 And so, with acknowledgement to the Muppets, I would like to welcome you all here to our panel on the topic of ESG in space. So this panel will ask whether ESG is a meaningful way to address both value and performance in space sustainability. We're seeing increasing discussion and application of environmental, social, and governance ESG strategies in the space sector, both as a motivator for incoming investment, some of the things Aaron was talking about, and as a corporate strategy tool to address sustainability challenges. How are space companies implementing ESG, and how can space help with ESG in the terrestrial sector? But before getting into this discussion, one just brief housekeeping reminder. We are doing Q&A through the Huvva app, so please do submit your questions in that app. And I think you're all probably very familiar with that, but just that reminder as well. The bios for the speakers are also on the app, so we're not going to go through the details, but I do want to just very briefly introduce everybody kind of going down to my left. So John Janka is a Chief Officer for Global Government Affairs and Regulatory Advice Act. Thank you, John. Gareth Keane is a partner with Promise Ventures. It's a venture firm focusing on early-stage deep technology software and hardware companies, which includes a number of space companies. Looking down, we have Brian Schenning, who is on the page. The founder and principal of One Small Step, which is a corporate sustainability advisory firm. And previously, Brian, you led the environmental and ESG sustainability programs at Northrop Grumman. To Brian's left is Amber Ledgerwood, the Director of Social and Environmental Impact at SES Satellites, where she is responsible for driving impact into SES's business, aligned with the UN SDGs, and focused on four pillars of space sustainability, climate action, diversity, and critical human needs. And then to Amber's left is Justinia Rodelkovitz. I hope I got that slightly correct. She is the Head of the Section for Consumer Solutions, Market and Technology at the European Union Agency for the Space Program, EU SPA, where she leads efforts focused on the development of space downstream products and solutions. And so we did have some last-minute speaker changes on this panel. John, Brian, really appreciate you stepping in in a last-minute role here. So thank you. And so with that, we'll dive right on in. Justinia, I want to start with you. So we heard from the preceding spotlight about the increasing prevalence of ESG strategies in sustainable finance and how some of the climate drivers in that. In your interaction with downstream companies in the space industry and those that use space data and services, what are you seeing about the role of space capabilities in supporting terrestrial ESG initiatives? Thank you, I am for this question. So I would just say maybe one word about the EU SPA, one sentence about EU SPA, because we are not so known probably here. So in Europe, we have actually two space agencies, apart from national space agencies that you have seen before. But two space agencies at European level, so ESA and EU SPA. And the role of EU SPA is actually to operate the European space programs like Galileo. We are also working on Copernicus, the Earth Observation program, and soon on Iris. And our sweet spot is to work with downstream companies. So with all the companies that are using space data services signals and to help them to use them better and to kind of encourage the expansion of space to a non-space industries. And in that context, we have been working recently on how space data, because as my predecessor said here in Spotlight Talk, data is the key. So how space data can actually help companies monitor their ESG targets. And you would be probably not surprised that actually satellites give you the best data for what is going on in our climate and how it is changing. So from satellites you can see how glaciers are melting, how temperature is increasing, how sea level is rising and all that. But it's not yet so much used and known that you can monitor these environmental impacts at corporate level using space data. And the data availability is very wild and it is actually to the level of corporate that you can calculate how much you are impacting space in terms of greenhouse emissions, in terms of your corporate impact on biodiversity, in terms of your corporate impact on deforestation and so on. And so we've issued recently a report on EU Space for Green Transformation that is freely available on the USPA website. And this is how I actually connected to Jan to promote a little bit this work, because we have seen that only around 20% of corporates in Europe use space data today for this purpose and the potential is much, much bigger. And also not only to monitor the ESG but also to impact the ESG. So to reduce emissions, to have a more sustainable supply chain, this is where you can use space data and the signals today. Alright, well thank you, Justinian. I think as we go through this panel, we want to turn, kind of weave back in the relationship between what our sector does and how sustainability in our environment allows some of those applications and services you're talking about. And with that in mind, I want to turn now to the operators we have here on the panel who are operating in that environment and delivering some of those services. So Amber, I'm going to turn to you first. And if you could just kind of introduce us to the ESG strategies that SES has employed and kind of why they, you know, the motivations behind those. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here and having this conversation. I want to start with the motivations, if that's okay, because it tees up nicely after what Erin said. We started at SES with a CSR approach, like many of the companies in this room, many years ago. We've always did good. We had a philanthropic approach to looking after our communities. And not too many years ago, we said actually what we're really missing is the purpose within our organization. People make up an organization and people want to work for an organization where they feel like they have a purpose. So our CEO said, you know, purpose is what I want to focus on and how do we, in everything we do, make a positive social impact or environmental impact in how we operate as a business. So that was the kind of the instigator of us starting an ESG program and that was the motivator for us trying to build up a strategy that made sense for us and that was totally aligned with our business strategy. Also, it's just the right thing to do, right? Businesses are a part of the society that we all operate in and so making sure that you're not just extracting but that you're also giving back and being mindful of all of the stakeholders and the stakeholders as a part of your ecosystem is really important. So with that stakeholder mindset, we did a materiality assessment. We figured out where are we most impacting or have the ability to impact our stakeholders in alignment with our business strategy and what made sense for us. And out of that came a four pillar ESG strategy. So we focus on space sustainability as the first pillar which I'll get back to since that is the topic of this conference. The other ones are climate action where we have a net zero goal. We're also doing science-based targets. We've done climate risk assessments. We've looked at reductions in our scope to GHG emissions. We have a diversity and inclusion pillar focused on our workforce and the diversity and inclusion specifically for women in leadership roles but also how we can expand diversity and inclusion within the industry. And I think we heard a lot about that in the other panels that we need diverse perspectives and so I think it's on all of us to make sure that we're seeking that out and driving that through STEM education initiatives and other ways that we encourage diversity. And the last pillar is focused on critical human needs and this is really where our products and services we feel like are making a positive social impact whether that's encouraging education, health, just general economic growth in places that don't have connectivity services as we provide connectivity and content around the world. So that's the fourth pillar. Obviously we do this in partnership with our customers, the governments that we work with, other industry folks who are interested in collaborating. And so if I just hop back to space sustainability since that is a major topic of our focus today, we, you know, our desire is to collaborate more across the space industry so that we are driving a more sustainable space environment. This feels business critical to us. I think as you saw on the videos earlier by the UK Space Agency, if we don't protect this environment then it will get too late and I think Mark made that point as well. Time is of the essence so we need to do this now in collaboration with each other. So obviously we are doing things that, actions that make us more mindful of our own footprint in space which is, you know, getting certified by the space sustainability rating, working with the Space Data Association to share information in space but kind of the keystone project that we're working on is life cycle assessments. This obviously will go across all of our pillars but life cycle assessments are something that are done in other industries at scale and in this industry we haven't done as many. So SES really wants to step out so that we can understand both the environmental impact of our satellites on the planet but also in the space segment as is defined by, you know, key indicators beyond just GHG emissions but also looking at resource depletion, mass left in space, acidification, kind of other indicators of environmental sustainability. Thank you, Erin. I'm hearing a reflection of the people, planet and prosperity that Erin mentioned in that set of remarks there. So some good things to come back to. John, essentially the same question to you. Can you tell us about bias-ass initiatives in ESG and your interests there? Sure. Let me start with the motivation. I think there's really three key elements. Continued and reliable access to space is important for nearly everything we do here on Earth, as you heard from some speakers earlier today. Second, we think it's just good business and good policy to ensure sustainable access for everyone around the world and three, we believe that the consumption of limited space resources is playing out at an increasing and alarming rate and we could go from there being virtually no problem a few years ago to being at saturation by the end of this decade. So seven, eight years from now and I think you've heard from others during the course of the day and I believe it's time to act now. So what are we doing? I'd sum it up by saying we're trying our best to advance the science and the awareness so that prudent policy decisions can be made by regulators and other influencers and there's really three prongs to our activities there. One, we are participating actively in the development of carrying capacity models and for those of you who are not familiar it's really just an empirical measure of how much is too much and this doesn't necessarily mean that's all you can ever do, it may mean that's what we can do with the state of technology today but we need to work within the limits and then we need to try to be more efficient in what we're doing so we can do more with the limited resources. Conceptually it's no different than what we've done with energy. I grew up a little older than a few of you here we all had these big hot rod cars with big V8 engines that got about six miles to the gallon and we thought it was really cool. Well it was at the time because we didn't know any better and now we're eking out even more performance in a cleaner way and getting more mileage out of our cars so that's what we're focused on is learning what the limits are and learning how to do more with less. We also think that the models that are being developed for carrying capacity are very important to assess the efficacy of various remediations and mitigations that are being proposed so rather than just accept blind faith that we should do the following to fix the problem in space we're looking for empirical models that let us take a proposition run it through the model and see if it really works and also see if it's the place where we should put our money initially doesn't mean they're bad ideas but we can't pursue every good idea all at once we don't have the time and resources and the last thing that we're doing is showing why we need more than soft commitments to best practices best practices are great but everyone's not going to honor that as we talked earlier on one of the other panels so we need something more than soft commitments we need a little bit of a stick and don't get me wrong I don't want this misconstrued improve space traffic management improve space situational awareness debris clean up they're all great ideas but those alone are not going to solve the problem and we can't fool ourselves into thinking they will and last and this may be a little controversial we need to constrain the irresponsible actions by some because otherwise all the rest of us are going to pay the price and you think about what's happening in the oceans we thought it was a great idea originally to dump plastics in the ocean because it doesn't matter and now all of us are paying the price for that so we'd like to get ahead of the issues and try to use space as responsibly and efficiently as we can so a few things there to pick up on you're hitting at the issue of metrics we can't manage what we don't measure because it's a cliche but it's true and then the question of bad actors came up in the earlier panel so how do we have the incentive of the enforcement structures to follow through on some of these voluntary commitments we're making some things to put opinion and get back to there Brian you're next up on the list here from your perspective you've been involved in helping companies establish ESG and sustainability initiatives both internal to a company as a company employee and now as an external consultant let's talk about this issue of performance and outcomes in your experience what are corporate boards and leadership looking for and ensuring that these ESG initiatives are delivering meaningful outcomes both for financial performance and the broader sustainability goals Thanks Ian and thanks for having me today it's a pleasure to be here and honored to be in front of a group of thought leaders in space and sustainability I think looking at your question from two different lenses one the established companies like SES and large corporations with well established boards and multi stakeholder bodies and large number of investors the ESG space is really focused on bringing as Amber said bringing all of these great things the company is doing together and giving it really more of a North Star and a vision for what's the purpose of the organization how do these all tie together there's definitely an activity around meeting the expectations of shareholders that will often drive a lot of what your focus is and so your value proposition is making sure you're delivering what your shareholders want you to be addressing whether that's climate risk human rights concerns with your products the multi-fold engagement with investors and the things that they're interested to make sure that you're governing properly within the organization I think ESG has really become a framework for describing your sustainability programs and it's a way to really assess and drive from a different lens progress in all of these initiatives diversity ethics environmental footprint cybersecurity all of these topics ESG brings a very unique lens and so it's this collaborative role within the organization to help elevate those different topics from a different perspective and so when you're looking at leadership and board level engagement the board is hearing about this and a lot of their different roles that they're working with and so part of it's just helping them understand these topics in context of the organization that you're working for from a value proposition you can talk about a lot of these are really just based culture it's really about engaging the employees having a workplace that draws the talent that you need in a highly competitive environment cost savings mostly on the environmental footprint part but it's also risk management whether it's climate risk or diversity inclusion program there's a lot of risk components to ESG that also providing value proposition for smaller companies that don't necessarily have programs in place today it's really about understanding what is the business imperative what are they dealing with today what are they doing well and where are those gaps and then helping really hone in measurable areas of impact that they can drive forward limited resources limited ability to really compete with the large corporations and what they're doing but it's important to start somewhere and start making progress in some of the key areas that really are meaningful to your business and to your employees some to your investors may not hear that as much at that point of investment but it's really about your culture and what you want to be establishing for organizations but also looking to the future around regulations we heard Aaron mentioned the SEC even the EU reporting directive looking ahead to what might you have to report on in the future but also voluntarily through your customers there's a lot of momentum for customer level engagement right now international aerospace environmental group has stood up a working group to do ESG engagement in the supply chain and many companies are going to be responding to those larger operators I think there's a lot of opportunity to just manage the company well drive some cost and build culture and ability thank you Brian Gareth we're not going to leave you out so next question coming to you so let's talk about the connection between ESG and investment from where you sit in the venture world are you seeing ESG motivations in space related venture capital interest from the limited partners and your clients essentially yeah absolutely happy to tackle that so like Ian said my name is Gareth thank you so much for having us on this panel so we're excited to be here and talking to a fine group of folks like you so my view and my perspective is going to be quite different I think to the operators and some of the other people on this panel we're driven by sort of our responsibility as investors to the companies that we invest in and to our limited partners the people who give us money to invest in early stage technology companies so our view of this sort of I guess the opportunity which is ahead of us in the sustainability frame is driven by two lenses one from our LPs and one from our portfolio and the investments that we make and we think there are a couple of like tailwinds which we're tracking closely we haven't made very many investments that are sustainability themed yet but I think most venture investors are focused on the technology dislocations that just bring efficiency to very mature industries and you look at some of the major contributors to some of the challenges we have from a sustainability perspective globally you know mining, transportation logistics, resource extraction of all kinds, agriculture there are opportunities here for the technology industry I think to bring efficiency which leads to absolutely gains in sustainability if I can make a process 10 times more efficient I can obviously become a pretty interesting company from an investor perspective but I can be very beneficial from a sustainability perspective as well from the LPs side we have seen that many of our investors the folks who give us money some of whom are on this panel are very interested in starting to track sustainability metrics and we find that frameworks such as the UN SDGs or some of the European commissions approach to sustainability are becoming items that we often discuss in our investment cases internally in our investment committee and also with our LPs as we report out to them we kind of talk about the investments we've made and how they sort of map to UN SDGs for example and then finally I think there's opportunity for companies to look at some of the reporting that some of the large massive Fortune 50 Fortune 100 companies are starting to do we often find that small companies are much better at solving those challenges around reporting figuring out technology directions or platforms that they can sell as an offering and hopefully become a big company and return money for us than our LPs but also help large corporations and large organizations to track their sustainability goals so I think multiple assets multiple ways that we think about sustainability but for us it's not a core thing which dominates our business like it would be for you guys at SES Amber for example alright thank you so beginning to get some questions in from the audience thank you that some of these are some of these are some tough ones so we're going to get to those we'll start weaving those in but Gareth you've hit on something that I did want to start talking about and that is okay let's take that we want these initiatives to be successful want to be successful for the environment we want them to be successful for driving sustainability sustainability outcomes and we want them to be successful for driving financial results right do we have the metrics to do that so I'm going to start with you and Justinia to answer that from an outside of the space sector perspective and then come to our operators here so Justinia Gareth you guys interact with folks outside of the space sector are there established ESG principles in those sectors non-space sectors that we might think about bringing into our community here so I think it's a great question and I think one of the benefits we have as very broad technology investors is we do get to look across a really wide swath of sectors wide swath of approaches to solving technology problems nothing jumps out at me you gave us these questions a few days ago and I've been kind of racking my brains but I do feel that there are maybe examples from sustainability in I mean we were talking about this at lunchtime right and we were talking about the agonia for example in the clothing industry which is a very different industry to the space industry but they've done some really interesting things in terms of how they track their supply chain for example and Justinia we were talking a little bit about some of the challenges around supply chain traceability and how you're trying to maybe solve that with Copernicus data and Galileo data so I think there's maybe some places where you can maybe take best practices from other industries other sectors and solutions to those problems that would be the way I would think about it from my perspective I think that space industry as any other industry I mean the ESG framework is one and we can really get inspired by what's going on on the terrestrial side so first of all I mean when it comes to energy and emissions reduction we have seen a lot of success stories and especially in road transportation we are really seeing the reduction in emissions as possible and this is where space sector could also make progress we've seen a lot of new technologies emerging when it comes to propulsion and so on but also we will use less energy if we ship less to space so there are these new technologies like how can you 3D print in space or how can you use modularity of space to actually have less load to ship and reduce energy in this way another area that we can get inspired from the terrestrial use cases is the waste management and here I'm thinking about reusability of space assets but we should not also forget about the ground segment because when we think about space sustainability we think about the space traffic management and the assets in space but we have also huge ground infrastructure and let's not forget about the caregivers because if we think of billions of terminals deployed here on the ground there could be also some reusability initiative like for example you give back your old phone you receive your new phone when you changed your models and this could also be implemented in the terminals and it's not happening really and waste management is also linked with the space traffic management so I'm happy to say that a few months ago Spath took over the European space traffic space and surveillance help desk so we are actually helping operators to be aware of what's there in space and how can they avoid collisions so this is one and there are a lot of really used cases where we can get inspired from the terrestrial when it comes to the framework or principles we are doing our study for this new space for green transformation report we've seen that there is not really one framework that all corporates follow and unfortunately the corporates follow the framework where they can actually look the best in terms of results but we've seen that there are some UN tables that you can use and so on but we really believe that the space data is the new trend and you can calculate the real environmental footprint and we would encourage everyone to dig into that topic so it's going to be the operator's turn here so something I've heard in there is supply chain I don't think we talk about supply chain very much in this industry Amber I know you already mentioned that a little bit in your opening that is certainly an element of ESG strategies outside of the space sector supply chain management and how we apply that and bringing in the ground segment is a good example of that Amber and John both of you as your companies built the ESG plans that you kind of integrated or introduced earlier and other companies out there in our set major satellite operators they have ESG plans you guys aren't the only ones Maxar who was meant to be on this panel as you guys built these plans how do we look across them to see that you guys are managing to the same things do we have the metrics were there metrics that you built into your plans do we need to do more to develop these things whichever one of you wants to take that first I'll start so we started with the UN SDGs as a baseline and a framework for how we can impact the world and there are so many other frameworks for reporting so GRI and SASP and TCFD and all of those have lots of data points and we have to fulfill as a company obligation inclusive of our supply chain and our value chain so our customers as well so when we report our GHG emissions for example that's the easiest example it is not just SES sitting alone it is up and down the entire value chain so all of that exists as just a company operating and we're going to get even more data points and metrics that we have to report as a European company sustainability reporting directive I think it's something like over a thousand different data points that we have to report as a company related to sustainability depending on your materiality so there's a lot out there I think in terms of where we could go with metrics to the point made before I think that each company based on where they operate and their jurisdiction where they're located are going to choose different reporting frameworks and so there isn't an apples to apples comparison I would say right now I think the CSRD is trying to get that apples to apples comparison for anyone in the EU and that gets to supply chain a little bit and a little bit to Garith's point as well for startups if you are looking to have customers that are based in the EU at a certain point you're going to need to think about how you integrate some of those reporting and some of the sustainability principles into your sustainability as well so I think there are metrics out there whether we as an industry have decided on the metrics that we want to compare ourselves yet I don't think we have if you look at the different sustainability reports from the US to the UK to the EU is all different as far as who reports what and how you represent your sustainability strategy and when you look specifically at space sustainability the closest thing I have seen into the gathering of the data and the metrics so that we can get there is doing a life cycle assessment which is why we think it's so important to get that data and to understand the impact that launching a satellite has in each segment so we're looking at the the satellite manufacturing the launch segment the space segment and the ground segment so how all of that working together impacts the environment and by environment we also mean the space environment so I think starting there and starting to gather some data is a starting point but there could definitely be more collaboration around the metrics that we use as an industry to say what does good look like John? So I think we're looking at it perhaps slightly differently in terms of the environment thinking of the environment in space is really having four aspects that are important one which is the collision risk when you put up so many objects that are a certain size in certain orbits do you reach a point where the collision risk becomes unbearable and we find ourselves heading toward what one of the prior speakers referred to is the Kessler syndrome another element is just spatial look angles communication satellites use radio frequencies to communicate back to Earth and historically many different systems have shared the use of those limited spectrum resources by sharing look angles I can look in this direction Ian can look in this direction and we can use the same frequencies at the same time that type of sharing has existed for decades it's becoming a lot more challenging when we're talking about 30, 40 300,000 satellites in low Earth orbit so trying to understand where we are on that limit the light pollution problem folks have probably seen there have been a lot of concerns from astronomers and scientists about the reflected light from large numbers of satellites in low Earth orbit that has on astronomical research and asteroid defense programs and the last one which is probably the least well understood is atmospheric damage when large numbers of satellites are burning up in the atmosphere at the end of their short lives what happens they don't just disappear they break down into small particles and the question is what's the nature of those particles and do they reside in the upper atmosphere for a while and if they reside there for a while what happens is there a chance that they contribute to climate change through this radiative forcing how bad is the problem do they do damage to the ozone layer we were worried years ago about aerosols and antiperspirants now we have a new threat of damage to the ozone layer so in terms of metrics on the first element collision risk I actually think we've come a remarkable way in just a few years there was a conference last week in Milan that was organized by one of the leading universities there bringing experts from around the world to talk about modeling collision risk and I do think people are converging and the folks who are sharing their research open source are learning from each other and are starting to combine their models and make their work better a lot of great people are working on that European Space Agency Polytechnic University of Milan MIT I'm proud to say I'm probably leaving some out but the point is folks are collaborating this is advancing so I think we're almost there on that metric when it comes to the light pollution issue I think we need more input from the astronomers the astronomers need to be able to explain to us how much is too much and why and then I think the engineers can get to work to try to solve it on the atmospheric issue there clearly is more work needed more terrific work that's out there if you haven't read it I see one of my friends from Aerospace Corporation here Audrey's colleague Marty Ross has written some fabulous articles about this and talking about additional work that's needed I commend that to you to read don't take it from me but the last thing I'll say is we're entering a different world seriously because if you have 35,000 satellites in a system to pick one and it has a five year life that's 7,000 satellites a year coming out of service every year back at the envelope that's 20 a day at 2,000 kilograms of piece that's a lot of metal that's burning up in the atmosphere and we don't yet know what the consequences are and that's just one system so long-winded way of saying I think we're making great progress in a short period of time but there's more work to do so hearing a lot of things in that discussion you're saying they're also hearing that space is an industry that operates in space it operates through the atmosphere and it operates terrestrial so we might have metrics from other sectors operations we're beginning to mature metrics for our own unique operating environment and then that in between zone might require a little bit more work so something we can keep talking about here now, Brian I'm going to turn to you with some of the start off some of the fun questions here because we do have to look at the critical side of this we do know that for better or worse ESG has become something of a political issue and there's some reaction to that and there's some reaction to the ways we communicate broadly about what ESG is and is not so from your standpoint Brian, what advice do you have for space companies about how to approach sustainability initiatives, ESG initiatives in light of some of the political questions that exist around the issue stand in for the panel gets the political question it's unfortunate that it's been politicized I think ESG at its core is just good governance but I kind of think it's in some ways it's good I've been involved in corporate sustainability for over a decade and so I've seen the evolution from pure voluntary reporting to tens of questionnaires that come in from investors asking all different questions about ESG to Amber's point there's not a single framework really that can articulate ESG consistently across the aerospace sector more broadly even and so I think some questioning is good I'm not going to say that it's a perfect system but I think being political about it I don't think is the right way to necessarily approach it unfortunately but I think it is more focused on the investment side the ESG impact investment funds I don't see it translating to corporations and their ESG sustainability programs as much but I also think it's a little bit irrelevant because it's so far along that I think any kind of political pushback right now isn't going to change the momentum the EU is pushing so far ahead that's going to drive what most large corporations do because of their global presence it's going to drive what they do for ESG which then is going to filter down into the supply chain even up through with customers as well because the large corporations are going to want to handle this from the get go I do see though that even private equity funds are looking at how to advise their portfolio companies to integrate ESG again it's just good governance venture capital funds are looking at what are some of those foundational pieces that start up should have to start thinking about this early on it could be simple as just thinking about diversity in your fourth fifth and sixth higher so you're not a all Caucasian male engineering company so you know I think it's going to continue and I think there's a lot of momentum that's going to be hard to really kill I think if you want to be cautious to that especially in the US I personally like to use the frame framing of sustainability I think it speaks more to vision strategy culture and what your real impact is ESG is really just the framework for context for scoring for disclosing so that is really more of that investor nomenclature so I would stick with sustainability it's something you can control a little bit more it gives you a little bit more leeway when you talk about your programs alright so Brian you're not the only one that's going to get tough question you just got the first one so I told you the audience had thrown someone in here I'm going to start pulling some of those in more directly so someone is in the audience offering to go to take a swim in the Hudson after the session I think what they're getting at is that maybe the Hudson isn't the cleanest body of water in the world right and the idea that some of the companies that in the corporate sector are making these sorts of commitments may also be some of the worst actors themselves right so I'm going to ask the other four panelists so Brian you can take a pass on this one I'm going to ask the other four panelists what do we do in the space sector to kind of be more proactive about this and how do we avoid greenwashing in the space sector what would your advice to our audience those listening online to demonstrate that we're doing things for meaningful impact and not greenwashing activities so just whoever wants to go or else I'll pick on somebody I'll start just to throw it out there I think metrics are a good place to start with greenwashing because you can't hide from the data I love the data is king that Aaron said I think that if we can get that set of metrics that makes sense for us as an industry or a space industry at large or even just the space industry I think that would do a lot to help with the greenwashing and then transparency at a company level where you are not trying to gloss it over and I think there's a piece of it as well that everyone just needs to recognize that we're all in a transformation journey so to John's point that we all are driving gas guzzlers and we think it's great that was then and this is now and so no more do better so I think it's about we're on this transformation journey figuring out what your hotspots are as an organization and where you can improve and being transparent about that is a great start I'm just going to double down on that I think measurement is key if you don't measure something you can't improve it I think the idea of these metrics and what those are and defining them I'm going to expand on it a little bit though I do think that the whole classic tragedy of the commons issue with space debris it's not really anybody's problem but it's all our problem so nobody really cares about it I do feel that there's a need for maybe corporates to be a more vocal voice in driving some of the the international discussion around space debris and helping us come to some kind of a forcing function around responsible management of assets in space I think that would help a space situation space domain awareness market for small companies and big companies I think it would help to maybe get some of the international cooperation which could take away some of the risks around bad actors which typically are nation state driven being very blunt and then I think that would be again back to the metrics thing a sort of a common playing field everybody can use to sort of track what they're doing from a sustainability perspective for me I see a large role for this greenwashing avoidance in the financial sector actually because I think everything starts with investment and it starts with a really great due diligence and this is where you can actually spot some kind of greenwashing attempts quite easily especially that now there is so many advisory services available in Europe I don't know how it is here in the US but in Europe we have two space agencies that really help the due diligence processes to identify from technology point of view it is kind of strange or there is really some reasoning behind that this can support sustainability I think this is one factor second factor is also that there is a big increase in understanding and kind of need for sustainability from the employees point of view so if you really want to be sustainable as a company you will be also very much scrutinized and kind of verified by your own employees and there will be people raising hands saying that no this is greenwashing so I think there is a lot of this transparency also from the insight that will happen more and more show me the numbers data, data, data, data we can argue about it but at least as someone earlier said it's a fact and then we can look at the fact and somebody can react to data and have their viewpoint but if you can demonstrate what you are doing then that data is data okay so there is a word that has come up in several answers and that is culture right and so when we talk about ESG there is a temptation to focus on the right but the S and G matter as well so where am I going with this question what is the Erin talked about the young people and the speech she was given what is the role of culture in setting these practices up here we have companies that are SES you guys are fairly mature companies we have a number of startups in the audience so how do you build this stuff into corporate culture and not make it a reporting based function Brian maybe look to you start there I think especially for small companies it's important to really define your why why are you going to do ESG is it just a reporting activity that's not exciting for anybody so how does it really drive with your corporate purpose where do you want to have an impact what do your employees want you to do that's a main driver for a lot of organizations for the perspective of the new generation coming into the workforce and what they expect so I think that's a really big thing to think about as you're going down this pathway but I think it's really important just to think small and to find your impact and focus on that find your core issues for the business that by managing them through an ESG lens that it will really help you achieve your business outcomes that you're trying to strive for alright so if you've been on panels with me before and I'd like to do something like lightning round I was going to say as a very early stage investor we 100% focus on the team and the culture is a very important part of that I think Peter Drucker back in the day said culture each strategy for breakfast culture is hugely important in small companies and hopefully you put the foundations in place in a small company so as you grow into a large company like a bias app or an SES you have the right culture in place but the best founders that we fund who are passionately committed to solving the problem that they're trying to solve and that is a very much a culture aligned with strategy so before I garret off my apologies for that I'd like to do something where I call this a lightning round where I'll take a question and point at one person John you've been through this with me before you know how it is so I'm going to try to do that now we've got about 10 minutes left and so I want to cover cover a few things rather quickly so Amber are going to start this one with you you know as a public company what are shareholders demanding in terms of ESG initiatives are you seeing that from your shareholders? Yes we are we get requests from shareholders very often asking specific questions a lot of times around risk for ESG related items also goals and targets right metrics so do we have a climate goal have we evaluated our climate risks what are risks related to human rights so absolutely our shareholders are very active in asking for these things generally speaking it is a transformation journey and so they understand when we can give them an action plan versus an actual answer but the expectation is that that will be different in the future and we will need to be able to answer their questions Thank you I've heard that investors from outside the space sector might be able to use ESG as a tool to know where to invest in space by helping them giving a framework to understand the sector true or false I would say false in a lot of cases and why I would say it's false because the space as an early stage investment opportunity is a pretty specialized area and we do see a bunch of more generalist funds come in and try and make space investments but I don't think they necessarily use ESG yet as an investing lens the one place where it might be true is around the applications of Earth observation data and how they can go solve some of the challenges in certain sectors and certain industries but I don't see that as being sort of a hard and fast rule you can apply for early stage space investments John this one I think is tailor made for you so question poses that ESG increases costs let's take that it's true I don't know but let's take that it's true many companies will often not do it because legal duty to sharehold is to preserve profitability so the criticism out there that ESG distracts from company profitability not drives it what role should government regulation play in imposing some of these principles that we're talking about on this panel if you accept that space is a finite resource and you accept that it's a shared resource and you accept what many economists discuss is the tragedy of the commons I think it's inevitable that regulators must have a role because when you're dealing with the commons look if I'm the first one there it's maybe it's not a great part of human nature but my incentive is to get it before you get it and to act in a way that drives up your costs of getting it and it's a bit of a zero sum game so if you accept that it's really important for every nation around the world to have access to the space economy I think it leads you to the conclusion that there needs to be some constraints put into place so a few people don't overdo it and box others out okay alright so Brian so there is an effort underway in our sector to develop the space sustainability rating and the idea if you're not yet but for those that may not be familiar with it I think it's all that companies could voluntarily submit to to have their missions rated against a set of sustainability metrics we've been talking about metrics on the panel the question here is is a metric like a rating is that not considered to be good enough so the question I'm going to pose that to you is what are the role of rating services in this conversation I think the SSR is helpful it's only one part of your business though it's no different than a LEED certified building energy star whatever that certification is it's just the building it's not necessarily what you're doing inside the building how you're operating outside of the building what you're providing your customers how you're dealing with your supply chain so it's one piece that you can tell your story that you're taking the appropriate action when you're operating in orbit but you really need a much broader framework to look at your whole business and your whole value chain of operations can I comment on that John you're breaking the rules we'll allow it the one thing that I think is important with the rating is openness and transparency folks need to be able to look at what goes into the rating and again data data data let's look at it and let's validate whether or not it's legitimate it can be a black box is what I'm saying sorry that's fine and Justinia going to come back to you we've been kind of bouncing back and forth between ESG in space and ESG for terrestrial applications can you just talk about do you see that is that difference real or where does that line lie about this as one set of principles or is there a broader need to separate that I think in principle is not different because all the parameters, KPIs that terrestrial companies are tracing the space sector can trace as well I think what we can get as an inspiration is that it's good to have somehow consistent metrics but it could maybe be a good initiative to have some kind of sustainability in space nothing like this exists so far or I haven't heard at least maybe it would be a good way to show some of the good examples and promote them more and to have it really better featured that's something that I am missing and maybe Secured World Foundation can start this new initiative but in principle I think it's the same space is a bit different because it has that impact and I think that we didn't speak maybe enough on the S dimension because in the social dimension space is really I think one of the best sectors that will really enable global connectivity that the space gives you so many opportunities that you are in the middle of remote area and you can still be localized, you have access to a map there are all these great social benefits that have been created by spare services so far globally that I think that position space a little bit better than other industries in some dimension so we should appreciate that also Thank you so we can barely see the countdown clock but I think we have about 3 minutes left so 30 seconds where do you want to leave this audience with is ESG an effective way to deliver space sustainability objectives so just move on down John and just move on down the line I would say necessary but not sufficient I would say that we see big opportunities for companies to come in small companies, nimble companies to come in and try and solve some of these challenges for large enterprises and we also see an opportunity for a driver for I guess LP limited partner investor capital to sort of be more focused on these issues becoming important for us ESG is not sufficient today because it doesn't really address space sustainability it's an undefined component that really needs some consistency for how space operators and players should be communicating their impacts in orbit and what they're doing to be responsible stewards of the space environment Yes and I would say that each company in the space industry should take responsibility for their impact in regards to space sustainability it is up to us to define those metrics and it is up to us to collaborate together and I think each individual company if you have an ESG program that doesn't involve space sustainability in your space company then you're probably missing out For me it's a starting point and let's work together to have something more customized to space but we have to start somewhere and so culture transparency data follow through and continue to discuss necessary but not sufficient so thank you everyone thank you John Gareth Brian Amber just in you thank you to all of you so