 Welcome, welcome, one and all. What an absolute joy it is to be here with you with the World Economic Forum's Race to Zero Dialogues. It's a day of industry discussion. And we're gonna be talking right here, right now, about the climate pledge. We're talking not only the grand ambition, but now the grand actions being taken. And this, of course, is a discussion of corporate responsibility. This is a discussion of companies across sectors, across continents coming together to work towards a more sustainable future. Most notably, of course, the climate pledge striving to be net zero carbon emissions by 2040, 10 years, of course, ahead of the Paris Agreement. This fierce ambition, though, that we see does indeed take working together. And celebration now is a time amid a health crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis to celebrate the great strives, the great steps being taken towards reducing the climate crisis that we also faced. Let us take this precious moment to highlight some of the achievements, to celebrate them, to learn from them, and to make sure that we continue to push forward. To set up this discussion with some incredible panelists that I'm lucky enough to be moderating here at Bloomberg, I'm going to now welcome and pass the baton over for a quick moment to Gonzalo Munoz, of course, COP25 Chile, high level climate champion to discuss what he's seeing in the fight for a carbon neutral future. Thanks so much, Caroline. And thanks to the WEF, of course, and mostly to the climate pledge and global optimism for the work that you're doing around mobilizing business sector that have a capability of helping accelerate the trajectory that we need. I'm really pleased to welcome everyone to a particular exciting session as part of the Race to Zero Dialogs. In this case, as I said, focus on the climate pledge. Ahead of COP26, we need to build an overwhelming wave of ambition and action from companies around the world to highlight to the world that the transition to net zero is happening and is absolutely inevitable. That is happening also in a much more accelerated way than we were previously imagined. The climate pledge is a critical part of this wave of ambition and is one of the greatest announcements the news of this year, even during COVID times. But by bringing together leading companies that are meaning absolutely leading companies to commit to achieving net zero and this is the point, by 2040, so 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement, the climate pledge is demonstrating that leading companies understand the need for a rapid transition and are developing plans to delivery. They're also understanding that the world is starting to celebrate and acknowledge those companies that are being part of the solution and probably also starting to somehow punish those that are not. One of the most exciting aspects of the climate pledge is the potential for companies like, well, I see here, Amazon Infosys and Siemens, many of which may have interdependent supply chains to work together to deliver the pledges collaboratively to learn from each other and to share best practices. There is a need and a massive opportunity to bring hundreds of thousands of providers, many of which are SMEs to also join the race to zero. That is an opportunity that we have set. We've set it also through the SME Climate Hub but also through every single aspect of the radical collaboration that is expressed in the race to zero. I absolutely welcome the ambition and action being demonstrated by signatories to the climate pledge and look forward to hear how signatories are translating their climate action and their climate ambition into the right implementation around, as I said, the whole value chain all around the world. We are as well as champions here to serve you. Let's work together towards the COP26 in Glasgow. Thank you very much. Back to you, Caroline. Well said, Gonzalo. We thank you for your time. And it is one of perhaps the most excitingly named and passionately named institutions. I love it for it. And it is global optimism, of course, a force behind the work that we are seeing done at the moment. And let's hear now from the leader, the founder, co-founder, Christiana Figueres, of course, who has been a driving force between global work towards a zero emissions future. Christiana, please take it away. You've made Christiana. Here we go. Thank you. I was just being respectful of Gonzalo. Thank you very much for the invitation to join you today and how exciting to be with all of you, to be presenting, discussing the climate pledge that is no less than a pledge to prove the Paris Agreement wrong, if you want to say it in a very provocative way. Because the Paris Agreement does not agree to decarbonizing by 2040. It says in the second half of the century. It's now being interpreted as 2050. But what we have learned, what we have learned since adopting the Paris Agreement, is that we were wrong in that day, that actually we have to accelerate. In 2015, the science, the climate science that we had led us to a text that was agreed to by all 195 countries that said, we have to go to well below two or strive to get as close as we can to 1.5 degrees as maximum temperature rise, which meant at that time net zero in the second half of the century. But three years later, science came out and said exactly what the small island states had been saying for years. Two degrees is way too high. It's got to be 1.5 degrees. Because if not, the difference between maximum temperature rise of 1.5 and 2 degrees is two to three times the physical destruction, two to three times the biodiversity laws, two to three times the human misery. So the long-term target can no longer be only 2050. It's got to be before 2050, which is why I am so grateful for the new target of 2040. That is the science imperative. The moral imperative, if we're going to have, by decarbonizing later than 2050, if we're going to have two to three times the human misery that we would have had if we decarbonized before, we will then be moving into a world of dystopia, constant destruction, diseases, famine, migration, political strife like we have never seen before. And let's remember those people who will be suffering that are the people who are not responsible for climate change. So the science imperative stacks up with the moral imperative. And then, as though that were not enough, the economic imperative. Because today we know that not only can we avoid dystopia, but we can build a much better world than the one that we have right now. We can have a world with clean air, clean and cheap energy, energy efficiency everywhere, smart transport, regenerated soils and oceans, higher quality of life. Jobs, let me say that again, jobs, jobs, jobs. The ILO has said that if we go to the halving of emissions by 2030, which is the new target of science, we can actually create 24 million new jobs by 2030. The new Biden administration has said they can create 10 million new jobs and clean energy in the US alone. So that is where jobs are. That is where the economic recovery post-COVID is. And corporations are already seeing that. Because those corporations that are putting people, planet, and profit at the center of their strategy, triple bottom line, with equal importance on all three components, those corporations have actually been performing much better than those that didn't through the stress test of the coronavirus period. So we actually, we think that we have two paths. And Tom Rivet-Karnegg and I wrote a book about two different paths. The fact is we only have one path that we can follow. But we have to realize that this period, the decade of the 20s, is the decisive decade in which we have to get to one half emissions by 2030. And that means forget about linear progress. That is 20th century thinking. We have to get now to exponential progress on this. And what that means is collective effort. We have to be able to bring corporations together, to bring asset owners together, as in the alliance that already exists, bring bankers together, bring civil society together. This has got to be a collective effort. Because if it is not, we will only progress in a linear fashion. Can no longer afford that. In order to get onto the exponential path, and in many areas we're already there, it's got to be a collective effort, such as the one that is emerging under the climate pledge. Christiana Figueres, global optimism, global passion, I think is what she displayed right there. And let's get right to it. Let's talk about that collaboration. Let's talk about that focus on people, planet, and profits in the way in which these companies are able to really push that agenda forward. I'm very pleased to welcome our panelists. We have, of course, Cara Hearst, VP, Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon. We have Ash Awad, Chief Market Officer at McKinstree. Olivier Blume, Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer at Schneider Electric. We've also got Burge Begez, he's head of Green Initiatives at Infosys, and Martin Powell, US Chief Sustainability Officer at Siemens. It is wonderful to have you all here with us today. And Cara, Amazon spearheading the climate pledge in many ways. We talk about ambition to action here. Already so many achievements being made by Amazon. I'm thinking the investments in climate-focused startups. You've already been making the labeling of your own products in climate-friendly ways and means. But let's go back to the ambition part. Let's go back to pre-2020s that Christiana was just talking about. Let's talk 2019, Cara. Why did Amazon set up the climate pledge? Well, lovely to see all of you here and what a conversation to have right now. Because I think the climate pledge really represents the ambition and acceleration and optimism that Christiana just spoke about. And for us, it was really a culmination of, again, looking at the science and saying, what can we do knowing what the science is telling us now to accelerate the path that we're already on and to leverage our size and our scale and what we could signal to others to make a difference. So we wanted to make an accelerated commitment. We wanted to make a doubling down on our optimism that we could do this 10 years earlier and that it was necessary to do that. But we also know that we absolutely could not do this alone. Partnership with other companies who are within our global supply chain or working with Amazon as partners in all different kinds of parts of our business and or who are leaders in their own industry are absolutely essential. And we felt that because of our size and the way that we are looking across those different industries, the signals that we wanted to send about the products and services that are needed to rapidly decarbonize would be something better done collectively. So that's where the pledge was born out of, a conversation around looking at that accelerated path, looking at the science, looking at the optimism and finding partners like global optimism who said, yes, this is possible, but let's all do this together and let's bring as many companies as we can into this pledge and community to work together to send those very strong signals that decarbonizing products and services are needed. Investment in natural climate solutions and restoration of land is needed. Investment of expansion and access to clean energy is needed and acceleration of technology. So that's where it was really born out of that, that very conversation. And of course, you spent years prior to Amazon, you were working really in terms of consortiums, a way of being able to work across platform, you know, BSL with academia, been working across government, across NGOs. And I want to speak to that cross-government perspective right now because what Martin Powell here, of course, now is Siemens USA, but I know him because he's worked with Bloomberg before but he's worked with Mike Bloomberg in terms of New York. You've worked also Martin in terms of the UK with Boris Johnson when he was in his mayoral role. How are you seeing collaboration going across corporates but also working across therefore governments, other NGOs, that sort of way? How does collaboration help with the climate pledge? Yeah, we're seeing a huge uptake with really partnering with local governments. We've been working with over 70 global cities looking at their carbon plans, looking at how they can achieve net zero. And I've been really encouraged in the last four, five years at how we've been able to think about a combination of both policy, but also technology and implementation through multiple stakeholders that you have in big urban environments as well as across countries. And I've seen real uptake. I've seen much more focus on real solutions. I've seen much more success in pilot and demonstration projects and now the time has come for scaling. And I think this is the really interesting part. I mean, I work very, very closely with our finance group. We're set up an infrastructure platform that's now looking to put big distributed energy projects through a proper pipeline and qualify some really major projects and start getting schools and hospitals and office buildings across these countries covered with solar distributed energy solutions and really start thinking differently about how we are going to tackle this problem. So it's exciting, it's fun. And being part of this distinguished group is also fabulous. I'm really pleased to see great companies. We all offer different ideas and to work together on this is going to be really, really fun. Let's talk about the energy solution in particular because you've got Schneider Electric here with us. And Anivia Bloom, your perspective in terms of the efforts you're moving towards for carbon neutrality and your operations, many would say electricity is really at the heartbeat of how we can focus on a more renewable future. Yeah, you're absolutely right. In the case of Schneider, what is very interesting is like many companies in the world, we have been focusing on what we can do to make the planet more sustainable as we behave as a company, what we used to all call CSR in the past. But at the same time, we are part of the solution for our customers. So what we are trying, of course, is to experiment a lot of things for ourselves first. So like many other companies, we've taken company to become carbon neutral across our operation by 2025, for instance, in our case, and net zero by 2030. Look, there are a lot of carbon plates. So the more interesting part is how we get there. And for us, the first commitment is we need to cut the energy intensity of all our operations everywhere in the company. To do that, we focus a lot on our own solution where we basically measure everywhere this energy consumption and how we can progress over time. The second biggest focus is really the decarbonization of the electricity consumption. So we are taking the commitment to become 100% renewable by 2030 and using a lot of PPA, which we started a lot in the US, but that we implement now much more in Europe. And there is something else that we are doing is to leverage also much more microgrid solution, which is still not completely mature everywhere in the world. But that's also very, very interesting to leverage those decentralized solutions. And last but not the least, the latest commitment we've been taking is our own fleet of vehicles at Schneider Electric, where we want to commit to switch to 100% electrical vehicle by 2030 everywhere in the world. So I'm not talking here, of course, of the individual vehicle of our employees, but the ones that are rented by Schneider Electric for the professional activities of our employees. So to cut the long story short, we are trying to act at different layers. And by doing that together, we believe we could be carbon net zero, sorry, by 2030 without a set. But again, I want to insist on the fact that it's a lot of experimentation that we are doing and learning, of course, from both experimentation and of course, learning from many other companies across the world. Yeah, I love that news and the microgrids. It's a really fascinating way to help bring that to smaller, medium-sized enterprises as well as the large institutions that all of you guys and girls are. Talking of getting into the urban areas Martyn was just referencing. Ash, let's take it to you because this is at your very heartbeat of what your business is about, building more sustainable buildings, decarbonizing our economy. How are you seeing the uptake for that? How much is this demand led as well as supply-driven from your side? Yeah, well, thank you and good morning or good evening to everyone. I'm not sure where everybody is exactly, but very happy to be joining you all. Well, hey, let me just start by saying one broad thing. And I love the moral imperative. We believe at McKinstry very clearly that there is a climate crisis and it's literally right around the corner, as Cristiana pointed out, that there is a deep affordability crisis that needs to be tackled. The challenge is that if you don't take on the affordability crisis, you actually cannot necessarily solve for the climate crisis. And as we saw in 2020, there clearly is an equity crisis. And so what's interesting is that all three of those issues play against each other or they can play well together. So I just wanted to start there and let you know that the reason we've committed to 2030 carbon neutrality is because we think of it as critical and important. We're so happy to join this climate pledge and very much appreciate Amazon and climate global optimism. Well, in terms of the demand, the demand is continuing to be very high to answer your question. We work particularly in the built environment, new construction and existing buildings. I wanna just make a general comment that it's not likely that we can build our way out of this climate crisis relative to the built environment. For instance, in the United States alone, there's 88 billions per feet of non-residential consuming 75% of electricity and producing 40% of the carbon. That's just, we're not gonna replace all of it. And so the idea of going and working with schools and hospitals and trying to find creative ways of dealing with deferred maintenance issues if essentially failing and aging equipment and systems putting together a creative alternative financing method so that they don't have to come up with the capital creating return on investment portfolios and approaches so that maybe other financiers wanna use their money to come in and actually finance the project. We're seeing more and more of that. A lot of patient capital sitting on the sideline wanting to do this work. And so when you couple that with this kind of desire and drive to completely decarbonize the built environment, we then enter conversations with clients that used to be replace my old boiler with a new boiler. Now the conversations are really interesting. The demand is replace my old failing boiler with a non-fossil fuel source system. Find a different way to provide me the thermal energy. Do it cost effectively and let's create the return on investment. That level of demand in the career that I've had continues to remind me that for as long as I've been involved in this, I feel like we've just begun the passion, the excitement, the interest, the desire and then clearly the demand from our clients is very, very high. And thank you for letting me be part of this panel. Great, I love hearing that positivity coming from the demand side as well as the supply side. And we've got to give credit where credit's due. We've got to celebrate achievements and we got some bragging rights on this panel right now because Bose, get in here from Infosys. You've already got there. You're already carbon neutral. You've done it decades, two decades ahead of time. How did you manage to do that for Infosys? Thank you for that question. So you're right, just two weeks ago we announced that we are carbon neutral and we are carbon neutral across all three scopes of emissions. And we would see a lot of companies targeting only scope one and two. And we have achieved carbon neutrality across all three scopes of emissions. And how did we do it? Obviously we were on this journey a little longer than many other companies. This has been a decade long journey for us. We actually started our climate action in 2008. And then in 2011, we made a commitment, we will turn carbon neutral. And we focused on energy efficiency, transition to renewables and high quality offsets to achieve this. And so I guess we are happy to be carbon neutral. So we are not really one of the first signatories to the climate pledge and we are first off the block being carbon neutral. So we're happy to be carbon neutral. Where next? Where next on the ESG roadmap then? How do you keep committed to it? So yeah, that's the other good thing. So along with our carbon neutrality announcement we have also announced our 2030 ESG vision where we have upped our ambitions across the board including we are taking a 30% reduction target for our scope free emissions in absolute terms. I see. So we've got just ongoing commitment, ongoing extension and also really interesting the way in which COVID potentially has impacted that and people working from home, people flying less but how you net that all off and the measurement. And in terms of measurement and in terms of action now Kara back to you in terms of the multifaceted way in which Amazon is tackling this we already heard in way in which Schneider Electric is looking at its vehicles. I know that's something that already Amazon is committed to. Where else are you seeing the most opportunity in some of the most biggest challenges in terms of ensuring that Amazon can be carbon neutral? Yeah, absolutely. We are looking across as both another have mentioned all three of our scopes and we're looking at how we first and foremost decarbonize our operations. So how do we make real business changes to understand where that's happening within our company? So we've built a carbon system of record. We spent multiple years building that so that once we launched a commitment like this our operators would have a deep understanding of the information and not only be able to see where carbon was occurring within our operations where those kind of most impactful kind of pieces of our business were but also where their decision making could be changed. What would happen if they would to make a different decision? So electrification of fleet is a great example of that. We've ordered 100,000 electric vehicles from Rivian that will all be on the road by 2030 and they'll start in 2022 and be executed along with Mercedes-Benz. We've ordered 1,800 electric vehicles in Europe and Mercedes-Benz has signed on to the Climate Pledge as well. We've established, as I mentioned before is a critical invest also in a longer term in decarbonizing technologies and think about what can we seed right now? We established a Climate Pledge Fund with an initial $2 billion in funding and that's really to support those visionary companies that are developing the products and services of the future that will help to facilitate this transition and we announced our first five investments there in carbon cure and Pachama, Redwood materials and turn tide technologies. So these are things that address our built environment to some extent but also the investment in natural climate solutions. So we're looking again across those carbon intense parts of our businesses and thinking what are the changes that we need to do now on fleet, on buildings in our data centers? And then we're looking ahead and saying what can we do to think about what is needed with these different technologies? We've also created a research group internally that we did a number of years ago which has been researching from a scientific point of view and putting some scientific rigor behind how we look at our business and how we think about our e-commerce business and what we understand about that. And we're sharing more about what we're finding both for cloud computing business and our e-commerce business which are both what we think are better alternatives to, for example, shopping in a physical store or having on-prem servers. So we are looking and providing information engaging with the academic community engaging across multiple different stakeholders certainly partnering with groups like We Mean Business and Race to Zero and Ted Countdown to really share as much information as possible both about how we're doing this but also I think, you know, I've been pointed out on this panel that it's a process and we're learning what's going to be needed and where are some of the most stickiest problems that we can attack with science and investment. I love the way in which you bring up stakeholders and you talk about also the decision-making process that has to go across the whole business down the chain of command. And to that point, Martin, how are you finding that in particular at Siemens, the decision-making process and making sure that employees are along for the ride that they're completely committed to this as much as it is coming from a top down it's actually coming from a bottom up perspective as well. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we just in the US alone, we have 280 sites. These are offices and big manufacturing facilities. So, you know, we need to empower our employees in those very local places to really act on plastics and recycling, increasing biodiversity of our green spaces. And our view is you've got to plant a thousand flowers and hope they all bloom really get the best ideas and grow them and replicate them elsewhere. But of course, like others have said on the panel, we have big central programs rolling out distributed energy solutions on our big sites. We're putting energy efficiency measures in them all as well. And, you know, post COVID, you know, the whole world is going to be thinking about how we save money on energy bills. We're going to get back to the McKinsey curve, the very famous abatement curve where we're putting in insulation properly. But this is our time to combine those measures with real innovations. Keep going to the right on this curve. And, you know, in our Princeton facility, we put a distributed energy solution in. We put solar in the parking lot. We put energy efficiency measures everywhere. We connect it to our IoT platform so that we can learn and replicate this across other buildings and energy share. And just, you know, we have to do all of these extra things and share that information. So again, you know, having a group like this, our combined knowledge is going to allow us to do much more. But there are so many employees in our company that just want to be involved, you know, it's a question of pointing them in the right direction, getting them involved in something they really want to be doing and just seeing how that grows. So it's exciting times. Good to hear that employees want to be doing it. What about at Schneider Electric, Olivier? What are you seeing in terms of suppliers wanting to get on board with this? Is there a little bit of pressure that you have to exert? Are they willingly wanting to take your lead and see the climate pledge and raise their game as well? Yeah, you know, interestingly, I was telling you the first example on our only operations we have experimented a lot on ourselves that we bring now to a customer. On the supplier side, the interesting part actually, we've started to do a lot of jobs through an entity that we have in the US which is called Energy and Sustainability Services. And it has started with the first program, we've done four Walmart for their supplier. And that was very interesting and Walmart was coming to us and say, look, we have a large number of suppliers in the US. They are small medium-sized company and we don't know somewhere how to help them really to go through this sustainability journey. Actually, we designed this program to Walmart which was to create a kind of ecosystem, a pool, and to make sure that those small medium-sized companies they can have access to PPA, they can have access to the latest technology. So now back to your question. We've learned from that experimentation that we've done four Walmart for their supplier to apply exactly the same program now at Schneider that we are going, by the way, to disclose next week. So we are basically creating a program where we target our top 1,000 supplier, not necessarily the biggest in size, but the most CO2 intensive in their operations. And actually we are creating an ecosystem where we give them access to the latest technology, latest service provider to have more access to renewable, more access to PPA in general, and to make sure that we can help them. Now, that's nice to say that the commitment we take is that for those 1,000 supplier is to help them to divide by two their CO2 emissions in the next five years, because we strongly believe that everything has to be measured. So we have right now, when we speak, this lining 2020 with them, and taking that commitment again to offer the solution and to get to that journey together. So we believe and you said it, I think, in your introduction, it's not only about what each company can do, but also how we can create ecosystem. And I think the large company have this also responsibility to have a small, medium-sized company everywhere in the world who don't know usually where to get started. But again, more to come in the coming days. Ash, you were earlier talking about building ecosystem, about how the demand is certainly there, but you can't build your way to a more carbon neutral society. You have to retroactively fit it, which is what your business is doing. But can you educate us to some of the biggest challenges that you found in doing that? Is it about education? Is it about getting parts? Is what has been some of the biggest tough calls, but also the triumphs? Yeah, let me give you some thoughts on both those. I do want to just maybe go back to a question you asked earlier, just a quick comment. We are finding just as an FYI that our people are demanding that we focus on climate and climate change. As a matter of fact, I just don't think we could hire the best in the industry if we hadn't made such a commitment. And if it wasn't part of the DNA in our fabric. So I wanted to just offer that comment that I just think that the workforce today, particularly, I don't know if it matters generationally, but I think it's something that we should just be mindful of. In terms of the biggest challenges, well, the built environment industry, the industry, the architects, engineers, contractors, operations and maintenance, here's something that I think maybe those that are part of the industry may not like me saying, but I want to say it out loud. We have lost productivity over the last 15 or 20 years. So this is the problem. The problem is that it costs too much to do these things. We are not very effective. We're not very efficient generally at how we deliver. And I think that that's something that the industry has to face up to. And I think one of the reasons we joined is because we are so looking forward to having deep discussions on new ways from a supply chain perspective, new collaborations that need to happen. So therefore, one of the biggest challenges that our clients face is that they're trying to teach kids, heal the sick, graduate nurses, engineers, serve their citizens. This is what they're trying to do. So then they become concerned that, yes, of course they want to decarbonize, they want to go deep energy efficient, then they want to do it as expediently as possible, but they're not sure if it's going to cost them focus and how much can they actually afford to do. But that's one of the biggest opportunities. And so the opportunity then becomes, how do we deliver that work in the most effective way possible without obviously removing their focus, enhancing their mission, finding different ways of not only alternative financing. See, sometimes when we talk about PPAs and alternative financing, it's good, it's important because they don't have the capital. But if the cost to deliver is more expensive than any other way of delivering, then it doesn't really work well for school districts that are already struggling. So we have to do a two-fer. We have to both make these projects deeply affordable, high quality, and sometimes we have to put together the financing that allows there to be a return on investment. The opportunity is there, that can be done, but it's going to require that we come together differently as an industry and we think differently about the way we put projects together and think to be blunt, more like an Amazon in terms of how they have thought differently about their supply chain. But ultimately, the concerns of clients have are understandable, but I am so encouraged that the opportunity to come together and find different ways of doing deep retrofits, driving to zero carbon in the built environment is just right there. It's right before it's cost-effective. And I know that as an industry, we can have quite an impact to create a balance between the built and the natural environment. But there are some challenges that we have to overcome. I fully appreciate any of you taking up previous questions that you've heard and adding your sense, putting your perspective in there. I love what you say about your employee base, Ash, but also the way in which you're spinning it forward and looking towards, you know, mere copper moments, saying that you need to drive for efficiency right now, there isn't enough there. And therefore, taking it to Bose, I mean, data services, what you provide, inherently is about efficiency for the companies, the clients in which you have. Where are you seeing the challenges that you've had to get already to carbon neutrality? You're a business that puts an awful lot of people on planes, for example. That's all ended in 2020 to a large degree. But where are the challenges, where were your biggest areas of inefficiency when it came to the climate and how were you able to think about it differently? So actually, in this decade long journey, we had quite a few challenges and I want to talk about two or three of them. When we started off, like many other companies find, we found lack of data. We didn't have enough data to really draw any insight to make any meaningful decision. So one of the things that we have done early on is to invest in metering everything. And that progressed to a level that today, in the office that I go to work every day, we have set up a command center which connects to almost 15 million square feet of office space across India. Everything is thousands of smart energy meters and water meters and weather monitoring stations and everything is hooked up to that station. Everything is monitored live. Everything can be managed remotely, controlled remotely. And that has given rich data and a lot of opportunities for efficiency. And on energy efficiency friend, the achievement that we have had over the last decade, our employees strength grew by over 150%. But our absolute energy consumption went up by only 20%. And that's how well we controlled our energy requirement. So the data problem that we overcame, the other challenge we can continue to face is our transition to renewable energy. Again, we have 15 million square feet of office space and data centers spread across this country. 90% of our footprint is in India. And while we have a commitment to transition to 100% RE and we are willing to invest, spend the money, go the mile, there are a lot of restrictive policies that are holding us back. So today we are about 50% renewable power and we are trying hard and hopefully, the policy landscape will enable us to get there soon. On that policy, you are an emerging market. How have you learned something in a developing market? How has it been within India? It sounds like actually red tape is still an issue, whereas you might have thought that was more something that was an issue for developed markets. What do you think can be used? It is a very complex issue and it's a very local issue. And it has to do with power sector has been under government control for a long time and it's been inefficient for decades. And a lot of the power distribution companies, the core problem is actually the power distribution companies through which we have to get our power. They have been in losses, accumulated losses of actually billions or dollars. And to companies like us or any big company, we have the cash cows for them. So whenever we want to, I mean, they are not in a position to procure and supply renewable power to us directly. So we have to go to third parties, get into a purchase agreement, get that power wheeled through the infrastructure owned by the government and deliver it to us. So in that process, we are kind of cutting them off. I mean, we will use only the grid, but in the financial transaction, we are cutting them off. So they are losing that big cash flow and that's a big problem for them. So a lot of restrictive actions and measures coming because of that. And that's a big challenge. It's a very local issue and it's, it is probably, it has nothing to do with being in developing country or people are aware of it. And it will probably take some time to straighten things out. Cara, of course, Amazon works across developed and developing countries and making inroads into India, but focusing of course with a lot of regulators and policymakers in the US, but wherever you have your footprint, how have you been seeing the differences in where you are, where you are based? Where have you seen best practice? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we want to provide, you know, our signals that we want, all these kinds of enabling technologies, particularly if you think about a clean energy market, where we operate, we want to be able to have as much clean power on the grids wherever we're looking to operate around the world. We have a similar commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2025. And we already have about 90 plus projects across the globe. But I think the point is very well taken that we have an opportunity to come together collectively to really send that very strong signal and get behind each other to say, we need enabling a policy environment. We need an enabling regulatory environment to have greater access to renewable energy everywhere that our companies operate across the collective voice of the pledge. And particularly in communities that historically have not benefited from clean energy offerings. I think that that's a really important point as well. We can extend a lot of these things that we're building for all of our company's operations into the communities. We want the people we're working for for us or any one of these companies to benefit in their community from increased access to renewable energy, increased energy efficiency options, increased electrification charging infrastructure. So I think that we have a critical role to play in the development of these types of infrastructures, the development of these enabling policy opportunities. We know that is sort of especially coming out of this pandemic moment, investments in these things are going to be bending cost curves, they're going to be inviting more access. I think a lot about even the airline industry which has obviously been hit very hard in the pandemic moment. And we took an action to really signal because there was availability of sustainable aviation fuel right now because it's not being utilized by the airlines. We wanted to make sure that we continue to signal that demand. So we like to use our air business as an enabler of that sustainable aviation fuel production. We put an order in for about 6 million gallons to signal that we're prioritizing bringing these kinds of fuels into our operations. They're not at the cost curve that we'd like to see yet. But I think by signaling those kinds of things, us and many other companies that are saying, this is the direction that we're going in. It's going to be how we decarbonize are the carbon intensive parts of our operations. And I just want to add one thing, which is our employees, I think all of us feel so strongly about the involvement of our employees. We have an Amazon ambassadors group. Over 6,000 employees have joined that group to really take individual actions within each of their roles at Amazon. So it's really spread like wildfire throughout our company and people are giving us solutions and ideas from all over the world and from each of their communities every day, which is super exciting. Cara, of course, sustainability has been in your life's work. I was in amid the dark cloud of COVID has had a great silver lining in terms of you've been the right business at the right time to serve a purpose in this moment and benefit from it. But have you been surprised or what's been surprising about the continued commitment to climate when we are facing so many other sudden crises? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think, you know, certainly our focus has been first and foremost on the health and wellbeing of our employees and our customers and keeping everybody as safe as possible. And our internal operational focus on, you know, making process changes to put those kinds of safety practices and items into place has been the primary focus of our company during the pandemic. However, we see the looming climate crisis. It has not gone anywhere. We cannot take our eye off a longer term vision that we have still the ability to implement, you know, solutions to this. And I think that's where the optimism part comes in, right? We still have a bit of time. We can't take our eyes off, you know, even in the moment that we're in and everything we need to do to keep people safe and to help them get the products and services that we need in our company. I feel very, you know, lucky and proud to be working at a company that's played a critical role in providing access to those services. What I want to do is to help us do that in the most sustainable way possible. So I think those two things go hand in hand. It's good for everybody. It's good for the health of the communities where we operate, that we're not only focused on that immediate health and safety picture, but the, you know, the health and safety of better quality of air, better access to renewable energy, all of those things go hand in hand. And they're part of how we will and we'll continue to operate. We have not taken any of our eye off of that. And I feel, you know, again, it's been incredible to see the investment that we've made, but also the momentum of the climate pledge and how many companies are interested in saying, you know what, yes, this is the moment where we want to come in and commit all the companies that are here today on this panel, the fact that they're able to get that kind of high level commitment from their companies in a year like 2020 is incredible. And speaking to the leadership of these companies that they are long-term visionary companies, that they are dedicated to this in a really true way, and they've not been, you know, they can handle multiple priorities as we all need to, quite frankly. And certainly as a Seattle-based business, wildfires and the climate crisis has been front and center for you in 2020 as well, I'm sure. And Martin, we were talking just a moment ago about policy making and regulatory environment. If you had one wish, of course, if you were back in Boris's ear, if you were talking to the new administration in the US, for example, what would you be asking for? I'm a big fan of mechanisms. I think, you know, a carbon price would be fabulous. I'm a big fan of cap and trade schemes. The state of New York are doing amazing things on building energy efficiency so that the, you know, the overall footprint comes down year on year. Things like congestion pricing and low-emission zones have proved to work, get people out of cars and clean up the cars. But they can also be a bit of a distraction, you know, I think strong policy that encourages more innovation in things like distributed energy and energy efficiency is really gonna be key in the next few years. I'd love to see a little bit more of that. I think every big city should have an energy master plan. I think the world is changing so significantly around the way our buildings are now mini power stations. They are no longer big consumers of energy and they're connected to a much bigger system. And an energy master plan would ensure a very smooth transition to electric vehicles and ports and harbours and airports and everything else that's slowly creeping into the electrified world. So those kind of policies, I think sometimes we chase big things and we should just keep that incremental improvement going. And just one other point I'd like to make on the Paris Agreement, you know, rejoining for the US will be an amazing step. I love the fact that London Heathrow expansion was rejected on the grounds of it not complying to the Paris Accord. This was Cristiana's hard work really coming to fruition because that should be a real wake-up call that Ash mentioned, you know, architects, engineers, construction companies, developers have to now think hard right at the beginning of what they're gonna build, how they're gonna do it, what they are creating and is it truly sustainable? And I think that's also gonna have a really wonderful impact. So I'd love to see a few more big schemes like that being rejected on those grounds to allow people to sort of see into the box and understand more fully what they have to do to move forward. I've got to have a few moments left. Olivier, what excites you about some of the big projects that you are seeing that you are of course France-based, Europe's predominantly but a global electronic electric equipment powerhouse? Where are you seeing some of the most innovation right now? Well, look, to keep it short, I will say that really three crucial areas in the decarbonisation journey I would say number one, electrification. Only 20% today of the world energy is electrical and we need really to enhance at least towards 40% of total energy mix in 20 years. Of course, many people know what can be done with electrical vehicles, but that goes beyond the electrification of mobility through heating, cooling and so on and so forth. So first of all, electrification. Point number two, I talked about it and some people mentioned it also. It's about decentralized energy. The world energy mix will decarbonise and we go step by step. There's a lot more renewable energy, but in 2019, only 20% of the deployed renewable capacity came from large utility scale, which means that the renewable energy is being adopted step by step to create also decentralized energy system with microgrid as we said before. And also distributed generation system will have much bigger impact thanks to the battery technology which is getting more and more mature. So so we need decentralisation and last but not least, obviously digitisation because digital technology today play a major role in reaching decarbonisation, having real time information of installation and super computing capabilities allow really to enhance efficiency really, really time. So for instance, in our case, what we call a cross-structure resource advisor offer this kind of technology where you not only connect to your system to get the data, but that bring to you artificial intelligence assisted services that really increase significantly. So the three common point probably of my three points, sorry, the one single point which is going to the three is the technology. What is very different today compared to 5, 10, 20 years ago is one, of course, a focus that all organisations in the world have on decarbonisation. So there is an appetite for more but I would say even more important than that. I think the technology are now made sure to make it happen. We are all technology companies now. I don't think a single one can claim that they aren't and that's sort of horizontal in some way. Ash, your perspective, lastly on what you'd wish for from a government. You're so steeped in public sector in terms of hospitals in which you're providing for schools. What would you ask in terms of policymaking? Yeah, well, let me just give you three very quick things. The first is that local, state and federal government need to continue to lead the way relative to deep energy efficiency in their own buildings. It'd be great to see the public sector adopt 100% zero carbon public buildings approach by 2030. And I think that this kind of wide scale program will catalyze continued massive market movement, you know, including innovations technically, financially. I think these are the kinds of actions that I don't feel bad putting the pressure on government because I don't think we can deal with executive orders or toothless policies anymore. I think we just need to see action. So that's one area. The second is that we need to treat energy efficiency as energy generation. Energy efficiency seems to be kind of this cute thing that sometimes people think is a good idea. And of course, everyone says it leads the way. But the truth of the matter is that it's not really dealt like a true measurable, dispatchable energy resource. That has to change. And then the last piece here that I think is actually very critical and may run a little different thinking. The utilities that exist, particularly in North America and I'd say particularly in the United States continue to be critical to the decarbonizing of all infrastructure buildings, the EV that we need to deploy. And so the relationship between utilities, building owners moving past the meter and then building orders and occupants past the lease. Those relationships that have been in place for so long need to be transformed, they need to change. Utilities need to do more past the meter. Building owners have a deeper responsibility to engage their occupants, their students in the realm of sustainability. So we have got to change some of the underlying relationships and those DMZs just will not allow us to get to the most expedient, most effective partnerships that we're gonna need to decarbonize, not just the built environment, but also the transportation environment. So those three areas, local state, federal government really stepping in, think about energy efficiency as energy generation and then realign those relationships between utilities, buildings, buildings and occupants. I think if we really focused on those practical pieces, we're gonna make some real difference happen very quickly. Thank you. And it's all about relationships. It is all about collaboration. It's all about us coming together and hearing your wealth of expertise across this panel. I was lucky enough to be the person sent out to Paris when this agreement COP 21 was signed. And the euphoria at that moment, I'm so glad to see is still being driven into real action right now. And thanks to the climate pledge, Christiana Figueres is back with us to really seal up what has been a very optimistic conversation, but one with real cool to action, I think still. Christiana, please do take it away, the co-founder of Global Optimism. Unmuting again. Impossible to be able to summarize a very rich discussion. Let me just pull a couple of threads. Kara started it all off by reminding us that everything we do has to be science-based. And from there we start, and then we go into ambition and acceleration, and we use our corporate scale to build corporate ecosystems that will actually take us to where we need to get to on time. But she also reminded us later on that this is a path, it's a process. There's no perfection, but there has to be constant improvement. Olivier then reminded us that where we start on this path is with our own footprint, measuring use of our own electricity, our fleet, and then move up to experimentation and innovation to take much better responsibility of our own footprint. Bose then told us, actually you can be carbon neutral now, and even issues such as lack of data can be addressed by digitalization and big data management and optimization of big data, which are technologies that are available to us right now. Martin then moved us to say, and beyond our own footprint, beyond our own direct influence, let's collaborate with cities because that is the way that we go to scale. And Ash reminded us that this is actually systemic. This is not about one corporation or one city. This actually is, we have a convergence of crisis, hence we have to converge the solutions systemically. Now, the bottom line for everyone is what is the theory of change? What the theory of change we used to think that the biggest lever in business is sales and the biggest lever in politics is votes. And there was a chicken age discussion, chicken and egg, which comes first. The fact is they both have to come together in order to get us to the scale and speed of transformation that we need. Sorry that this is so great, but we're going to be cut off. Christiana, thank you very much. What a wonderful discussion. Thanks to all our panelists and we wish you a wonderful rest of the day, whether it be morning, evening or afternoon. Thank you very much indeed.