Innovation summit told ‘now is not the time to hesitate’ on climate ambition

Toxic. Unpleasant. Contentious. These are just some of the words used at the Innovation Zero World Congress in London to describe the current political discourse around climate and clean energy.

Yet the speakers who used these words were quick to urge the energy sector and its financiers to stay strong in the face of an agenda that seeks to blow the energy transition off course.

Opening the summit – which targets the nexus of innovation and finance – Rhian-Mari Thomas said there was no room in the climate fight for “alarmists” and stressed that enabling and accelerating the energy transition relied on “the art of deal making” in every sense.

“Climate ambition is faltering but now is not the time to hesitate,” said Thomas, chief executive of independent organisation the Green Finance Institute. “We must stick with our values and our vision.”

But she added: “We know that none of this will happen swiftly or happen of its own accord.

“The stakeholder collaboration is radical and none of it is easy. But equally, none of it is impossible. It’s going to need transformative technologies, forward-thinking policies, and always closest to my heart, and pioneering financial solutions.

“In short, I believe it’s going to need bold leadership and it’s going to need innovation.”

Thomas was joined on stage by Rachel Kyte, the UK Special Representative for the Climate, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Kyte’s previous roles include being Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and vice-president for Sustainable Development at the World Bank: climate and finance are her passions, yet she too is dismayed by the tone of the climate debate.

“It’s very difficult when you wake up every day and listen to the headlines to not be deeply concerned that we are falling away from the collective ambition of ten years ago at the Paris Agreement.”

She said there are parts of the political spectrum that are attempting to make that collective ambition “toxic”, yet she stressed “those headlines don’t represent the silent majority”.

“Most countries have got their sleeves rolled up and they are looking for the policy frameworks that will allow them to build the grids that will carry green electrons.”

She said the amount of innovation between the financial and energy sectors was “quite extraordinary”, adding that “we have a real challenge of scale and we need to be able to protect the dialogue between the private sector and government around this agenda. That itself is under attack in many countries.”

She emphasised that the key word in the phrase ‘energy transition’ was ‘transition’: “It doesn’t go at the same pace every day and there are leaps forward in that transition.”

Kyte said that “the question for all of us is this: Can we take this spirit of solidarity that we have had for the last few decades as a result of climate negotiations, and transfer that into opportunities for investment to enable public and private money flow to where it is most needed.”

Nineteen years ago, celebrated climate economist Nick Stern delivered the eponymous Stern Report, which said that the cost of inaction on climate would greatly outweigh the cost of any action.

Kyte referenced Stern and said that “in the last 19 years we have not translated that basic tenet into public policy… and we need to do that”.

However, she said that “for now, innovation is absolutely essential, because it is innovation that gives me hope”.