 So many people have been speaking about the climate crisis, but the real question is why is it that we're still not acting at the scale and speed that is necessary? For 150 years, we built up a world based on the assumption that we can exploit the planet for free and it translates to very dramatic impacts happening right as we speak. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier, which means it exacerbates existing inequities in our society. We need to remember we're on the same planet and this is the planet that we need to make sustainable for the whole of humanity. Making much faster progress toward all 17 sustainable development goals is the best pathway to adjust future for all and public-private partnerships will be absolutely crucial to this transition. We know that this transition will require a fast adoption of a lot of new technologies and the question today is how to find the appropriate way to find this technology. Younger generations are demanding a sense of purpose. They want to look at companies and say, I am investing with you all for this reason. The solutions are there. What we need is governments to regulate, to invest and we need business to act with values. History will look at us, people, politicians, corporate leaders. These times require not only solutions but speed. There is nowhere else to look than the mirror. We are the ones that need to do this. Welcome back to the Sustainable Development Impact Meetings and to a session on how technology and innovation can play a key role in helping hard-to-abate sectors in the race to decarbonize. I'm Emanuela Orsini, broadcasting to you live from the World Economic Forum Studio here in New York City. As the push to meet the targets set out in the Sustainable Development Agenda intensifies the demand for technologies that cut emissions from heavy industry is growing. The International Energy Agency has said that 50% of emission reductions required to achieve net zero will come from technologies that are not yet available or at the required scale. Now, this is especially challenging for the so-called hard-to-abate sectors such as iron and steel, shipping, cement, aviation and mining. According to the UN, heavy industry is the second largest source of CO2 emissions, accounting for 25% of all CO2 emissions worldwide. So how can we create more opportunities to accelerate innovation in these sectors and reduce costs so these solutions can be rapidly deployed? Now over the next 45 minutes, we'll explore this question, the challenges these industries face, what needs to be done to solve them, and take a look at some of the solutions already being deployed and are showing us the way to a more sustainable future. And we'll also talk about Uplink, the World Economic Forum's platform which is supporting and scaling purpose-driven startups all over the world. Entrepreneurs with the kinds of solutions we need more of if we're going to succeed in meeting our decarbonization and climate goals. We'll take a look at mining and aviation a bit closer. But first, let's introduce today's panel. Joining me today is Vivek Salgaukar, director of VIMSOM Group. Thank you for being here. Benedict Sabotka, CEO of Eurasian Resources Group. Thank you for joining us. Annie Hills, senior advisor on innovation to special presidential envoy for climate from the U.S. Department of State. Thanks for joining. And Sharuk Shamim, co-founder and CEO of MVCOR. Thank you all for joining me here today. Now, Annie, I want to start with you. For our wider audience watching who may not know that much about the topic, can we talk about some of the biggest challenges the hard-to-abate industries face in this green transition? Let's start from the beginning. Absolutely. So I think mentally you did a great job of laying out what we actually mean when we talk about the hard-to-abate industries. There are really two things that we're talking about there. Usually we're talking about heavy transports. I think about long-distance shipping and trucking and aviation as well as sort of heavy materials and heavy industries. Reminding comes in as well as steel, aluminum, concrete and chemicals. What makes these sectors hard to abate and the reason that we call them that is because they can't use the levers that we traditionally think about when we think about decarbonization. We might think about energy efficiency or switching to clean energy. Those levers can be used for the hard-to-abate sectors, but they won't get us all the way to a decarbonized solution. The reason is that these sectors essentially have fossil fuels baked into the processes that they're using. So if you think about transport, you're going to combust fossil fuels in order to drive a car or take a plane or a ship. Similarly, when you're thinking about the heavy materials, oftentimes fossil fuels is actually an input into the processes that are being used or in some cases like concrete. It's actually a chemical output. You make CO2 and you make concrete. So it's much more difficult to actually get rid of the CO2 in these hard-to-abate sectors. So what we actually need to see in the hard-to-abate sectors is innovation, the way that we are doing these processes. The good news is that innovation largely exists. It's just not up to scale yet. So we need to have the will and the capital to actually scale these innovations and as well to think about how to do processes that we've done for a long time that might have heavy assets, expensive assets, with long life cycles. We have to have the will to make changes to those processes as well. And so how can we make those changes? What are the biggest barriers for that? You know, I think, like I said, one of the biggest barriers is there's will. There's the need for capital in order to change these processes. And then we need to scale up innovation, which I know is something that we'll talk about today, actually take these technologies that have been proven maybe on a small scale and make them something that can be used at commercial scale. And so you are a member of the First Movers Coalition. So it's an initiative from the Forum, as well as a coalition of companies that create the necessary demand for green technologies and also supports the purchasing power needed to decarbonize tough-to-abate sectors. What role can governments play in advancing innovation? That's a great question. And I'll just say first, the U.S. government has been extremely pleased to co-launch the First Movers Coalition with the World Economic Forum and to now see, I think, we have over 110 purchasing commitments in the hard-to-abate sectors. So we're extremely thrilled about where we are today. There's a lot of roles that government can play, and I'll focus on a few. The first thing that government needs to do is to create policy and incentives that will encourage these changes, and the hard-to-abate sectors. If we look at the U.S., I think that's a great example of where we are leaning in on the required policies with tax credits, 45Q, 45V. These are ways that we're providing money to scale up carbon capture or to scale up hydrogen, which sort of underlie the hard-to-abate sectors' solutions. We also are providing direct funding for industrial hubs or for hydrogen hubs. So we are actually putting that policy and the funding behind addressing those sectors. I would also say the government plays a very important role thinking about infrastructure. If you think about, again, any of these hard-to-abate sectors, there's a real infrastructure component to them as well. So for shipping, you need bunkering. You need to know where those fuels are going to be if you're thinking about long-distance transport. You need to understand where charging infrastructure is. Similarly, you need to know if you're trying to do steelmaking with hydrogen. Where are those hydrogen pipelines going to be? So a little bit of clarity on the infrastructure. Government can support both in creating clarity so that you can make clear investment plans and also actually helping to push forward that infrastructure. The final thing that I'll say on what governments can do is that governments are actually also a major buyer when we talk about demand signals on the purchasing side. It's important for governments to recognize that in many cases we are the largest purchaser of concrete, of steel, we have fleets. So it's important for us to think about our role as a buyer as well. Now, the first move is coalition. It supports over seven sectors, including mining. So I just want to focus a bit more on the mining sector. Benedict, from a private sector perspective, how is collaborating with different governments beneficial for your organization in working to decarbonize? The mining industry, because it's in many host countries such an important employer and source of infrastructure, source of power generation. Biod's nature has a very strong stakeholder component. And those are obviously governments and civil society and the communities that live around our operations. In some cases, and we're in 20 countries, in some cases we're the only company that exists at that location, which means we provide not just for the jobs, but we provide for the medical services, for electricity supply, for water supply, for wastewater disposal. So we do a lot more than just the actual business, which means the public-private sector cooperation is inherent in what we have to do and where we operate. Now, the challenge is that governments, they obviously want investment and they want employment, but on the other hand, they also want mining companies to be a responsible citizen. Now, as we now see the supply chain for the energy transition virtually exploding. I mean, we've never seen anything like this before in history. This is the biggest purchase order in the history of the mining industry, the green energy transition, because just so much more material is going to be needed. At the same time, there's so many obstacles for us to expand our production if we want to raise to the top as opposed to raise to the bottom, because it's easy to expand production when you raise to the bottom. You just break the rules and a lot of companies do that. We see that every day. But if you want to do the right thing, it's incredibly difficult to actually expand production to bring more of these energy transition critic materials to the market and to do that in a sustainable way. And what we find in some of the regions we operate in Asia or in Africa or in South America is that the governments are very supportive and they push us for more investment but we don't actually get the reward for being good companies the way that we should be getting the reward for being the good companies. The challenge being here, it's a commodity industry, right? Commodity in itself means that the price is the same, right? Whether it's one unit produced with a very high carbon footprint or one unit of a certain metal produced with a very low carbon footprint, the price is identical. So there's no differentiation. So good companies, companies that try to do the right thing that actually do not get rewarded because a price for one unit of iron ore is the same as the next unit of iron ore. And that is a challenge if I can build on what Annie said. It's not just the hard-to-bate emissions that are baked into the production process and there's a lot you can do about electrifying your truck fleet. You can use renewable energy, co-generating in your operations. You can use different types of transportation. You can move rail as opposed to trucks. So there's many things you can do but there is inherent differences in the product itself. So for example, if you produce an iron ore which has a low content of iron ore, automatically your CO2 footprint further down the line in the steel process is going to be significantly higher than when you produce a concentrate that is very high in iron because that will mean you have significantly lower carbon emissions in the process downstream. And there's very little reward for that increment in being a better producer of a product that has inherently a better carbon footprint. So that needs to change and I think we need a lot more transparency around the provenance of the material, not just from an ESG point of view, but also from the emissions point of view. So we're working on that with a number of our partners, for example, at the global battery lines that I'm co-chairing, the 150-member multi-stakehold organization which was founded originally at the World Economic Forum. And we're working on a tool that's called the battery passport which for all the materials that go into a battery, end-to-end from cradle to grave, tracks CO2 emissions because the difference is huge and this way you can give consumers a choice and then there's an opportunity for price differentiation. And so you mentioned earlier that the total mineral demand for clean energy technologies will double as the International Energy Agency says by 2040 we think that will happen. So how else can you prepare your organization to respond to this demand and what are the biggest challenges? Well the numbers are staggering. The World Bank estimates that by 2050 the mining industry will have to invest an incremental 1.7 trillion US dollars into mining expansion infrastructure associated processing capacity and so on. Now that sounds like a huge number but for the mining industry that is an incredibly huge number because our average annual capex is maybe 100 billion dollars in the industry. So it's a tiny industry that gets hit with this expectation to be doubling production capacity in a very short period of time. So there are challenges on organizational design, on human resources, the industry is very short of talent because 10 years ago nobody cared, right? It was an industry that was the people from the dark side of the moon they're part of the problem as opposed to today we're part of the conversation, we're part of the solution or at least many people see us as that. So expanding the supply chain is going to be an incredible challenge but look it's a great opportunity for business and it's a great opportunity also for innovation because still today the mining industry applies very much the same technologies in extracting and refining and processing and transportation that they did 10, 15 years ago. It's inherently very conservative industry and we're trying to change that because innovation is going to make this industry so much more efficient and so much more capable in expanding and deploying capital increasingly complicated, technically challenging jurisdictions and geographies while at the same time trying to safeguard all the rules and requirements that are important under the ESG rule so it's a big challenge but it's a great challenge and a great opportunity for technology companies, for innovators, for startups to look at this industry and say hey let's shake up this dinosaur a little bit and see what it can do. And so that's a good transition to Vivec you're the director of then some group of mining company from India you're also co-founder of Prospect Innovation you've worked with startups in the mining space so why did you feel the agencies to start looking for technologies that would make mining more sustainable? Sure, so thanks actually and just going off of what Benedict said one of the things that I wanted to do when I joined our family business which has been around for over 70 years is seeing how we could actually improve our own operations and the natural kind of next step for me is to look at the early stage technology environment for mining as you would for any other industry you would expect to find venture capitalists you would expect to find incubators, accelerators, so on and so forth I spent a couple of years trying to do it and I found nothing and that was quite shocking to me considering the size and the scale and the dependency of everybody literally on this planet on the mining industry to have nothing of an ecosystem for technology and early stage acceleration, incubation it just did not exist and so that was a problem but also an opportunity but most importantly I think a responsibility so being also in this industry being part of a family business I have the need to think in generations and so therefore how are we going to continue to stay relevant and so four and a half years ago started Prospect Innovation which looks at early stage technology for the mining process what's interesting actually is that for the mining industry you're using the exact same technologies that people are talking about all the time all the very very exciting technologies that get headlines are actually applicable to the mining industry it's just that the innovators and the technologists are actually not aware of the use case in the mining industry because the industry traditionally has been fairly closed off and that's one of the things that we're trying to change and that's also where partnering with the forum actually helps in terms of changing that narrative and getting more people involved in the conversation and actually having a conversation to begin with so over the years it's been a short journey it's been about four and a half years we've now had about 30 companies roughly come through it from about a dozen countries so the technology does exist it's just hard to find and the question is how we can actually widen that funnel and expand the way in which we actually go through the selection process and actually match technologies with use cases which is where we have the unique position to be where we have both capital allocators as well as operators and producers so we can then match it and then bring these companies actually to scale and so what are some of the challenges that you've seen in this space when it comes to carbon reduction goals so I think the biggest challenge is actually trying to get people thinking about mining as a use case and as a TAM or total addressable market or a use case so the thing is if you look at the top engineering schools around the world very few of the the brightest that are coming out of it are thinking about mining as something that they need to actually work towards solving and what the interesting thing there is typically when you're starting a company you're looking for a use case where you have very low competition a big potential market and a way in which you can actually deploy what it is that you have been working on the mining industry offers all of those things it's just that again there's a lack of awareness and that in large part is also due to the industry and us because we've been more reactive and not proactive in terms of telling the story and talking about how critical the industry is and how with any industry there's good actors and bad actors but that doesn't necessarily have to mean that the bad kind of completely overshadows everything else unfortunately what the messaging has been so for us a big part of it is reaching out to companies saying that hey this technology is super fascinating and actually this is the use case in the mining industry would you consider actually doing that and playing a role in that matching and what happens oftentimes is these companies in where they are at that moment are competing against dozens if not more trying to solve the same problem where suddenly now you have a massive industry that could be one or two or three people actually working on it your chances of success are high and also given the scale of the mining industry every little incremental bit translates to a tremendous amount just because again of the size and the scale of the industry so in terms of just going back to your question the biggest problem I think is just that awareness and I think one of the best ways to kind of get over that is really getting more people involved and collaborating and making it more about and just the individual companies which is what in many cases has happened in the past Meneni do you want to build on that in terms of some of the other challenges that you've seen and what else can be done the biggest challenge in this industry to apply technology is particularly around emissions reduction the use case is important people are very conservative and no one's ever gotten fired for using the same production process he used 20 or 30 years ago so we need to get a lot more risk taken and innovation approach into this industry and of course as also demographics of this industry changes I mean I was appointed chief executive officer when I was 32 years old and I was by far the youngest person in this industry and today still 10 years later I'm still the youngest CEO in this industry so it shows that the demographics they're not actually not regenerating this industry is not getting any younger and that also means that there's to some extent less interest in trying out new things because you will not say the results 10 years from now we have to change the attitude towards innovation and of course a price the problem today we have is to reduce emissions in your production in your processing processing and in this approach there's very little reward for that other than being a very good citizen particularly today as we compete I mean one unit of a metal that's for example produced for a battery competes with all the other units of metals that are produced somewhere else in the world and for the consumer there's no difference whether this unit has been produced using lignite coal-fired power with a very dirty production process whether it's been based on hydropower you can't see the difference because you can't see the element looks the same so there's no reward for actually being better or trying to be better so the use case is trying to apply but also then being able to say this actually saves us money or this is a good business case I think we need to both we need market based mechanisms for more innovation in the industry so we need to bake that into the proposition so how can we reduce costs so I'll give you one example a member of the King Charles sustainable market initiative is a group of about 300 CEOs that are trying to apply market based solutions for for example for hard to bait emissions in industries so one big area that we think in our industry that will dramatically reduce the emissions is renewable energy today most mining companies still do not use renewable energy so of course it's inherent in the process because you need to have 365 days 24-7 because the plants always run a mine doesn't stop it's like a big refiner it always runs so you always need power and that makes it very difficult because then you have to have not just the intermittency problem solved but you also have to have storage now this is where the batteries come in so people talk about the impact of the batteries that have on the transportation sector reduced crude oil consumption replaced crude oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels a day this year it's already 2 million barrels a day that's the entire production of Mexico if you forecast this to 2030-2040 we're looking at a replacement number of something like 17-18 million barrels a day just by electric vehicles that's the entire production of the United States of America so it is having a massive impact but you need to have the same in renewable energy storage because that will replace a lot of units a lot of emissions in power generation we believe that transportation and power generation are roughly 40% of global emissions 30% of this you can replace, reduce by applying battery energy storage solutions in transportation and in energy storage and that will come back to the industry because obviously energy is a very significant part of our cost to make that sustainable is a clear objective and Vivek, back to the startups that you've worked with have you seen interest in funding for these startups? Is there momentum? Yeah, so it's an interesting question because hardware to begin with is difficult to fund because the gestation period is much longer than say software however what's been interesting is that so the last 15 months have been fairly difficult in terms of the fundraising environment for early stage technologies across the board what we've actually found is that a couple of our best performing companies have raised significant rounds at significant valuations in the last couple of months actually so what that tells us is there is a demand for it as long as the right product market fit is actually there so yes it is challenging but it is not impossible and I think this will only increase as there is more the conversation increases about what is needed and cost reduction for the material space as we grow to decarbonize and get to these goals right so if you just throw out numbers again you know if you want to get to these some of these 2040 goals you have to you have to mine from now until 2040 twice the amount of copper that has ever been mined in the history of mankind right that's a staggering number so you cannot recycle your weight out of this problem you can't massively increase just mining in order to get there it has to be a combination of several things we're not saying that innovation is the only way it's an important way and it has to be done but there are several things that have to be done simultaneously as well and the good thing about innovation and technology is that it touches multiple facets of this very problem right and so I think again it comes to awareness and having that conversation because the returns for just a financial investor are fantastic but also it's truly a case of doing well by doing good because all of these things are actually going to reduce the impact that we have in the environment and actually enable us as a civilization as a race to actually get through these goals that we've set ourselves because of what has happened over the last centuries right and so I think when you look at it it's still staggering that despite all of this you don't have venture capital funds that are focused purely on technology like this right you have several that are maybe looking across the board and this forms a small slice of it but yet you don't have any that's looking directly at this right we are hoping that that changes we're playing a role in doing that we're also investing significant capital of our own to do this but that's of course one drop in the bucket it has to increase and that's part of why also working with the forum helps in terms of increasing that funnel and getting it to a much wider audience because that's what's ultimately is needed we need to get much more people involved but the good need is the returns are there to actually justify that okay so now I want to go to an entrepreneur in the mining space Sharuk you're the CEO of a startup called MVCOR which helps to repurpose the waste created by the mining industry and you're also part of the upland community you're selected as one of our circular economy innovation challenges so can you tell us a bit more about what your company does and and the problem you're solving definitely thanks for having me so we are Calgary Canada based company and our whole focus is and we are strong believer of cradle to cradle so we take waste or technically it's raw material for our process and we convert that into low carbon cement material so this raw material can come from any sources be it mining waste basically after any hydro metallurgical operation we can work with pretty much any energy transition based metal waste or maybe it's coming from precious metal waste apart from that we can work with construction industry waste simple demolition waste or pretty much any smelting slag coming from nickel copper or any other metal smelting units we take that material we convert that into a cement replacement that can go as high as 40% basically reducing a lot of built carbon or embodied carbon in built environment additionally what we've been constantly trying to do is to push this technology to a very big commercial scale so that we can prove the viability and also the sustainability of the process in reducing the carbon emissions from both mining and also from the construction industry and what are your biggest needs right now as a startup how have you seen the environment going for you the startup for us typically for any startups like funding is a major major need apart from that I think the government support specifically operating in mining and both in construction where this is pretty much regulatory driven so having that support from government side where regulations doesn't act as a hinder or block for us rather than as a support so that's really important and then also tagging on the point that for us incentives also matter a lot like the way that we produce our SCM versus the ones in the market we have to differentiate between the benefits of our material compared to what's already in there so there should be some sort of like support additional support provided either by the government or maybe simply in the industry itself and what inspire you to start this company so I actually came from India in 2016 to Canada and I saw oil sand tailings which is actually in our backyard pretty much in northern Alberta and the tailings that was getting produced and during the oil extraction process it was getting stored in massive ponds called tailing ponds when we saw the volume of it it was around 1.6 trillion liters of wastewater just accumulated in a land of 220 square meters in footprint this problem itself was massive so that's when we started with this initiative that let's go after this particular industry and try to solve this from a sustainable perspective to reduce the inventory of these waste getting generated from the oil sands and then we basically started realizing that it's not just one industry or oil sands the metal mining industry exactly producing a similar or even higher quantity of waste material that can simply be now reused or helped us into a useful product for another industry so that was a big motivation for us and then Government of Alberta actually came up with a much needed support at that point of time to help us getting that platform so that we can start working on commercializing our technology And what importance do partnerships and collaborations have for your company? Oh those are the most important things for us and we always strive for collaboration because we really believe that in this case if we want to make a meaningful impact we have to do it with collaborative efforts with major stakeholders for example we are working with major mining companies in North America, Latin America also in Europe and in Asia and with cement companies as well in the similar regions to make sure that we can identify the market we have the major people already involved in the project who can not just support from yes we are giving you the permission to operate on our land but also the much more operational support because as a starter we really need all those kind of like help from not just regulatory perspective but also from a scale up perspective as well And Vivek back to you we are happy to announce this partnership with the Vimson Group house spec innovation here with Uplink at the World Economic Forum we are going to be working together on selecting and supporting entrepreneurs in the sustainable mining space so what do you hope to achieve with this partnership you mentioned a bit before you can add on to that sure so thanks for that and it's something that we are very excited to commence I think ultimately what's needed is to get this at a global scale and I think Uplink which is what the World Economic Forum has built as a platform is tremendous in terms of increasing that visibility and widening that funnel so what we hope to achieve is a number of things so over a series of challenges of the next several years what we want to do is figure out specific use cases and specific problems that the industry faces and then have technologists and entrepreneurs really address them because again you know kind of taking that you know moving it out of this sort of black box type situation where people aren't aware of what these problems are even though they have solutions that can actually address them is one of the things that we are trying to do right so it's also exciting because there's a lot of technology that just has to be tweaked a little bit for the use case and mining which again I think will form a big part of this so in terms of what it is that we want to get done there's several areas I think that are quite important first of all just the exploration side of things I think is very crucial because we are going to have to find new deposits because existing deposits are getting depleted which makes it harder and harder to actually mine them and that obviously increases your footprint for example to figure out if there's a better way to deal with tailings and waste because that's a huge it's now looked at as a problem but it could actually be a huge source of raw material so that's another possible area that we would look at so similar to that there's several things that we are thinking about which we will in new time launch but I think that's something that it's hugely exciting because it should hopefully really multiply the effect that we've tried to have we've had 30 odd companies in the last several times to do more than that in a much shorter period of time through this collaboration and I think what it does is not just bring in startups but also most importantly brings in the industry to actually work together and collaborate and have these conversations and most importantly actually take a chance on these startups and actually pilot them, invest in them and give them a shot because ultimately it's not just about how much of an impact they are going to have but ultimately these are going to end up saving saving these companies massive amounts and contributing to their bottom line so it's truly going to be that double or triple bottom line and that's something that we're very, very excited about Very exciting, thanks so I'm on uplink and our challenges we have right now a sustainable aviation challenge open so before I get to the details of that, Annie, talk to us a bit about more talk to us a bit more about aviation and what are the biggest barriers when it comes to decarbonizing the sector Yeah, so aviation, I mean all of the hard to bait sectors are complicated and aviation is no exception I'll give you a couple of the barriers that I see but recognize this is not exhaustive, one of the first ones is something that I think we've heard a lot about in the conversation today with regards to mining and that's cost, sustainable aviation fuels or other ways of decarbonizing aviation are expensive and there's a question of how we're going to split that cost across the plane, so how much is going to be born by fuel suppliers versus by airlines versus by cargo carriers or passengers and we need to figure out how to split those costs across the value chain for something that we might have historically thought about as a commodity Another thing that I'll just mention in terms of decarbonizing aviation, one of the solutions that we hear a lot about is sustainable aviation fuels what we often think of as sustainable aviation fuels biofuels and advanced biofuels they're going to have issues scaling to meet the entire need of the of the aviation industry for reasons about trying to the amount of feedstock that's available it's just going to be difficult for sustainable aviation fuel to meet the entire need so there's really going to need to be a portfolio of solutions in order to meet the aviation problem so that will include other pathways like power to liquid as well as some of the other innovations that we're looking to spur through the aviation challenge essentially we need to continue to innovate and find a whole suite of solutions that can help us to meet the entire need of the aviation sector which is immense there are many other barriers as well regulatory is one that comes to mind I probably won't go into those because we could have a whole another session on it but we'll stop there It seems like a huge sector also that seems almost insurmountable like there's just so many parts as you mentioned across the chain to get to that so I'm wondering who else needs to be involved to get to this point you know there need to be almost every stakeholder needs to be involved and we are already seeing that today we need to have airports involved we need to have local governments involved we need to have the federal government involved we need to have internationally have folks involved and we're thinking about different flight paths that's going to be very important different corporations we need to have suppliers and buyers involved and all of that is beginning to happen but that that partnership and that value chain building and the bringing together of many stakeholders is a really critical next step that needs to happen in order to meet the need of aviation and do you think we'll do it on time you know we're a bit tight on time will we have it ready here's what I'll say and I wish I had a crystal ball and could give you the complete answer on that but what I will say is we're seeing really promising coalition building right now actually just recently a number of first movers coalition members eco lab Bank of America I know that I'm forgetting somebody and it'll come to me and I'll and Delta I was going to say I'll tell you who it is launched a staff hub in Minnesota and they're really working to work with Minnesota to work with a number of different stakeholders to both invest in R&D to invest in actually building out the sustainable aviation fuel and the other aviation technologies that are needed to meet the challenge and we're seeing more and more of that hub approach as well and thinking about specific flight paths to get started so you know we need to continue that momentum but we're you know luckily seeing that begin to coalesce on the ground now maybe if I can just build on one point here what we believe we'll be seeing and we see this as the work we do with the global battery lines is the rate of innovation in the battery sector is going to make electrification of the airline industry a lot more feasible in the next few years and of course when you start with shorter areas you'll have support batteries that give you more range and so on but there's a tremendous amount of innovation the rate of innovation in batteries is absolutely staggering who would have expected ten years ago that you can drive a car for six, seven hundred miles today an electric vehicle so you would expect something else to happen in aircraft as well because right now in aircrafts the batteries for airlines are quite short but the time for flights with the electrical airplane is quite short short flight time short flight time so hopefully in a few years we'll get to it hopefully Benedict will solve that there are also some interesting startups in that space as well and electrification of aircraft exciting so on the topic of startups I want to touch a bit more on the sustainable aviation challenge that we have open on uplink so we're calling for tech solutions including sustainable fuels, propulsion technologies and value chain innovation so what did these startups really need to scale and how can we make them commercially available globally? Well the first answer of course is funding capital I think that we hear that across the board what I hope that this challenge can bring and what will be important and again this is a drawing on the theme of this conversation there needs to be the demand for these technologies that may be more expensive we need to know that there will be a market for them if they come to market and that can help actually a startup to make their own business case and to invest further if there's clarity that there will be a buyer on the other end so one of the things that we're hoping to do with this challenge that I hope to see is a real connection with the folks who are looking and actively seeking for asking for these innovations that'll be a part of it and hopefully that can help to make a stronger investment case for the startups who do join this challenge and that will be one important part of the solution okay so for our audience watching if you have an innovative solution to help decarbonize the aviation industry head on over to the uplink website to find out more about the sustainable aviation challenge and you have until the 2nd of October to submit your solution so out of all the submissions 10 to 15 winners will be selected and they'll become uplink top innovators they'll benefit from connections to industry buyers and access to market leaders potential partnerships that can help them grow so they'll also become part of the uplink innovation ecosystem which will give them access to selected world economic form of events like this week's SDIM meeting and get targeted support, networking and visibility opportunities now I'd like to ask one final question for all of you in a year from now what would you hope we're sharing as far as progress is concerned when it comes to accelerating innovation within these industries sure so I guess more of what we've been seeing which is more appetite for investment more appetite for actually entrepreneurs looking for solutions and working on solutions for the mining industry more appetite from mining industry players themselves to actually take these on fund them and pilot them and I think also a shift in the narrative from the mining industry having this stigma to actually then being seen as actually part of the solution because it is the very beginning of the supply chain and there's a lot of conversation happening about sustainable supply chain so I think a shift that has already taken place but hopefully accelerating of that shift on all those counts yeah I think that was a great answer I just say I hope to continue to see the momentum that we're seeing now keeping up not letting down that investment appetite like we mentioned the investment space is in a bit of receding a bit right now but for very early stage innovative solutions the investment appetite is actually growing and we saw that in the last year so I hope we continue to see the acknowledgement of investment need for investment innovation I also hope that by this time next year when we come back to SDIM we're talking not just about the appetite of potential buyers but we're talking about projects and partnerships and really specific announcements that have grown from the recognized need today probably three things I think we're going to see a lot more collaboration across industries and within industry sectors so end to end because you need to have a more collaborative approach to this than to many other problems so actors that actually can never play together they're now starting to have this conversation which is great the second thing is you'll probably see more geographical diversification of innovation today the vast majority of innovation in green technologies come from China by far because the largest renewable energy markets the largest producer of batteries in the world the largest producer of electric vehicles today this is the center of the renewable energy the green energy transition most people are not aware of that it's also source of over half of the investment in the mining industry it's all about China we're going to see more diversification to other regions as well which is great because there's going to be more innovation and of course the third aspect we'll have to see more investment going into the space and investment that should not just go into new technologies for new industries for emission reduction but there's so much efficiency gains you can have in the historic original energy transition and the energy systems so things like flaring one of the biggest sources of emissions it's got nothing to do with the renewable energy and it's such an easy problem to fix with money it's an engineering problem it is not a regular problem it's an engineering problem which means you throw money at it you can solve it so there's so many things we can improve in these hard to abate industries that are actually not so hard to abate it just takes funding and implementation which is something the private sector is usually very good at if you let them do with this so from a startup perspective I really believe that we'll start seeing a lot more collaboration from the mining industry we've already started seeing it since last year for us itself whenever we are talking to any mining company the openness we can clearly assess that they are now really moving from yes we are conservative industry to more like yes we really want to innovate and this is happening not just in the mining but also in the construction industry where a lot of initiatives are coming where they're actively pursuing even early stage technologies where they can nurture them and basically take it forward to do at a stage where they can commercially deploy it so that's definitely kind of be accelerating in the next year or so and then the funding is really important like for a lot of startups even in the pre-seed or seed stage like we are looking at really good deals happening with very good valuations that actually gives incentive to entrepreneurs to start working towards like solving these type of problems so definitely these two aspects would be accelerating in the next year or so well that brings our session to a close thank you so much for joining us and joining me today here in this session thank you and I want to thank you all the audience for being with me here today as well to talk about big challenges in the tough to decarbonize sectors there's still a long road ahead however as we've just seen accelerating innovation through collaboration and through key initiatives can be a key driver for the transition towards net zero so if you'd like to learn more about how to support purpose-driven entrepreneurs that are trying to tackle some of the biggest issues facing our planet such as water security the conservation of nature protecting the ocean the circular economy and many more topics make sure to visit uplink we'll leave you now with the launch of the video of the sustainable aviation challenge thank you so much for tuning in we'll see you next time we're now facing the challenge of preventing flying for a net zero emissions future we will need new propulsion systems running on alternative fuels new materials new aircraft designs and operational changes that can deliver emission reductions it will take a lot of great minds to decarbonize aviation and we're looking for the best ideas out there we're looking for three types of main innovations sustainable aviation fuel and other novel propulsion technologies that's kind of the first bucket the second are value chain innovations anything from feedstock to combustion and propulsion all the way through market infrastructure that helps us transact environmental attributes at the end the third bucket of innovation are those innovations that come from other sectors that we can apply to decarbonize and revolutionize aviation what we're excited about is that the innovators will also benefit from the collaborations with the supporting partners which represent some of the most innovative leaders in aviation and that will look like things like technical support business support and financial support