 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to you all, wherever you may be. I'm Vikram Khanna, I'm the Associate Editor of the Straits Times in Singapore, and I'd like to welcome you to this session on greeting the economic recovery. We'll try to cover what lessons we've learned from past recovery packages launched by governments, what governments can do in future to support the transition to net zero emissions, what the private sector can do, and how climate tech innovations can be scaled up. We have a very distinguished panel to deal with these issues. May I just introduce them very briefly? There is Enos Abu Hamid, who is the Chief Executive Officer of H2GO Power, I guess, in the United Kingdom, which is one of the relatively few successful companies in the climate tech space. We have a police Dalmia, who is the managing director of Dalmia Bharath Group India, which is a conglomerate, which a large company, which is taking very interesting climate-friendly initiatives. And we have Inger Anderson, who is the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program based in Nairobi. Welcome to you all, and thank you for being here, and welcome to the audience too, wherever you may be. Please feel free to submit questions that you may have on Slido at any time during the session, but please try to keep your questions concise and to the point. Okay, just to set the stage, we're going to just run a poll for the audience on COVID recovery packages. So could we have the poll, please? Okay, the question is, what percentage within COVID recovery packages has been allocated to environmentally positive measures? So if you can please vote. Okay. It says between 21 and 40%. Well, it seems that according to the OECD, only 17% of recovery funds have been allocated to COVID recovery packages to environmentally positive measures. And one of the things we'll explore in this session is what can the governments can do to make more effective use of these funds? But first, may I just ask the panelists, what is your reaction to the poll? 17%, only 17% being spent on environmentally positive measures seems pretty low. What's that a missed opportunity? Or was it understandable, given that a lot of companies suffered, whether they're clean or dirty, and it was a matter of survival for many companies? So is it understandable that the governments did not really distinguish very much between green and non-green when coming out with the recovery package? What do you all say? Maybe we can start with anger, welcoming her. So you have to unmute. Sorry, I think I'm unmuted. Thank you very much. And thank you very much for having me. I think obviously that it was a big mistake. Now, I get that the initial payments had to be from money into people's pockets, checks were cut. This we have to understand. And of course, a huge amount of the stimulus did also go to the health care system. So let's not misunderstand that that matters. But in the sort of second wave that we saw in many countries, I think that that was a time that was an opportunity missed. And certainly, as countries are looking at the third wave, now is the time to make some, yes, conditionalities on these funds, because otherwise we fall back into the old groove. So there has been an opportunity missed in a number of countries. Others are really looking at it. I'm sure we'll get into it in our discussion today. Very good. Thank you. Any other reactions in us? What do you think? Was that a missed opportunity or was it understandable? Yeah, I'm just going to reiterate here and say it's certainly a missed opportunity. Seems like we either miss an opportunity in our plans as governments, or we pan expend. It's a bad time that we find a spot in between where we plan a little bit better based on historical references and use public funds in a way that contributes to a more economical and sustainable growth as opposed to being at places where we have to pan expend and then miss more opportunities. Right. And Puneet, from India, I don't know if the Indian government spent anything at all in its recovery package for environmentally sensitive businesses. What do you think? Was that really an opportunity missed? Well, I think governments are driven by public opinion, and I think this was such a catastrophic shock that people really didn't have a playbook on how to deal with it. And at that point in time, it was really all about ensuring that the marginalized sections of society are not hurt, at least in India. I know there were migrant labor which was going back from cities to villages. There was not enough transportation. There was no food. So I think the basic necessities was important at that point in time. And I think even in the second wave, we really had a lot of problems in our healthcare infrastructure where all the money was redirected. So my view is that at that point in time where the reaction time had to be very quick, and you had to ensure that people are holding their head above water, it was the right move. However, having said that, I think there are some changes which have happened in lifestyle where people have cut business travel, like we're talking on Zoom right now. And some lifestyle changes have already been driven by COVID-19, which in some ways I think are quite structural in nature and which will sustain to some measure even post-COVID. And I think that's an opportunity. How do you leverage some of the acceleration in new technologies which has happened due to COVID, the adoption of which has happened due to COVID, how do you sustain it and scale it up? So I think there's an opportunity, but at that time, it was the right thing to do at least in a country like India. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. So moving on from that, Inger, if I can ask you what needs to change in the way governments support the transition to net zero, how can we ensure that the industrial policies of the future will not have the shortcomings of what they did in the past? Well, I think that we've learned a lot, haven't we? I mean, we had the 2008 economic crisis where government poured money into the economy again for good reason, but we need to understand there are some clear lessons that we take away from that. And one is that you've got to act fast. And here I think governments that had the fiscal space, they did act fast. And that was a good thing. All these monies, your numbers were significant in your poll there, around 16 trillion or so. But we have to also understand it was highly inequitably spent. It was a rich spending on themselves to a large extent. But I will say that countries like Senegal or Kenya or India, which we will hear, I'm sure from Puneet, did do what they could within the space that they had, but nevertheless act fast. The second thing is, and here I think we have fallen short. And I take away again, like Puneet said, you've got to spend on health and you've got to spend on putting money into poor people's pockets. You sort of take that out. But others that are buoying up polluting, dirty industries, especially in the wealthier economies, an opportunity was missed here. Because here, with the NDCs for climate that they had to deliver, there was a real opportunity to make a significant gear shift. And that need to be there for a company by policy regulatory shifts. And many countries have missed that. And that's a shame because this money, we borrowed it from the next generation. Surely we want to lead the next generation, not with a mountain of debt and a broken planet. So there really was an opportunity here. I'd also say that if we understand the current, especially in wealthy countries, which is where these huge streams, I mean, these 16 trillion were largely spent, a lot of spending goes to subsidies. Now, this was a chance to make a gear shift on subsidies, both on fossil fuel subsidies as well as agricultural subsidies, which also was missed here. And finally, I think we could really have, and there's still time, it's not the end of it because spending will continue into 2022, stimulus spending, I believe, but really drive this direct to incentivize private sector, incentivize with regulatory setting, incentivize the banking industry to also help shift. And this could have been done earlier on in many countries. And I do think that these were opportunities that were missed. Thank you. That's quite a comprehensive list of to-dos for governments. Would any of the other panelists like to add anything to those points on what governments can do beneath? Especially in the context of India, I mean, how can the government help the transition in net zero? And since you're an entrepreneur, what can the private sector do? Are you ready for this change? Well, I'm afraid I don't have a very specific answer, but I think the first, and I have some suggestions, but the first thing I would say that it needs a change in perspective. This looming climate crisis is a global problem. It's not the problem of a country or a continent. It's a global problem. And I think we have enough scientific knowledge available now and that will keep developing, but this climate change is a political issue and not an environmental issue. And I think we don't need negotiations when there is a crisis. We need the best possible actions and we need leadership. So we have to create a shared vision between government, corporates, financial institutions, not for profit and society, but somebody has to take the lead and others will have to support. So my view is that instead of complaining about the other person who does not act, I think conscious corporations have to take the lead and commit themselves to a more aggressive net zero playbook. Similarly, I think governments also have to commit themselves. Whether other governments are committing or not, I think they have to commit themselves in a larger interest of future generations to control temperatures within 1.5 degree Celsius. Now, I think the real issue which inhibits this is the ability to take risk. And Vikram, you were saying what can medium or large corporations do? I think large corporations typically like to preserve status score. They want to preserve profitability. They want to grow their profitability with the least amount of risk. That is why most of the innovation happens in startups and not in large corporations. We have seen that over and over again in country after country and sector after sector. So there is something about DNA of large corporations with preserved status score. The same is with governments. Governments also are elected for four years or five years and they look at public opinion. They look at delivery measures which they can do to improve the standard of living as opposed to risking their political futures and betting on a 10 year 20 year game plan. So I think we need to recognize this fact while we are thinking about it. And I want to just take one example where risk was taken and it has paid handsome dividends in India. If you look at solar power, the real issue at one point in time was can solar power scale up to be really significant? At that time, governments started to buy solar power at 17 rupees per kilowatt hour. It is three to four times the grid rate. It was unheard of in India. They encouraged central government underwrote those power purchase agreements. And concessional finance was also available. So one, there was a demand for green products at a significantly higher price point than the grid and there was concessional long term finance available for it. And what have we seen in the last 10 years? We have seen that the cost of solar power has dropped by 85%. It is below the grid rate today. We have also seen that the cost of LED bulbs have dropped by 90% and this is in less than a decade's time. We have also seen innovation along with scale. We have seen the efficiency improved from 14 to 18%, which is 30% increase in efficiency and the land required also 30%. So we have seen that cost drops. We have also seen that innovation happens. But I think it requires some risk-taking appetite from the government and conscious corporations. So I think in this case, there is a few things which can be done and this requires more debate because these are just directional ideas. How can you create polluters to pay for the pollution that they're causing? Can you create landfill tax? Can you create some carbon pricing mechanism? Either you create a penalty or you create an incentive for people to come down faster. So I think some of these points, how do you ensure that there's regulation which causes polluters to pay and how do you incentivize aggressive carbon reduction roadmap or penalize if people maintain status quo? So I think these are some of the things which need to be discussed and I think COP26 is a great platform to discuss all this. We are going to have people from all over the world meet in Glasgow in this winter and I think that's a great platform to review and renew our commitments toward net zero and accelerate the plans. I think that's a very important point that it's important to make the status quo expensive, not make it easy for the incumbents to carry on with the status quo. If you could move to Anas, I mean from the perspective of a startup, I mean, there seem to be lots of climate tech innovations. I mean, your company is a prime example. There are around 1,200 startups in the space according to PWC but the financing for them actually has not been very fantastic. It's only about 60 billion dollars been put into this climate, put into climate tech as of 2019, which is really a fraction of what has even gone into, for example, AI or other sort of innovative areas. Now, what is the problem here? I mean, how can we ensure that climate tech gets the investments that it deserves that is able to pick up traction and adoption as well? And how can your technologies in your space be commercialized more quickly and be made to scale up? What do you think? I'm very grateful that you're asking this question because it's a very important topic to bring to the conversation of tackling climate change at the pace that we still have time to do something. And starting from the point of investment that goes into a climate tech. So it's a very good positioning when you say let's do some comparisons here where we are comparing climate tech versus digital or AI businesses. So the appetite of the investors are not there because of the simple reason which is how fast can you generate returns from climate tech innovation, which startups are really taking the lead on bringing to market as opposed to how fast can you do that with digital innovation and AI? So the development cycle for climate tech businesses is very long where the path until you start generating returns is not as clear. The demand of the end user is not as high as when you're talking about digital AI businesses. And that's all basically when you bring it into a metric for an investor to look at, they need to be visionaries to invest in that rather than investors with mandates for generating returns within X amount of time. And this is what investors do. So our expectation from the investment community or the private investment community need to be either realistic or we need to introduce some change here. In my opinion or from the journey that I bring in from my experience starting a climate tech business, the government has been the major investor especially at the very beginning until we can de-risk and prove that the technology work, we can bring it to a place where investors could actually see the value of it and demand starts being creating. And it's very easy to die throughout that journey because first, as I said, development is very, very long. When you're developing especially in the energy industry, I run a hydrogen business. Seven years ago, I started the company. The interest in hydrogen wasn't there. The climate conversation wasn't really strong. And you did not have the likes of Greta's and the importance of doing something about climate. It was still quite vague. You did not have tariffs. You did not have targets. The concept of net zero and governmental commitments wasn't there seven years ago. So it can only imagine how difficult it was to sit in front of an investor and convince them that if you invest in my company, this is how much value and returns we could possibly generate in 10 years time. So the appetite to wait 10 years time wasn't there. Having said all that, the government was really our biggest financial investor until we got to a point where we were able to de-risk and really get to a point where we actually could demonstrate how we could be profitable and bring in value. Why this is a problem? The problem is with the pace that we need to get into results to tackle climate change. If not much innovation is coming out of corporates and incumbents, which to Penitz point, we see a lot of innovation peaks come from startups because the appetite for risk is very high or even maybe startups don't do proper risk evaluation because they really work around concepts and results rather than evaluation of risk. But the gap between innovation that is arising in the SMEs communities, the scale-ups communities, and then scaling them fast enough that corporates actually do. I mean, there's a very big gap and I think with government involvement we could really narrow it by perhaps encouraging corporates to adopt innovation that is being created through startups and scale-ups to take it to a place where the deployment and implementation of innovation in Climetech could be really impactful, fast enough, because we are on a time watch and we do have a stopper running and government really will have a major role in terms of writing policies that will not force, but really encourage corporates not to work in isolation, but also encourage and take under the wing more innovative companies and make them bigger. Just to follow up on your point in us, so how can the governments encourage big corporations to adopt your Climetech products? And should these be subsidized or should the government, how can you incentivize these companies? So for example, I'm going to talk about a very specific example. In the hydrogen industry, we're seeing a lot of large corporates announcing large initiatives, large-scale initiatives that are funded by government, which is taxpayers' money. Some of them are reproducing innovation that has already been done or introduced through small corporates, small businesses. What I would think would be very clever if governments say, we'll give you the funding, which is taxpayers' funding, but we would not want you, want to put you in a place where you are competing on innovation with small businesses. We want to see you working together with them and scale faster. So one of the things that governments could do, because they are the funder, they could say, basically, here is a policy that will give you the money only if we see innovation of small businesses integrated in your initiatives to make sure that there is a win-win-win to everyone when it comes to scaling at pace. Okay, fair point. Ingo, there's a question that has come up. What can governments do to encourage banks to lend to green technologies? I think you mentioned 2008, and it struck me that it is not only the governments that came out with recovery packages, but also central banks. The central banks poured in massive amounts, by buying up bonds and so on. So what can banks, including central banks do to speed up the transition to zero? Well, I think, actually, we have to start where Ines left off. Banks can do a lot, but the government set the guardrails. And if the government is not setting the guardrails, then it's hard to incentivize the banks to go just out of their philosophical or personal goodwill of the CEO. Some are, but nevertheless, banks go where the policy guardrails guide them or where obvious profitability is. That's after all the duty of a bank. If a bank does something else, investors would not be too happy. Which is why what Ines was speaking about, which are incentivizing or what Punit was talking about, which was, did include fiscal measures on pollution, etc. These two things, these levers are at the government's disposal. And so that's where we have to begin. And just if I may just enter the point here. Today, the UN has issued what the NDCs say so far. And these are, remember, we promised in Paris at five years, hence six because of COVID, we would come with stretched NDCs, right? Well, when we add up the NDCs, that have been submitted so far, we will land at 2.7 degrees at the end of the century. So we don't have time. We really don't have time. And we absolutely need to see a stretching. And that means governments cannot kick that can down the road. They must enact legislation. So what kind of legislation is it then? Well, we talked about the stimulus. So that's one thing where we will still see, for example, in the US, the infrastructure package is on the docket. Now, how will that then drive green infrastructure? How will that then drive climate positive? And I can assure you the moment you put in some some sweet money that is a government provided banks will be right behind it investing in these these potential real investables. And right now, when poorer countries are very much also looking at jobs and decent jobs and sustainable growth, we need to also understand that investing in renewable as a sector will drive this. Now, it's doing it safely. One, but we just, I mean, the example of solar is brilliant, because globally, not just in India, that price has gone down over the last decade. But so has, and we saw wind reduction over the 80s and 90s, where you have high wind velocity. And there will be others. I sit in Kenya, Kenya invested in geothermal. We sit right on the African rift. I don't know, 20 years ago, and now geothermal is a significant contributor to the Kenyan energy mix. So there really are some significant opportunities here. And it is about that smart policy mix, carbon taxes or whatever it is that we are talking about in terms of polluter pays. We still haven't gotten there at a global level in the context of the UNFCCC, but we must and it's very, very clear that that can drive. If we had a smart mix of carbon taxes of green investments, you know, we've looked at this and if we did this consistently, IMF tells us over the next 15 years, we would look to create about 12 million jobs. We would also shave or add, sorry, about 0.7 globally to the global GDP. So there's some real opportunities here not to be missed. And I think that it is about creating available concessional finance, the sweet money that private banks will follow and then setting these guardrails. And that is not just energy. It is also agriculture, right? And we need to understand that in many European countries, agriculture is a significant emitter and needs to be investing in nature-positive and climate-positive solutions. But they really are there. And I will add another point on the public side that drives the private side is public procurement, right? Here, you can really public procurement in some poor countries is up to 40, 50% of the overall procurement in a country. So if you set some guardrails that will push this, this is another way to incentivize the sector in China. They've now come up with a list of, for public procurement, the categories, it's increased phenomenally. They have 400,000 models that are on the public procurement, green procurement list. Same is happening in Korea, in European Union, the green procurement policy. So countries are picking this up. It's harder for the poorest. We need to understand. But there's another driver, another lever that governments have at their disposal. Yeah. Thanks. That was quite a long and ambitious list of things to do. May I just remind the audience, please feel free to post your questions on Slido so we can have more, we have quite a few already, but we'd like to still have more. Puneet, since Inga mentioned public procurement, the importance of that. Do you think that's option for India, for your industry to sort of kickstart faster innovation? I think it certainly is. I think it's an absolutely great idea. And even though in many countries, as Inga said, public procurement is 40% to 40% of the total spend in India, it's much smaller, but still the volume is very large. And we've already seen success in some areas. Like, for example, government has started doing star rating for appliances, home appliances like the refrigerator, like the air conditioner. And as they started doing star ratings, they even do it for buildings now. So as they started doing star ratings, there was much more awareness. And at least in urban markets, people start preferring some of these energy efficient appliances. And government also is saying that we will buy this only when it comes to our own buildings or our own procurement. So I think we are seeing some small success stories in this area, and it definitely leads to a change in behavior. We have also seen this in banks, where government directs a private sector, a priority sector lending. It was mostly driven towards agriculture, where a certain amount of the bank's loan book would have to be mandatory given to priority sector like agriculture, and even SMEs. And I think, as Inas was saying, that banks usually chase IRR and can be enact legislation to make them chase impact. And I think here I have one small idea where we have already identified high hard to obeyed sectors like industrial, transportation, energy, and agriculture. In these sectors, can banks be incentivized to report how much innovative projects they've funded? And not just looking at IRR, but looking at whether how many projects they funded first of all? Did they put management time and mind share to filter and identify projects? Whether it failed or succeeded is a second level issue, but at least how many projects they funded? And second, were those projects able to achieve some milestone? They may not have reached full commercialization, but at least one milestone. So I think if we can identify these hard to obeyed sectors and also give some push to banks to support them, I think it can unleash a wave of innovation. And I think, as I said, most importantly, we all have to share the risk. Our general DNA is to preserve status quo, but we have to all share the risk. And I read somewhere which resonated with me about 15, 20 years ago, the biggest risk of all is taking no risk at all. And I think to me that underscores the theme which Glasgow and COP26 and all climate change visionaries have to ensure that we work with that team and take some risk. Ultimately, it is about saving the future generation in this planet. And the gain cannot be just measured in financial terms, but it is the bigger gain is to leave a good planet behind and a good environment behind for future generations. I think that cannot be measured monetarily. So I think we have to take some risk. So just one follow-up question on banks. I mean, we've talked about carrots for banks. Carrots should be incentive, banks should be incentivized to lend to green sectors. What about sticks? They should be penalized for lending to fossil fuels or dirty sectors. I mean, sorry, in Singapore, for example, we have the banks are being stress tested on their loan, not only the banks, but even insurance companies, the entire financial sector is being stress tested on their loan portfolios. Who are they lending to? And I think they're being pushed out of lending. For example, they don't lend any more to gold projects, at least the banks in Singapore don't. So I think you need sticks as well. You've got to stop the banks from lending to dirty sectors. So what do you think of that policy? Yes, I think that it's coming. And I think if we look at what Mark Carney, for example, did during his time at the central, at the UK central bank and the way in which, in fact, we at UNEP had been working with central bank governors for quite some time together with the IMF and others. There is really an understanding that when you do article four and when you do stress testing on the financial system that you can't lend into stranding assets or assets that will strand, you know, 20, 30 years out and understand this, of course, I start today planning for my coal plant. It will be built and commissioned seven years hence and a coal plant generally in the developing world will be alive for 50 to 60 years. So we are talking long term and understanding therefore the asset mix that banks hold and therefore the viability of their portfolio matters. And it will matter ever more as more and more countries will put a price on carbon and frankly as investors do not want to see their money in this, especially institutional investors. And here I think, you know, we're already seeing pension funds, large, large, massive pension funds, CalPERS and many others, frankly stepping out of this because of a concern around the yes, the world and the planet, but also the returns because that young person who joins a pension fund at age 22 needs to pull his pension or pension and age 88. And so these assets need to be producing. So I think it's already happening and is will become more mainstream part of central banks and stress testing of the overall financial system in countries. Right. Very good. Yeah. In us, just to come back to what can be done for startups in your space beyond public procurement, beyond government, governments being more active in financing. What about market incentives? What about, you know, things like carbon contracts for difference or any other market intensive or even just carbon pricing? Are there any, because these are things that support continuing innovation. It's not just a one-time financial infusion into a company, but it's continuing innovation. So what market instruments do you think could work in encouraging continued innovation? You're muted, sorry. We have a challenge, which is demand creation. And despite the conversation about the importance of introducing climate tech or new tech that tackles the way, you know, we run the energy industry, for example, the way we produce energy, the way we consume energy, the way we transfer energy from one place to another. So we have a dominant industry that there is a need to displace gradually or faster. That whole debate can be can be had here. But the demand creation is a key point. So how fast can we expect demand to be there for procurement to happen at a stage where you have, you know, a large enough market share for innovators or innovators who are scaling technology and innovation that directly addresses like key pollution points or key pollution masses? How do we create that demand fast enough? And that's a question that I am going to be honest here. I don't have like a precise answer to. We can work on the innovation and creating the solution and having it ready and having it at a cost that is competitive with incumbents, displacing what we are doing in terms of producing energy, consuming it is the hardest part of the equation. And again, we do need governments to intervene, we do need bans, we do need demand creation that is encouraged by policies that governments put in place for the solutions to really be able to measurably attack carbon emissions. Right, right. Thank you. We've got an audience question. We are quickly running out of time, but I will run this one audience question through the panel. It says fighting climate change is critical but not sufficient. How do we make sure we also ensure that nature, land degradation and the food system are also included? So would anybody like to take a crack at that? Ingar, yes. Thank you. And I'm really glad that question came up. You know, whilst everybody's focused on COP26 as we should be, there's another COP right behind it and that is the biodiversity COP. Recall that and there's another COP and that's the desegregation COP. Right now, India, by the way, since we have two gentlemen from India here, I should mention, India holds a presidency for the desegregation COP as we speak. But the point is that our land and our terrestrial surface and our sea, our marine is overexploited, cannot sustain the kind of exploitation that we are sucking at it, whether it's over extraction fish, etc., whether it's over use of fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides. We have huge runoff of nitrogen into our seas causing these dead zones. And of course, with climate change, we have global warming, our ocean warming and acidification. Essentially, oceans are these innocents, right? They can't help but take up the CO2 and we sort of making them into a cells of water in that it becomes ever more acidic because it just absorbs the CO2. Whereas if we grow trees, if we have sound ecosystems, that CO2 would be instead greater uptake on the terrestrial side. So all of this to say that there is not a single crisis. There are these three crises, the climate crisis everyone knows, the biodiversity and nature crisis, which includes land degradation and desegregation and the pollution and waste crisis from our and all of this comes from our unsustainable consumption and production. And yet the consumption and production gap is massive, right? We have poor countries where in fact, there's an underconsumption and we have on average and you have other countries where there is no more consumption, which is why we need to really understand that equity and intergenerational justice is broader and wider than perhaps a conversation we've had, which is why at least countries need to meet the commitments they've made on financing because financing cleaner, greener and so on will involve the support from the north or from the wealthier countries or whatever the richer countries. And these commitments have been made. So just to say that the question asked is super relevant and I think is very much part and parcel of the broader conversation that the UN Secretary General has when he speaks about making peace with nature, making peace with the planet. We need to tackle climate, nature and pollution in one go. There's a much bigger agenda than just climate, my goodness. Okay. So I'm afraid we've almost run out of time, but I do want to go with the last point, which is that in one sentence, what advice would you give or even one word, one sentence, what advice would you give to policy makers around the world in us? Unmute, please. Instead of long-term targets, that will be very difficult to hold anybody accountable to. Can we have like measures and metrics that we follow on annually and measure progress to encourage action? Sorry, this is a lot more than one word. Okay. Thank you. Puneet. I would say big risks and sure leadership. Fantastic. And Inga, one sentence. Intergenerational justice and equity. Thank you. On that constructive note, I'm afraid we have to call this to a close, but not before we thank our panelists and our viewers for joining us. And please, I must to encourage you to share your reflections on this session on social media. So thank you all and have a good morning, afternoon or evening wherever you are.