 Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back. And yes, thanks for the reminder, John. Questions in the Q&A, please. Gives me one place to check rather than two. I'm doing my best on the chat. So we're going to carry on the subject that we've been, it was been greatly kicked off for us today by Celine and Guna. And we're going to be hearing about a bit more about one of the activities going on in the open group right now, the open footprint forum. And to do that, we have Sammy Lakshmanen, who is a principal focusing on environmental, social and governance at PWC. Sammy has more than 20 years of experience working at the cross-section of sustainability and technology, co-developing and operationalising digital transformations that support companies' sustainability strategies and performance. Sammy's worked across all major industry sectors, including energy and oil and gas, developing and implementing digital strategies and roadmaps that support the client's most pressing challenges such as the low carbon economy transition, business resilience and increasingly the disclosure of materials on environmental, social and governance issues and value creation opportunities associated with their investments. Importantly, Sammy's been involved in the global implementation of environmental data management systems, especially for greenhouse gas emissions for the largest companies in the world in the oil and gas, technology, mining and other sectors. So a warm welcome from the open group to you, Sammy Lakshmanen. Welcome, Sammy. Steve, appreciate it. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes, we can. And see you. Excellent. Perfect. Good. I always like to do the technology check. Now, thank you, everybody. Appreciate your time today to talk through it. I'll spend about the next 20 minutes or so just highlighting some of the things that have happened since COP26. Well, hopefully everyone on this call is aware, but COP26 was a pretty major event last year in Scotland to bring all the countries and companies and industries and activists and whatever else that might be out there together to start to talk about how we progress the climate change agenda, especially sort of in the concept of sort of a one and a half degree change and so on and so forth. What I wanted to do is just highlight a couple of things in this space around, you know, what's been happening since and how is COP26 really influenced it, but also equally talk a little bit more about the importance of leveraging data because that's, as you heard from my introductions, I'm a big data guy and when you start to talk about greenhouse gas emissions and climate, you'll see that a lot of the conversations are really anchored around having good high quality data and we'll dive into that a little bit more. I don't think I can control, there we go. Perfect. All right, so let's talk a little bit about COP26. So what did COP26 achieve? As you can imagine, there were a number of pledges and commitments. I'm not going to go into the detail of all of them as there was quite a substantial number. I'm sure there's many of us that can probably feel that we could have gone more. There's probably some that said, ooh, that went quite far as well. But there were some really big, you know, I think announcements. You know, I'll start with, first of all, you know, things that are near and dear to my heart. You know, a commitment by about 100 countries to end in reverse deforestation, you know, global methane pledge to reduce or to limit methane emissions by 30%, you know, by 2030. And once again, about another 100 countries there signed up. Although obviously some of the key countries there did not sign up, but a lot of the commitments were voluntary. A number of net zero commitments by various organizations as well as achieving a number of climate targets. Some of the probably the more, you know, specific things, you know, you've seen, for example, the commitment to phase out, you know, unabated coal power or phase down unabated coal power, phase out, you know, inefficient, you know, fossil fuel subsidies, although there hasn't been any specific timelines. But once again, these were pledges and commitments. Equally of importance was the ability to trade carbon emission credits. You know, Article 6, as you may have seen, that people have the ability now to, you know, there's now a framework that's been sort of agreed for trading these credits across, you know, country borders to help, you know, meet some of these climate targets by buying offset credits. Transition to zero emission vehicles by the time you get to 2030 and beyond, as well as the creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board. If you take a look at all of these different pledges and commitments, they all kind of anchor on a number of things. First of all, a lot of these are commitments out in the future. And so as you can imagine, as with many commitments, you know, people are going to start to scrutinize and analyze, well, how are we doing? How are we meeting these pledges and these commitments? Are we achieving the reductions that we really want? Equally, as you can imagine, there is a lot of money that's being poured into this. You know, I think literally in the order of trillions and trillions of dollars, you know, depending on how you look at it, you know, either in private capital, in government funding, subsidies, taxes, incentives, you know, that's now, you know, being committed to transforming the global economy to net zero in some form or fashion. And that might be at a country level that might be at specific industry level. For example, you can see that, you know, take a country like South Africa, for example, they receive, you know, they're getting about eight and a half billion dollars to reduce their reliance on coal and power generation. So there's a number of, once again, commitments being made and a vast amount of money that's being spent in this space. But what does that once again sort of translate to us? How do we make sure that these commitments and these pledges are being honored or that they're achieving the right target? Because once again, at the end of the day, if we don't have visibility, if we don't have a view on how progress is being made, you know, today, tomorrow, you know, especially with some of these things going up to 2030, 2040, 2050, in some cases even up to 2070, it's very easy for these things to kind of get lost over and, you know, be the issue and the problem for the next stakeholder, the next participant and so on and so forth. So that's really an emphasis that's going on right now, which is really looking at how do we ensure that we're tracking, monitoring, reporting and verifying those data. And so that's really what I wanted to kind of spend a little bit of time today on. When you start to think about how do we leverage data, once again, you've got lots of commitments, lots of money being spent. Well, how do we actually really make sure that those commitments and pledges are actually driving the behavior that we want, which is to, you know, eventually see a reduction in greenhouse gas missions at an absolute level, regardless how it is. And I tend to break it down and kind of in a similar context to the Paris Agreement, which is sort of this MRV concept. So how do we monitor, report and verify greenhouse gas emissions? And the reason I do that is when you start to think about data and when you start to think about these commitments and these start to think about the money that's being spent, you're really asking a few questions here. Do we have a view on what our emissions are right now? How accurate is it? How uncertain is it? And do we have a clear view at a granular level that we've got the right view on emissions? How do we report our emissions to all the interested stakeholders? I'll talk a little bit more about that today, but there's a lot of people that's interested around the impact of emissions above and beyond what we've seen historically in terms of just regulators. And then last but not least, how do we verify this, right? You get a number. Well, how do I make sure that it's absolutely correct or that it's something that I can rely on? Once again, if I'm talking about trillions of dollars, millions of dollars being spent, how do I make sure that those emissions and those offsets are really credible? Okay. So let me just jump right quick in here. So we'll just take each of those topics from a simplistic perspective. If I look at monitoring, how do we quantify emissions at a granular and more frequent basis, right? A lot of times emissions have been done on an annual basis, some spreadsheets, back of some envelope or some invoices, but when you start to think about emissions being tracked on a day-to-day basis, weekly basis, or a batch by batch, I mean, customers are starting to make decisions on it. So how do I actually track my impact of my carbon emissions at a more granular and frequent basis, especially for the products that we're making or the services that we're providing? I may know the emissions of a refinery, but how do I now quantify that carbon intensity of that barrel of oil, whether it's sustainable aviation fuel or just regular aviation fuel? How do I track that and how do I quantify that? And you're seeing a lot of emphasis around systems and technology and data being put into place to take advantage of some of this information. Once again, we can track lots of data. We've got all kinds of sensors in the world, but how do we track that? How do we improve emissions monitoring technology? So, as I mentioned, there's lots of things like satellites and drones and so on and so forth. How do they compare against traditional methods? And there's still a little bit of debate. I know our next speaker is going to talk to you a lot more about satellite imagery. And the technology is definitely improving, but there's still some gaps into some of the accuracy around some of those numbers in comparison to some of the traditional methods that might take more time, be more labor intensive, but are more accurate. So how do we build those emissions up? And so, once again, we need to make sure that that technology is scaling and you're starting to see, once again, some of that investment dollars that we talked about earlier being applied to that. And finally, how do you improve the quality of the underlying data? I mean, it's great that we have all the sophistication around tools and systems and being able to exchange data, but if the underlying data is still bad, if your suppliers are unclear as to what to collect and how to report it and how to quantify the emissions for your scope three, then that still raises a bit of an issue. Okay. When we talk about reporting, I will say that the number of stakeholders is now rapidly increased, right? Previously, it was just regulators that might have been the EPA. Now you've got the likes of the SEC. They're quite interested in your carbon reporting. I was talking to a group in India this morning where effectively something is similar happening in terms of their interest in ESG or greenhouse gas reporting. Your investors, your lenders, they themselves are getting more and more savvy around what scope one, scope two, scope three emissions means. Your customers, they are desperate to want to understand the impact of your products because that's now making, that's then helping their decision making process. Equally, how do we import the right information into the right framework, right? There's a number of different frameworks that are out there. And then finally, how do we share that appropriate data in terms of the scope three emissions? So once again, continues to be an alphabet soup of these reporting needs, but these are some of the challenges that are questions that are being asked out there at the moment. Finally, last but not least, I will talk about a little bit on verification. How are these emissions being verified and by who? It's great that we have some numbers that are published, but are they really real? Are they really been verified by a third party? Is there a reasonable assurance around these? How do I make sure that the emissions that somebody else reported to me, especially my suppliers are correct? And how do I then verify those offsets that are being used to reduce emissions, so to speak? So once again, these are a lot of questions that I've been kind of posing to you, but really what I wanted to do is summarize into kind of two bottom lines, right? So effectively, when you start to think about the questions that I've been talking about over the last 10 minutes, really kind of boils down into two fundamental things for me. One is emphasis on high quality and verifiable greenhouse gas data. That could be the underlying activity data. It could be your emission factors, your carbon intensities. And we'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide. And also the ability to share the data across organizations, right? And if you think about both of those things, the fundamental importance of data is so critical. If I don't have high quality data, well, all of these commitments, you know, you could be off by, you know, several orders of magnitude and not realize it just because you didn't have high quality data or there was a bunch of gaps in your understanding of emissions or those equivalent reductions. Equally, if you don't have the verification necessary, then equally, there's a struggle to really believe if those numbers are correct and so on and so forth. And once again, the carbon world is not unique to one country, one company, one organization, but really it's a global problem. If you think about, you know, a piece of furniture being manufactured in China, being shipped to somewhere in Europe, you know, being, you know, put onto a car that then goes into someone's home. You know, possibly, you know, in my cases, I've moved a couple of times now overseas being shipped across and so on and so forth. That the journey of any of those different products crosses lots of different fence lines, countries and borders, and therefore you have to have the ability to share that data across different organizations. So what does that all mean? If I kind of think, come back to those two fundamental statements around the sort of high quality and verifiable greenhouse gas data and the ability to share that data seamlessly across organizations, it basically boils down into four fundamental components. So first of all, you need to have a robust data model. I know it sounds silly. It sounds kind of basic, but that's fundamentally what we need, right? In order for us to be able to share data, we need to have a common understanding of what we think is important data and relevant data that we need to share from one organization to another. You need to have the data governance associated to it, right? So who decides what? You know, you might make mistakes, the ability to restate the governance and the provenance around the data and how it's been checked and audited and verified is equally as important. So once again, how do you trust those numbers that come to you? So what are the processes and policies that we have in place? Interoperable technology and systems. It'd be nice if we all lived in one harmonized unified technology world, but we know that's not true. Whether it's, you know, the underlying technology stacks of SAP versus Oracle, Microsoft versus Amazon or Google, you know, for those of you really, you know, desperate for the technology conversations, the iPhone versus Android, there's lots of different technologies, lots of different systems. So how do we make sure that those technologies are interoperable? And then finally, how do we make sure that the data standard is exchanged and, you know, in and out? And that's effectively what we've been focusing on in the Open Footprint Forum for the last year or so. You know, we've built out a data model around scope one and scope two emissions. For those of you who are unfamiliar with those terms, that's your asset inventory and your imported emissions. And so now we've got an alignment that we need to be publishing here pretty soon around sort of the data model on how we track emissions at a granular level. We've now looked at ways of exchanging data across from one company to another company, you know, in a relatively, let's call it painless way, so that the ability for data to be shared across organizations is available. And then import it into whatever tools and systems that you may have accordingly in here. And then what I will say also is the ability to, when you start to think about all this, is how do you track this within your own systems, right? So when you start to start to talk about the data governance and the data model, you're almost talking about in a very similar fashion as what you used to see in the financial world, no different than sort of the ledgers and all the accounts, this concept of sort of a greenhouse gas or a carbon ledger becomes highly important, right? Because effectively, you're now talking about emissions of carbon that you're now, you know, emitting, sharing, offsetting, reducing, etc. Very similar to financial assets and the ability for you to track that in a ledger type format. I, you know, my assets and my liabilities, my transactions in terms of the pluses and the minuses, the puts and the takes becomes relatively important once again in order for us to understand what a particular carbon footprint is for an organization, regardless of how it may be. I think I may have one more slide, but let me just check, yep, okay, perfect, good. You know, but what I will say is ultimately down to you, you know, for the organizations here that are looking at this. When you start to think about what this means for your organization, when I just finished describing all the effort around data, high quality data, the ability to share, I boil it down to kind of three very basic things. And if you've done these three things, great. If you've started the journey, great. If you haven't done anything with it, this is the first three things I would focus on. So first of all, industrialized reporting. You know, I've done this now for 20 plus years and you'd be amazed at how much of greenhouse gas still sits in the spreadsheet or in a, you know, PDF document or whatever the case might be. But if you imagine the scrutiny that you're going to get from regulators, investors and customers, no different than financial reporting. I live in Houston. I live through the days of Enron. You know, imagine the emphasis that that people will have as they did on financial reporting, creating the likes of the Sarbanes Oxley's of the world. Imagine that same level of scrutiny, but in a much more accelerated timeline around greenhouse gases. You said you're going to reduce your carbon emissions by X percent by 2030 will show me how you did it show me prove to me that you've done that. Your ability to industrialize that is massive. I have organizations I literally know do emission calculations on 1400 spreadsheets for a single facility. Can you imagine how difficult it must be to validate and verify that and pass the proverbial sniff test with an investor. Understand where you have data gaps. I've yet to see an organization in this world that's got perfect data. And if you find one or if you think you're one, let me know because I'd be happy to come have a chat with you. But there are data gaps, whether it's your understanding of the carbon intensity of your products, especially around when you talk about your scope three emissions, what your suppliers and what your customers are contributing. Most people have a reasonable handle on scope one to as in the emissions that are generated from your facilities. But when it comes to your customers in your in your suppliers, that's a little bit of a gray area. And what we've often found with our organizations is actually just bad data. Right. If you think about the share impact of scope three emissions in some cases, it might be, you know, 70 80% of your total carbon footprint. If you have a pretty big data gaps as in you actually don't know what your suppliers are providing and how carbon intensive those products are, then you have no idea how carbon intensive your products are. And that's a very simple aspect. And then finally, you don't have to do this by yourself. There are technology platforms, data exchanges that do help you simplify and automate this. You know, we've moved past the, you know, the days of, you know, Excel spreadsheets and, and, you know, ledgers and books, there's lots of data exchanges available to pass information around the work we're doing the open for print is to allow us to to to share that information. And once again, technology platforms, whether it's the ERPs or the technology providers of the world are focusing on this exact issue so that they have the ability to share that information from one organization to another. High from energy, a high amount of energy that's being spent in the space. So I think those are probably the three highlights. I'll probably pause there and maybe open it up for some some questions. Great stuff, Sammy. Thank you very much. And yeah, finished a few minutes early. So we do have some do have some time for some questions. First one that came in. Are there, are there common international standards that architects can leverage as part of their principles and architectural designs. You know, the common data model, for example, that can be used to compare results globally, including standards around capture. That's part of what we're working on right now, obviously, but you know, what's out there right now that people could go to. Yeah. Unfortunately, I would say there, there are not a lot of international standards that have been adopted. Just matter of fact, there's a lot of reporting frameworks. So you'll hear terms like GRI or, you know, TCFD or things like that. Once again, those are reporting frameworks that tell you what to report, but not necessarily how do you, you know, store and architect that data, so to speak. You have a number of technology platforms that obviously have developed their own architecture within their platforms. That common data model does not really exist as it stands right now. That is literally the work of the enterprise, sorry, of the open footprint forum is to develop that common knowledge and basis. And once again, the complexity of carbon data on one hand is simple. You have emissions equals activity times factor. That's effectively any carbon calculation, but all the detail that goes behind each of those components, is no different than financial reporting, as you can imagine, is quite tricky. I will also say that we are also partnering. It's not just the open footprint. There are other organizations like the World Business Council for sustainable development is a good one where they're starting to develop data models, for example, around the product side of things, carbon intensity side of things. And once again, we within the open footprint are working with them in collaboration to that. There are also specific, let's just say data standards or exchanges that are working on this exact issue. The one that comes most obvious to mind is like, for example, pidex in the oil and gas space. Once again, they're looking at how they share scope three emissions across different data exchanges to basically facilitate that transfer of information around greenhouse gases. No different than they did with invoices and things like that back in the day, so to speak. So hopefully that answers your question. Absolutely. Thank you. And one more and then we'll take any others in the panel. What do you stress the importance of the reporting and how it's, you know, there's going to be a lot of scrutiny on that, which on the one hand sounds like more work for accountants, which surely that's not a good thing. But anyway, do you see specialists evolving around that kind of reporting or do you see it being very closely linked to the financial reporting side? I think the financial reporting this side will definitely come in place, especially with the likes of the SEC, for example, in the U.S. They, you know, they've already, they haven't announced it, but they've indicated that there's likely some form of reporting that will be done around scope one, scope two greenhouse gas emissions. So when you start to think that the likes of an SEC are interested, you can see that there will be a clear overlay with the financial reporting world. I will also say that there is definitely an accounting issue. I mean, when you start to look at some of the disclosures, well, you know, it becomes a bit of an accounting issue as to who takes credit for the savings, right? If I decarbonize myself and I'm the supplier for someone else and they're taking credit for my emissions production as well, well, how does that all work? Because at the end of the day, there's only a finite number of carbon. I'm a chemical engineer and mass doesn't just, you know, mass has to be preserved, right? So, so I think there will definitely be some accounting rules. No different than, you know, wonderful tax systems that tell you what you can take credit for and who can take credit for and all that that still needs to be developed. I think at the moment right now, we barely, this is the kind of crawl before we walk before we run, we barely even know what we think might be in our scope of emissions, let alone what we think we save. Let alone what we avoided. And there's definitely some thorny issues that my favorite one, an example actually here from an oil and gas client, you know, if I, and this is their argument, not so much, you know, one that I either view one way or the other. But, you know, if I reduce the carbon intensity of my natural gas and I reduce the need for coal plants, my emissions will probably go up because I'm selling more natural gas. But I'm actually reducing carbon because, you know, someone's not using coal as much as a simplistic example. Once again, if you're in part of those industries, that's not me nitpicking, but just imagine, you know, the complexity of all that accounting of emissions. And that's why I keep coming back to it's a carbon ledger, no different than the world has banks and, you know, financial ledgers and generally accepted accounting principles. The same principle here. We're going to have to develop some of these things in parallel around carbon accounting. Wonderful. Okay. Sammy, we'll leave it there. But looking forward to you joining us on the panel, but a big thank you from all of us for your presentation today. Thank you, Sam. Thanks, Steve. Pleasure.