Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP29

The Climate Action Innovation Zone opened its doors on Wednesday 13th November for the first day of the Sustainable Innovation Forum. Nik Gowing, Chair of the Forum, officially started the discussions, inviting H.E. Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Co-Chair of the COP29 International Advisory Committee, to deliver the welcome keynote address to the audience.  

H.E. Fernanda Espinosa emphasised the need for this COP to provide countries with “the financial means to secure a just and inclusive transition to low carbon economies and societies,” stating, “this financial boost is especially important for developing countries to scale up their climate efforts and ambition. These countries are most affected by climate change, which is exacerbating their ongoing challenges.” 

Day One 

Enhancing Ambition and Enabling Action  

As country leaders started to announce their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs 3.0), the opening panel of the Sustainable Innovation Forum Enhancing Ambition and Enabling Action explored how finance and business are aligning their strategies with the various pledges and declarations to be determined at this year’s climate talks.  

Maria Mendiluce, CEO of the We Mean Business Coalition, Jon Creyts, CEO of RMI and Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission, discussed the importance of ingenuity to foster and finance innovation for a liveable future.  

Lord Turner addressed the need to align the private sector and public policy, “we need public policy to say we want to meet stretching objectives, we need corporations to accept that challenge and begin to develop the technology. But where there is a green cost premium, we will need carbon pricing and regulation.” 

Carbon Markets Unleashed 

Following the progress made on day one of COP29 in approving rules on a UN-led carbon market, the panel Carbon Markets Unleashed dove into the rapid development of the market's parameters and standards to better understand how carbon markets can drive companies' net zero ambitions.  

Lorna Ritchie of ICVCM, Olga Hancock from the Church Commissioners of England, Rodrigo Fidias Buenaventura Canino, Chair of the CNMV, and Tina Reine of Zefiro Methane Corp, reflected on the proposed standards for how international carbon crediting projects and investigated the strategic value of CCUS as part of the climate mitigation strategy. 

Scaling clean energy 

COP29 must push the agenda forward on the UAE Consensus, notably towards the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. Powering the Future: Rapid scaling of clean energy for stability and resilience featured a discussion moderated by Erik Solheim of the Global Renewables Alliance between Cody Taylor, Vice President at ABB, Liz Bronder, Managing Director at RELP, Mike Train, CSO of Emerson, and Takajiro Ishikawa, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, on the energy technology of tomorrow, energy efficiency, and crowding investment to drive deployment.  

Mike Train offered the experience of Emerson as a global automation provider, “We have been working to try and get to scale with examples so we can show the world what it takes to build large scale. We have ran in to the cost challenges of that, we need stepping stones to the cost rather than trying to leap the river all in one go. We are looking for collaboration with governments to enable risk-taking and innovation.” 

When discussing the challenges to deployment posed by grid bottlenecks, Cody Taylor urged the audience not to ignore the energy efficiency angle, “If governments incentivise the adoption and uptake of energy efficient processes and technologies, it will change the demand equation – reducing emissions and the number of permits needed.” 

Climate Finance 

In the afternoon, focus was shifted to finance, the buzzword of this COP, with UNEP FI and PRI’s Eric Usher and David Atkin addressing the Forum on building an international financial framework fit for purpose.  As CEO of PRI, David laid out the vision for this framework, “we want to get to a world where companies disclose sustainability information against the same set of requirements in a standardised way regardless of where they are based,” and highlighted the importance of policy, “if you think of finance as the facilitator, policy is the enabler.”  

This theme continued as Paul Smith, UNEP FI, moderated a dialogue between Shargiil Bashir of the Net Zero Banking Alliance and Winfred Kinuthia from the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Resilience and Prosperity on unlocking a sustainable future for the Global South. 

The final panel of the day Liftoff Plans for Hard to Abate Sectors featured Sir Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, Chris Stephens, Director (Africa and Asia) at the Carbon Trust, Prof. Miranda Barker OBE of the British Chamber of Commerce, Rana Ghoneim, Chief of the Division of Energy and Climate Action at UNIDO, and Vanessa Chan, Chief Commercialisation Officer of the US Department of Energy. The speakers shared success stories of technological innovations fostered and deployed through entrepreneurial states, innovation hubs and business coalitions. 

Vanessa Chan gave insight into the US’ Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, “the goal for us was to have a private sector led, government enabled energy transition, taking that $500bn to buy down risk in these new technologies to the point where the $23tn in the private sector will activate to bring these technologies to market.” 

The Adaptation Advantage  

On Wednesday, the World Leaders Climate Action Summit continued in the Blue Zone, including the Leaders’ Summit of the Small Islands Developing States and a high-level roundtable on scaling up adaptation finance, with leaders emphasising the importance of investing in the prevention of climate disasters.   

Reflecting this, Tom Mitchell Executive Director of IIED, Avinash Persaud of InterAmerican Development Bank and Racquel Moses, CEO of the Caribbean Climate-Smart Accelerator, explored finance mechanisms and innovations best suited to address adaptation and cover the adaptation finance gap, in order to build a climate-resilient future. The discussion reiterated that investing in adaptation is a saving on future costs.  

Day Two  

Day two of the Sustainable Innovation Forum continued discussions on driving ambition for a just transition to a green economy, creating a sustainable built environment, mobilising climate finance and investment, and embedding circularity into global value chains, as well as exploring public-private collaboration and roadmaps to accelerate delivery. 

Patricia Espinosa, CEO and Founding Partner of onepoint5, welcomed attendees with a strong message on economic imperative of climate change, “if we don’t act sufficiently, global GDP could shrink 18% by 2050, not only as a country, not only as a government, but also at the sub-national level, we need to have a plan; how will we get to the 1.5-degree goal by the end of the century?” 

Public-private collaboration  

The opening panel NDCs 3.0: Driving ambition through public-private collaboration explored how business can influence and support more ambitious climate policies and ensure alignment with future policy.  The lively session was hosted by Chris Skidmore, Chair of the Climate Action Coalition, with Patricia Espinosa, Astrid Manroth, Head of the World Bank’s Global Infrastructure Facility, Dr. Amani Abou-Zeid, Commissioner for Energy and Infrastructure at the African Union Commission, and Anna Lührmann, Germany’s Minister of State for Europe and Climate. 

 Implementation 

 Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), reminded the Forum that finance is not the be all and end all - pledged and disbursed finance does not necessarily translate into tangible impacts - during his discussion From Promise to Progress: tackling the climate implementation gap with New York Times Journalist David Gilles. Challenges to implementation remain, such as limited institutional capacity, delays in project execution, and inadequate technical support. This implementation gap significantly hampers progress toward global climate goals.  

 Exploring the circular economy 

 The COP29 Presidency, with partners including UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), launched the Baku Initiative for Climate Finance, Investment, and Trade (BICFIT) Dialogue. The Dialogue aims to advance national ambitions and actions through the synergistic utilisation of climate finance, investment, and trade.  

 At the Sustainable Innovation Forum, Anthony Watanabe, CSO of Indorama Ventures, Dr. Ben Jordan, Senior Director (Environmental Policy) at The Coca-Cola Company, and Jenny Davis-Peccoud, Partner at Bain & Company, addressed how these three aspects can work to institutionalise circularity in global value chains, with the circular economy presenting an opportunity to reduce global emissions by 40% by 2050. 

Harnessing biodiversity 

The UN’s Biodiversity COP16, in Cali, Colombia, which ended just two weeks ago, placed focus on the interdependence of climate change and biodiversity. As COP29 continues to amplify this message, yesterday at the Sustainable Innovation Forum the panel Harnessing Biodiversity for Resilience and Net-Zero Success explored how the private sector can integrate the preservation of natural habitats into business models and enhance nature-based solutions. Moderated by Gonzalo Muñoz, Co-Founder of Ambition Loop, this panel was joined by Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of California Natural Resources Agency, Kristin Hughes, Global Head of Sustainability at Diageo, and Rhian Kelly, CSO of National Grid.  

These speakers shared innovative approaches to biodiversity regeneration as a component of carbon offsetting and how leveraging natural capital can accelerate progress towards net-zero targets. 

The Road to 2030 

The final section of the Forum concluded with setting the scene for the next five years, with 2030 a key milestone for reaching the goals set out by the Paris Agreement. The panel The Road to 2030  moderated by Dr. Surabi Menon, VP (Global Intelligence) of ClimateWorks Foundation, was joined by panelists Chris Stark, Head of Mission Control at UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ije Okeke, Managing Director (Global South) at RMI, Simon Henzell-Thomas, Global Director of Climate and Nature at the Ingka Group, and Leyla Hasanova, the Youth Climate Champion for COP29.  

The group explored policy developments needed to enhance and strengthen the green economy, whilst ensuring inclusivity is at the heart of the transition. Dr. Menon amplified the importance of empowering young people to advocate for stronger climate action, “the youth will hold us accountable for the speed at which we are going to be implementing our work plans for 2030.” 

To watch these discussions, visit: Agenda | Sustainable Innovation Forum | COP29