocks observers with its outperforming GDP but with solar. Good.
Its target for EVs was 50 per cent by 2035 and it’s already 10 years ahead of the target, “destroying” the market for “hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil demand daily.”
Kennedy also notes Figueres thinks the move to clean energy cannot be reversed.
Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance is another expert keeping a close eye on China. His social media feeds are a thing of joy and optimism. But he notes it’s going to be tough. Donald Trump asked for $1 billion in donations from the fossil fuel industry, promising to wind back environmental restrictions and climate policies in exchange, so we can’t expect an easy challenge, Buckely says.
The Rockefeller Foundation has helped the TNFD double down
Just announced in recent days is multi-year support to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which is also pretty thrilled that it’s just snared a significant commitment from China.
Joining the taskforce last week was the state owned, Bank of China. Bevin Liu’s story this week notes the taskforce launched two new TNFD consultation groups in China; “one in Beijing, convened by the locally based Institute of Finance and Sustainability (IFS), and another in Hong Kong, convened by Hong Kong Green Finance Association and its local Business Environment Council.”
Already taskforce members include the governments of Japan, Switzerland, Norway, The Netherlands, the UK and Germany. (Nope, not Australia.)
Bevin’s article goes on to say that there is “growing momentum in the Chinese market to assess and integrate nature-related considerations into financial and corporate decision-making”.
Asia will double down
Clean Energy Investor Group chief executive Richie Merzian chimes in with the observation that as the US steps back from the global climate race other investment opportunities will take its place.
“The US for the last few years has been a massive vacuum cleaner for investment because of the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act which directed funds to clean energy). Capital that is being invested in the US right now will need a new home. Asia is where the majority of the world’s emissions are, where the majority of the world’s energy is consumed. It’s where the majority of the world’s climate solutions are being manufactured.”
Australia is doubling down
Australia too has started its pushback on the backlash.
As we put this issue to bed the Albanese government has come charging over the hill with a $2 billion top up to the top up to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Nice.
That’s after the CEFC announced last week it was pumping $100 million into Axa IM Alts’s sustainable, build to rent housing with a big affordable proportion in the offering. This is leadership of the first order and we can expect others will follow.
Willow has done a great job to tease out the logic and strategy in this move with in-depth interviews with both CEFC and Axa IM Alts.
And in more good news, the federal government has tipped another $2 billion into the CEFC or green bank, for renewables, energy storage, property, electric vehicles, infrastructure and natural capital.
Not bad for Trump’s first week – we’ll keep you posted as this industry rises from its previous rate of action and activates its inner Zelenskyy/Figueres.