Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week weekend podcast.
Speaker 2: Call it the Wall Street Churn this past week as
Speaker 2: Vetchir J. Powell spend two days up on Capitol Hill
Speaker 2: taking questions on the economy and monetary policy. Sounding rather neutral,
Speaker 2: one might even say boring, dare they They did, how
Speaker 2: although warrant lawmakers that lowering interest rates too little or
Speaker 2: too late could put the economy and the labor market
Speaker 2: at risk, while also reiterating that cutting rates too soon
Speaker 2: or too much could stall or even reverse inflation progress,
Speaker 2: hinting that perhaps two percent is no longer the target number.
Speaker 3: You don't want to wait until fluflation gets all the
Speaker 3: way down to two percent, because inflation has a certain momentum.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't wait that long. If you waited that long,
Speaker 3: you probably waited too long because inflation will be moving
Speaker 3: downward and we'll go well below two percent, which we
Speaker 3: don't want.
Speaker 4: Excluding food and energy year over year core CPI running
Speaker 4: at three point three percent, but still a softer report
Speaker 4: for the month of June, and that spills good news
Speaker 4: for investors hoping for that long awaited interest rate cut
Speaker 4: later this year.
Speaker 5: And well, J.
Speaker 4: Powell gave us a check on the economy, Carol and
Speaker 4: I this week got a check on the climate.
Speaker 2: That was definitely our focus. And that's because this week
Speaker 2: we broadcasted live from the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker 2: It was gathering of Earth's foremost collaborators, activists and innovators,
Speaker 2: business leaders, leaders from government, all on ways we can
Speaker 2: work toward a new climate era, on everything from sustainability
Speaker 2: and design to food policy, tech and so much more.
Speaker 4: And so our show this weekend is dedicated to just that.
Speaker 4: We'll hear from great minds discussing the effects of climate misinformation,
Speaker 4: ways to improve ecotourism, how a satellite can track climate
Speaker 4: warming pollution, and how the chief sustainability officer over at
Speaker 4: Amazon and a WNBA Legend are collaborating for change.
Speaker 2: We begin this hour with one of the nation's most
Speaker 2: respected voices on climate change, the environment, and public health.
Speaker 2: Jena McCarthy is a former EPA administrator, Harvard professor, and
Speaker 2: environmental thought leader. She was also the first ever White
Speaker 2: House National Climate Advisor under President Biden. We got her
Speaker 2: take on building a partnership playbook when it comes to
Speaker 2: climate initiatives. Gina is also a senior advisor at Bloomberg Philanthropies,
Speaker 2: which is the philanthropic arm of Bloomberg LP, the parent
Speaker 2: company of Bloomberg Radio and of course founded by Michael R.
Speaker 6: Bloomberg.
Speaker 7: You know, we have a lot of good companies that
Speaker 7: are here represented, but honestly, we need more partnerships, both
Speaker 7: across the USA and internationally to really tackle this at
Speaker 7: the scale that it deserves. Clearly, the Inflation Production Act
Speaker 7: was an opportunity to give some public money to drive
Speaker 7: a whole lot more private investment, and we have to
Speaker 7: stop thinking that way.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's e the or.
Speaker 7: I actually think it's so partnerships that are going to
Speaker 7: drive this in a way that actually provides meaningful scaling
Speaker 7: of this opportunity, not just in the US but globally.
Speaker 4: Okay, where's the government involvement? You mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act? Yes,
Speaker 4: in your view, is that just the tip of the Iceberg.
Speaker 7: Do we need more that Well, we saw our immediately
Speaker 7: after that happened, we saw the EU st driving new
Speaker 7: changes in Germany. So it's begun to take off, and
Speaker 7: people are realizing that it's a way for the public
Speaker 7: and private sector to really join together so that they
Speaker 7: both of them can win. This is not about, you know,
Speaker 7: spending so much money in the private sector that you can't.
Speaker 2: Afford to do the deals. This is about how.
Speaker 7: Do we make these deals affordable by connecting public and private.
Speaker 7: But there's still a lot of opportunities for private companies
Speaker 7: to accelerate their markets, and they're going to take advantage
Speaker 7: of that, and we should let them.
Speaker 4: You've worked in both Republican and democratic administrations. Why and
Speaker 4: when did the idea of climate change become so political
Speaker 4: in your view?
Speaker 7: You know, it started off being pretty political because it
Speaker 7: took a whole lot longer time than it should have
Speaker 7: for us to recognize that this was a legitimate issue.
Speaker 7: And so now, of course it still remains fairly political.
Speaker 7: But honestly, the politics starts to move out when you
Speaker 7: realize that the kind of technologies and opportunities we have
Speaker 7: today are going to make people's lives better, if it's
Speaker 7: going to keep us healthier, it's going to save us money,
Speaker 7: if it's going to create real jobs, which.
Speaker 2: Is what we're seeing today.
Speaker 7: The politics may still be there, but it doesn't have
Speaker 7: the punch it news to.
Speaker 4: How much speaking of politics of America remains all in
Speaker 4: if it elects Trump in November, given his promises to
Speaker 4: eliminate what he calls the ev mandate, target offshore wind
Speaker 4: and pull the US out of the Paris Crimate Agreement.
Speaker 7: Look, I have every expectation that what he said he's
Speaker 7: gonna do, he's gonna do. So give you your answer.
Speaker 7: I don't see the United States or globally the kind
Speaker 7: of progression we need on climate if we don't elect
Speaker 7: someone who understands climate and wants to move those.
Speaker 8: Issues, and in your view, that is not the former
Speaker 8: president that is.
Speaker 7: That is correct because what's at stake is not just climate,
Speaker 7: which is the existential challenge of our time, but it's
Speaker 7: fundamentally our democracy.
Speaker 2: Are you concerned from climate? First of all, that we
Speaker 2: would go off in a very different direction, We would
Speaker 2: be more isolated, because climate obviously has no quarters right.
Speaker 2: So yes, never before have we needed to work together
Speaker 2: with everybody. You know, we would just talking about that.
Speaker 7: It's going to take public private partnerships, and it's going
Speaker 7: to take the US and the other developed world to
Speaker 7: start investing in the developing world if we want to
Speaker 7: make this work. And those investments can't be cold, they
Speaker 7: can't be more natural gas. They've got to be the
Speaker 7: shift to clean energy and transportation that we I know
Speaker 7: we can do well.
Speaker 2: It is interesting because we know the US pulled out
Speaker 2: of the Powers Agreement under Donald Trump, then President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump if he threatened to do it again if he's
Speaker 2: elected in November. You have pointed though, in terms of
Speaker 2: climate progress that's made by states, by cities, like the
Speaker 2: local level. I think about we're going to be talking
Speaker 2: with the mayor of Seattle, like the local level really
Speaker 2: matters too.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 7: That's really what Bloomberg's America All In program is all about.
Speaker 7: And it's more than five thousand people are joining together,
Speaker 7: and that's because sub national governments matter. If you remember
Speaker 7: when Trump was president before, the effort was to make
Speaker 7: sure that states and cities stood up and held the
Speaker 7: ground and kept moving forward, and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 7: So we need to make sure that We're not going
Speaker 7: back again and revisiting that. We need to actually keep
Speaker 7: moving forward with all of the breath of expertise and
Speaker 7: experience we now have that says that we can win
Speaker 7: this climate battle if we have the coach to stand
Speaker 7: up against folks that are deniers and stop really supporting
Speaker 7: those folks who know what the future needs to be.
Speaker 4: You were talking about the Inflation Reduction Act, the investment
Speaker 4: in clean tech manufacturing, clean energy products projects under biden
Speaker 4: fed by the IRA. How much of that endures regardless
Speaker 4: of what happens at the polls in November. How durable
Speaker 4: is the investment that's been unleashed by the IRA and
Speaker 4: other policies that could be carried back if Trump wins
Speaker 4: the White House? Like, how vulnerable is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: When you look at the money, we're talking about something
Speaker 7: like three hundred and sixty one billion dollars right, right,
Speaker 7: And this is just the start.
Speaker 2: This is a ten year program. We just had a
Speaker 2: second birthday.
Speaker 8: I think.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So we have a long way to go. And
Speaker 7: we're talking about job growth that's in the plus three
Speaker 7: hundred thousand plus new jobs.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: These things matter to people.
Speaker 7: Human beings care about this and so these are benefits
Speaker 7: that people can see and feel and taste. So that's
Speaker 7: why I believe this going. Will there be challenges, absolutely.
Speaker 7: I expect that under a Republican administration, you're going to
Speaker 7: see lots of folks wanting to pull that out. You're
Speaker 7: already seeing bills in Congress being proposed to get rid
Speaker 7: of this and that.
Speaker 2: But when push.
Speaker 7: Comes to shove, we have more money going to Republican
Speaker 7: districts that are now building the manufacturing plants that they
Speaker 7: don't want to shut down. So if they want to
Speaker 7: go against their own constituents and their benefits, then then
Speaker 7: more power to them if they want to risk it.
Speaker 7: But I don't think that's going to be the case.
Speaker 7: I think we're going to hold the fort.
Speaker 2: We'll lose some.
Speaker 7: There'll be challenges, I think internationally, not just pulling out
Speaker 7: of the NATO even, But these are the things, the lodge,
Speaker 7: things that we have to think about that.
Speaker 9: Could be at risk.
Speaker 2: Thirty seconds genius. I'm thinking about everybody who's listening, yet,
Speaker 2: what's the one thing every individual take politics out, sh'd
Speaker 2: be asking themselves when it comes to the climate, what do.
Speaker 7: They want as a future for the kids, What do
Speaker 7: they see right now as the challenges that they're facing.
Speaker 7: We can no longer hide from the climate impacts. But
Speaker 7: what we can do is grab the clean energy future
Speaker 7: for our kids. That's how we're all going in.
Speaker 2: It's definitely something we think about, right you have young kids.
Speaker 2: I have a twenty one year old. We definitely think
Speaker 2: about it. Thank you so much and all the work
Speaker 2: that you've done.
Speaker 9: Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Jada McCarthy, I'm so glad I squeezed it on you.
Speaker 8: Where to run out of time? If I've read all
Speaker 8: her title.
Speaker 2: It's really impressive, But it's why we wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 4: Do you former in the US EPA administrator under President Obama,
Speaker 4: the first White House National Climate Advisor appointed by President Biden.
Speaker 4: Once again, she's part of the coalition co chair of
Speaker 4: America is All In Coalition, which is supported by Michael Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Do you have something about the environment? Climate change and all
Speaker 2: the work. We're just going to say that if you
Speaker 2: missed any of it, check it out on our podcast
Speaker 2: week This is Blooper.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 2: Tim Another big thing lawmakers will have to think about
Speaker 2: is climate disinformation. In fact, we all have to think
Speaker 2: about it. Just do a Google search or ask chat
Speaker 2: GPT and lots of entries pop up from around the
Speaker 2: globe and for the last few years, and not all
Speaker 2: of it when it comes to the climate is correct.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 4: In the World Economic Forums Global Risks Report twenty twenty
Speaker 4: four ranked misinformation and disinformation as the biggest short term
Speaker 4: risk to human society, and extreme weather events is the
Speaker 4: top long term risk, which implies that obscuring the facts
Speaker 4: about climate change can be extremely harmful. This is compounded
Speaker 4: by false information being significantly more likely to be reshared
Speaker 4: than the truth on social media platforms.
Speaker 2: Our next guest is working to get out correct information
Speaker 2: on climate change. Lower Hesse Fischer is Program director for
Speaker 2: the MIT Climate Engagement Program.
Speaker 10: Now, there's a lot As you mentioned, when you Google
Speaker 10: climate change, you get a lot of confusing information, and
Speaker 10: we understand that climate change is hard to understand. So
Speaker 10: what we do at MIT is we help people get smart,
Speaker 10: quick about climate change. You go online and you not
Speaker 10: only see the misinformation, but also a lot of the
Speaker 10: partisan the advocacy that's happening. Is hard to know what
Speaker 10: to believe and who to trust, So we provide non partisan,
Speaker 10: science based, easy to understand explainers about climate change, as
Speaker 10: well as answers to readers questions, how do you know
Speaker 10: which scientists to trust?
Speaker 8: Though?
Speaker 10: Well, we fact check everything that we publish, so we
Speaker 10: make sure that we're not just putting out something that
Speaker 10: we don't understand or we understand ourselves, that we're really
Speaker 10: doing our due diligence inside of this, and we primarily
Speaker 10: interview MIT faculty who are trusted.
Speaker 11: At the top of the game.
Speaker 4: Okay, but it's getting a lot better than it used
Speaker 4: to be. Here's some data from a survey recently have
Speaker 4: found that those who believe climate change is happening out
Speaker 4: numbered those who don't.
Speaker 8: Five to one.
Speaker 4: Over half of the surveys just been said they understand
Speaker 4: climate change is mostly caused by humans, And if you
Speaker 4: look at it from just a few years ago in
Speaker 4: twenty eleven, that group survey said that fifty one percent
Speaker 4: said Americans would ask scientists whether climate change was a
Speaker 4: hoax compared to thirty nine percent in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 8: I mean, things are really going in the right direction.
Speaker 10: Listen to these are good news trends. But that's not
Speaker 10: the issue anymore. Yes, we have people that we still
Speaker 10: need to convince that climate change is happening in human calls,
Speaker 10: but now people have questions. There's this growing climate curious
Speaker 10: audience that are like, Okay, I hear about all these
Speaker 10: bad things about wind turbines and solar panels, Are those true?
Speaker 10: How do I think about carbon capture or planning?
Speaker 4: Sometimes you have presidential candidates talking about partage whatever that's.
Speaker 10: True, And so people are going to be googling and
Speaker 10: fact checking. We want to make sure that they get
Speaker 10: the right information and actually the content that we're putting
Speaker 10: at climate dot mit dot edu is one of the
Speaker 10: top research sites coming up on Google search terms.
Speaker 2: More I'm what are like, what's some of the top
Speaker 2: questions that people?
Speaker 10: Oh, yes, it's a lot of fun actually to see.
Speaker 10: We get really wonky science questions about like what's happening
Speaker 10: and why.
Speaker 11: We get a lot of questions.
Speaker 10: About EV's and batteries, the environmental impact of evs. One
Speaker 10: of our favorite ones that we get is about trees,
Speaker 10: planting trees. Why can't we just plant trees as a
Speaker 10: climate solution. Well, what we do is we say, okay, well,
Speaker 10: let's look at what would it take to actually plant
Speaker 10: trees to offset our carbon emissions in the United States.
Speaker 10: When we walk through that, we realize we're not talking
Speaker 10: about planting trees. We're talking about planning forests. In order
Speaker 10: to offset one year of the US's carbon emissions would
Speaker 10: take a forest the size of New Mexico, and we
Speaker 10: need to build that forest every single year to offset
Speaker 10: US emissions. I mean, when you start looking at it
Speaker 10: from that perspective, you can get a sense of Okay,
Speaker 10: this is not really the right solution here.
Speaker 4: Well what is the right solution? Because I'll be honest,
Speaker 4: that does not sound great. No, doesn't sound like we're
Speaker 4: moving in the right direction.
Speaker 10: Well, we need to The term is decarbonized, right, we
Speaker 10: need to stop putting in more carbon into.
Speaker 2: The atmosphere than they can take care. How is it
Speaker 2: it's about stop producing carbon?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 2: There is it.
Speaker 10: Well, okay, we can have a long conversation about the
Speaker 10: carbon cycle, and I'm sure it will be very intellectually
Speaker 10: interesting for everybody, But there are natural pulls from the
Speaker 10: atmosphere that the Earth does. We need to accelerate some
Speaker 10: of those in order to pull out the carbon that's
Speaker 10: already up there.
Speaker 2: But we also need to stop putting.
Speaker 10: Stuff up there, because it's been accumulating and it's going
Speaker 10: to keep accumulating if we can't take it out fast enough.
Speaker 10: There's this great analogy I like using called the toolbox.
Speaker 10: We have an energy toolbox of solutions.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 10: We have wind, we have solar, we have nuclear, And
Speaker 10: I'm kind of obsessed with this term called nuclear is
Speaker 10: part of it.
Speaker 2: Nuclear is part of it. We are increasingly having conversations
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 11: And you should be.
Speaker 10: So there's this concept of technological tribalism. There are people
Speaker 10: who are all wind, all solar, forget everything else. Then
Speaker 10: there are people who are all carbon capture, forget about wind. Well,
Speaker 10: we need to get beyond all of that, right, because
Speaker 10: each of these technologies have their strengths and have their weaknesses,
Speaker 10: and we need to have an honest conversation about that.
Speaker 4: Just care what do the solar people do at night?
Speaker 4: Just out of curiosity? Well, I mean do they have
Speaker 4: big batteries everywhere?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 10: I mean energy storage is a big part of the
Speaker 10: right now, you can only have about thirty percent of
Speaker 10: wind and solar on the grid in order to kind
Speaker 10: of keep the grid running and be reliable.
Speaker 2: We really need to get.
Speaker 10: Beyond that and get to energy storage different kinds of
Speaker 10: battery technologies.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's talk about the battery technology because I
Speaker 4: think one thing that keeps coming up over and over
Speaker 4: again is the idea that the batteries have rare earth
Speaker 4: materials in them. They are built with materials that have
Speaker 4: questionable labor practices. In some instances, you're digging into the
Speaker 4: earth to use these things. What do you do when
Speaker 4: they're dead and they where do you put them? How
Speaker 4: do you store them?
Speaker 10: It's not perfect, it's not perfect, but it's also not
Speaker 10: a new problem. We've been dealing with this with diamonds.
Speaker 10: We've been dealing this with lithium that goes into our
Speaker 10: computers and our cell phones. I mean, this is a
Speaker 10: growing industry. But also when we look at the history
Speaker 10: of coal mining and the dangers that come with coal
Speaker 10: mining and all the other impacts of that. I'm not
Speaker 10: trying to diminish the impact. It's really important. That's why
Speaker 10: I need to have these kinds of honest conversations and
Speaker 10: not turn aside because we favor one technology or the
Speaker 10: other because our political party tells us that we should.
Speaker 2: Is the toolbox toolkit in terms of renewables complete at
Speaker 2: this point. You talk solar, you talk win, you talk nuclear.
Speaker 2: Is there more that we need?
Speaker 10: There are some applications where carbon capture is part of
Speaker 10: the equation, right There are some industries that are hard
Speaker 10: to decarbonize. We're not saying carbon capture. So when you're emitting,
Speaker 10: when you're burning fossil fuels, capturing that carbon, putting it
Speaker 10: under the ground, turning into products. Listen, we're not there
Speaker 10: with that technology. It solution it is, it does work,
Speaker 10: but it's not a climate solution.
Speaker 4: Is it a solution because it's not at scale? Or
Speaker 4: is it because it's so expensive to do?
Speaker 10: Because someone's expensive to do. I mean we're at very
Speaker 10: high levels of efficiency when it comes to carbon capture,
Speaker 10: it's still way too expensive and so are batteries right now.
Speaker 10: So when I talk about the toolboxes, there might be
Speaker 10: a small, very important application like kind of last mile
Speaker 10: of to carbonization for carbon capture. But yeah, wind, solar, nuclear, So.
Speaker 11: We have that constant flow of electricity.
Speaker 6: These are very important.
Speaker 4: A tiny battery for an electric bike h eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: I mean, tiny batter.
Speaker 10: Are not there yet, but there's lots of innovation that's
Speaker 10: happening in this areas.
Speaker 2: I have a question, and I would go to your
Speaker 2: platform and say, is it too late?
Speaker 10: Oh, my goodness, it is not. So people really don't
Speaker 10: understand the momentum that is building.
Speaker 2: And through climate dot MIT.
Speaker 10: Dot edu, we really try to share all the good
Speaker 10: news stories that are happening in this area.
Speaker 2: But is it because you're right too, because it is
Speaker 2: a much more balanced and nuanced story, or is it
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. It's gotten hotter earth and
Speaker 2: there's some things.
Speaker 1: So there are.
Speaker 10: Climate impacts that are scary and happening, and the progress
Speaker 10: towards actually solving this problem is happening.
Speaker 2: The momentum is there.
Speaker 10: We are decarbonizing faster than the economy is growing, so
Speaker 10: there's a decoupling of the growth of the economy and
Speaker 10: how much we're reducing emissions. Wind and solar have never
Speaker 10: been cheaper, of course, I mean China built more solar
Speaker 10: in the last year than US has ever built in
Speaker 10: the history China.
Speaker 11: Yeah, so businesses really need to get like.
Speaker 2: This is not a Our business is leading the way
Speaker 2: more than government, just real quickly.
Speaker 10: Well on some issues and some issues not so much.
Speaker 10: I mean it's a trend. It's a fast moving train,
Speaker 10: and we need to get up. What's your bringing in
Speaker 10: people on board?
Speaker 2: What's the platform again? Where can we find? Climate dot
Speaker 2: Mit dot edu.
Speaker 10: We run a podcast where we talk about all these
Speaker 10: things in fifteen minute easy to understand segments called til Climate.
Speaker 10: We'd love for your folks to listen.
Speaker 9: Really good stuff today.
Speaker 8: I learned climate. That's what it stands for.
Speaker 2: It's really pretty cool. Staple stuff or thanks so much
Speaker 2: about Laura hesse Fischer, program director of the MIT Climate
Speaker 2: Engagement Program. On site here at the Bloomberg Green Festival
Speaker 2: in Seattle.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 9: More of our.
Speaker 2: Broadcast from the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. Washington this
Speaker 2: past week and Tim, it's new coincidence that we're in
Speaker 2: this city. We're here because of this these impressive legacy
Speaker 2: of environmental leadership. We had a lot to talk about.
Speaker 4: Yes, Seattle has been a focus on building a clean
Speaker 4: energy economy and investing in healthy, well connected communities, and
Speaker 4: yet like other cities in the nation, its struggled to
Speaker 4: come back after the pandemic. For his take on the
Speaker 4: role that cities play in climate change and green policies,
Speaker 4: we spoke with Seattle Mayor Bruce Harral.
Speaker 13: You've heard the cliche now mayors get things done, and
Speaker 13: it's more than a cliche. Is actually how we are
Speaker 13: going to transform our climate battles. I believe that we
Speaker 13: are what we work with. For example, in our building
Speaker 13: emissions performance standard and legislation that I proposed in the past,
Speaker 13: we look at our buildings which is a high polluter,
Speaker 13: and we said we will reduce our carbon emissions by
Speaker 13: twenty seven percent by twenty thirty. And this is at
Speaker 13: the same time we're trying to get better foot traffic down.
Speaker 13: There's supporting small businesses. Amazon is based here obviously, and
Speaker 13: the e commerce has changed. Lying habbts and where people
Speaker 13: go and live and play, and so at the same time,
Speaker 13: that is when you demonstrate to your values. And so
Speaker 13: if we believe that this war against climate change is real,
Speaker 13: as we do, then this is the time to start
Speaker 13: staking out our plate. And so I think cities are
Speaker 13: best position to this. And I said earlier in the panel,
Speaker 13: you know, I have one of the greenest I think,
Speaker 13: the greenest governor and through Jay Insley in the country,
Speaker 13: and so we have a good ecosystem of climate warriors.
Speaker 13: That helps, right and absolutely it helps, and so so on.
Speaker 13: From a state law perspective, they could do, they could
Speaker 13: pass policy that make sure we're all working in unison.
Speaker 5: With each other.
Speaker 13: But cities have the flexibility to go even further. And
Speaker 13: so that's what we try to do.
Speaker 9: In everything that we do.
Speaker 13: I you know, transportation, of course, you know, we're doing
Speaker 13: some incredible things in transportation. So I think the cities
Speaker 13: are the best position to get it done.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about transportation.
Speaker 4: In the two days I've been here, I've taken the bus,
Speaker 4: the light rail, the monorail.
Speaker 8: It's been pretty great.
Speaker 4: But this is still a city where a lot of
Speaker 4: people say they need a car.
Speaker 8: How do you how do you change.
Speaker 13: So I proposed a one point five to five billion
Speaker 13: dollar leve a translation level to look at our whole ecosystem.
Speaker 13: And it's all about choice. And you know, cars are
Speaker 13: getting smaller and they're becoming electrified, and so we don't
Speaker 13: have an anti car campaign which a lot of cars
Speaker 13: are getting bigger, a lot of cars are getting well, yeah,
Speaker 13: the the US, the four to the truck is still yeah.
Speaker 13: So you know, if your point is, we're still car dependent.
Speaker 13: So far, we're looking at decades and decades of a
Speaker 13: culture in a country that's built out of Michigan and
Speaker 13: looking at what GM and other companies have built. You know,
Speaker 13: these are legacy organizations. So there's an ecosystem. And I
Speaker 13: don't pit cars against bikes. There's literally hundreds of millions
Speaker 13: of dollars in here for everyone. In terms of building
Speaker 13: protected bike lanes. A person eighty five years old may
Speaker 13: not ride a bike. We lead with transit, we lead
Speaker 13: with safety, we lead with equity. So I think I
Speaker 13: think here in Seattle we're demonstrating this car versus bikes war,
Speaker 13: if you will, that we do it in a very
Speaker 13: civilized way, realizing that there still may be single modes
Speaker 13: of transportation i e. Cars, they could get smaller and
Speaker 13: they're electrified. But this fight against climate change should be
Speaker 13: a unifying element. I talked openly about race, I talk
Speaker 13: openly about socioeconomic differences. When people are hungry and you're
Speaker 13: talking about saving the planet, can you get their attention?
Speaker 13: You can when you change the narrative for it being
Speaker 13: a unifying and uplifting fight against climate change. And that's
Speaker 13: working here in Seattle or horl Let me.
Speaker 2: Ask you about that, because as a mayor, you've got
Speaker 2: to look at all of your citizens. And I too
Speaker 2: have walked around the city. I've walked down Pike Street.
Speaker 2: Your city's not alone in terms of dealing with homeless,
Speaker 2: a large homeless community. We see it certainly in New
Speaker 2: York City. Back home, I also think about office occupancies
Speaker 2: right people are staying home, they're working from home. Remote
Speaker 2: work is still a thing post pandemic. Like New York
Speaker 2: and some other major cities, you have a lot of
Speaker 2: your office buildings that are vacant. How do you balance
Speaker 2: climate I mean, that's our future, but how do you
Speaker 2: focus it against all of that too? That that's pretty challenging.
Speaker 13: It is very challenging. So the first question I think
Speaker 13: we try to answer is to get people downtown. That example,
Speaker 13: if they're working from home, what drives people to downtown actively?
Speaker 13: There are certain things you cannot get through ecommerce, and
Speaker 13: again we're the home to Amazon, so we use forty commerce.
Speaker 13: You can't get a beautiful art show or beautiful song,
Speaker 13: or you can't buy that, and so we activate areas.
Speaker 13: You can't get daycare online or to speak, and so
Speaker 13: we're looking at the new downtown if you will. Two
Speaker 13: things is it has to be activated that meets people's needs.
Speaker 13: And so you have a workforce that have young children,
Speaker 13: you should have daycare services, affordable daycare service, and close proximity.
Speaker 13: People are very attached to their pets, so I asked
Speaker 13: the question, how many dog parts do we put around
Speaker 13: certain areas because with COVID they got used to being
Speaker 13: around their pet all day. These are real examples of
Speaker 13: how you get activated downtown. More people are going to
Speaker 13: live downtown. I have about one hundred thousand people living.
Speaker 2: Downtown, right, what was it before the pandemic?
Speaker 13: Oh, that never has been pretty consistent. These are residents.
Speaker 13: But what I did was I proposed the legislation to
Speaker 13: convert office buildings to residential buildings, acceleration of permits, a
Speaker 13: lot of incentives to do that because we think more
Speaker 13: people will live downtown. What's happening in this country with
Speaker 13: the introduction of fentan illinoisio. It is killing our country.
Speaker 13: It is a health issue. I have zero desire just
Speaker 13: to arrest them when they go in jail, to come
Speaker 13: right back and go right back to the spot I
Speaker 13: have to make arrest. Of course we will make arrest,
Speaker 13: and we are making arrest based on someone presents a
Speaker 13: threat of arm. The health system in our country is
Speaker 13: such a I don't have control over that. Most cities do,
Speaker 13: not a few cities. I think birthday has our own
Speaker 13: health department is should usually run by what's called the
Speaker 13: continuum of care, which is a county, so money goes
Speaker 13: to the county. What COVID showed us is that cities
Speaker 13: could be more nimal. Money's went directly to the cities
Speaker 13: and they could get things done. So right now there's
Speaker 13: a mini mayors including myself, looking at how do we
Speaker 13: restructure the health strategies in our cities because you're right,
Speaker 13: people are dying there. You know you could buy a
Speaker 13: fentanyl pill for fifty cents and they're committing crimes. Is
Speaker 13: worth the habit and so right now, I mean we've recovered,
Speaker 13: we've been doing some incredible work getting these people off
Speaker 13: the streets. Now we have to openly, I think, redesign
Speaker 13: the system, and we have to We're a rich city.
Speaker 13: Let's just be we're one of the wealthiest per capital cities.
Speaker 13: And when you don't have the proper safeguards for people
Speaker 13: falling through the cracks, that's.
Speaker 8: What they will do.
Speaker 13: And that's what you're seeing is people that could not
Speaker 13: in a meritocracy, could not find their way to success,
Speaker 13: and there could be a host of issues they're dealing with,
Speaker 13: whether it's mental illness and who knows what the challenges are.
Speaker 13: So we're going upstream. We now invest in pre K
Speaker 13: brain development between zero and four. We're looking at the
Speaker 13: middle schools and the high schools, trying to find the triggers.
Speaker 13: But what you're seeing out here is again a successful city,
Speaker 13: people falling through the cracks in a broken down health system,
Speaker 13: and we're trying to implode that right now to get
Speaker 13: them the help they need and get.
Speaker 2: Them all So if you would change one more thing
Speaker 2: that you think would get them off the streets.
Speaker 13: What would it be, Well, I'd like to have the
Speaker 13: ability to control the health dollars to get them treatment.
Speaker 13: They are sick, and you don't arrest a sick person,
Speaker 13: You treat them, drink them healthy, and realizing they are
Speaker 13: bad people as well, so we're not afraid to make
Speaker 13: arrest and get the bad people off the streets. So
Speaker 13: if I had one thing to do, would be too.
Speaker 13: And we're working on this is to redesign the health
Speaker 13: strategies on these PBC dying on the streets.
Speaker 8: You know what.
Speaker 4: Housing is also part of this conversation. It's part of
Speaker 4: the sustainability conversation. It's part of the green conversation. The
Speaker 4: cost of housing here is astronomical, like in many parts
Speaker 4: of the country.
Speaker 8: What are you doing in terms.
Speaker 4: Of encouraging developers, working with developers to build affordable housing
Speaker 4: to house some of these folks.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so I passed the largest housing levee last year
Speaker 13: in our country's history, is nine hundred and seventy million dollars.
Speaker 13: And in that it's all about affordable housing. Is making
Speaker 13: sure the teacher, the barista, the healthcare worker can live
Speaker 13: in the city. We create incentives throughout a tax and centers,
Speaker 13: if you will, to make sure that we reached you know,
Speaker 13: thirty fifty sixty percent of area median income for people
Speaker 13: to live right here in the city. The fact of
Speaker 13: the matter is is, again we are a rapidly growing city.
Speaker 14: I have wealthy people moving here. Supply and demand dictates
Speaker 14: housing prices. So so my relationship with other cities becomes
Speaker 14: critical as well, because I want people to be sheltered
Speaker 14: preferably in Seattle.
Speaker 13: But I have to realize the economics and such that
Speaker 13: it makes a look tough here. You know, the meeting
Speaker 13: house being nine hundred thousand to a million. You know,
Speaker 13: my wife and have three children, and when I look
Speaker 13: at and one just got married three weeks ago. So
Speaker 13: we're in their house highting and thinking, a wow, you
Speaker 13: got to have to come up with one hundred thousand
Speaker 13: dollars make a down payment here, and so locking mom
Speaker 13: and dad for that congratulations.
Speaker 5: So it's a real problem.
Speaker 13: So we get as creative as possible. You know, we
Speaker 13: talk about the terms called a podments or micro units.
Speaker 13: We relax our standards for our detached dwelling units and
Speaker 13: das outos attached, detached to look at single families owning
Speaker 13: building more so, we're being as creative as possible to
Speaker 13: make it affordable. But we are going and supply and demand.
Speaker 8: That's just the reality of it.
Speaker 2: What do you make of kind of citizen dissatisfaction with
Speaker 2: the country you see applying out as we make our
Speaker 2: way to the November presidential elections. Right, we talked about
Speaker 2: the economy doing okay, although we see some softness in
Speaker 2: the labor market. I'm continuing, but what do you make
Speaker 2: of that disconnect that maybe we're not realizing some of
Speaker 2: the struggles of our citizens.
Speaker 13: So this is what concerns me. And then in the
Speaker 13: context of climate change, is that our younger generation, they
Speaker 13: understand the needs to protect our planet, they are getting
Speaker 13: dissatisfied when they see potential leaders that they somewhat feel
Speaker 13: like there's a disconnect. And you know, I've won four
Speaker 13: elections in the city. I know how to debate. One
Speaker 13: thing I never do. I never just denigrate my opponent.
Speaker 14: I just figure they're they're they're applying for the same
Speaker 14: job I'm applying for.
Speaker 13: This is what I have to offer. They have another brand,
Speaker 13: that's fine, But what you're seeing is this debate that
Speaker 13: I think and I'm not even taking signs, I think
Speaker 13: that it's such a turn off for the younger generation,
Speaker 13: Like I forget, forget those two guys. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 13: going to disengage. That will hurt our country.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 13: What I want to see is one person says, you
Speaker 13: know what, I respect your opinion, but this is what
Speaker 13: I'm going to do for the for this this country,
Speaker 13: and we're losing that. So leaders like myself elected leaders,
Speaker 13: we have to be louder than that radioactivity that we
Speaker 13: see the younger generation being so turned off. I talked
Speaker 13: to all three of our kids about this that that.
Speaker 8: Scares me well.
Speaker 2: And you wonder about the younger generation. Maybe they're looking
Speaker 2: for a younger candidate right to vote for like going forward.
Speaker 13: Since I'm not part of that generation, I won't speak
Speaker 13: for them.
Speaker 2: Listen, Thank you for speaking though to us today. We
Speaker 2: really appreciate it. Thank you, really appreciate it.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Mary, good to see you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple car Play and andnbroud Auto with a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: From a city's climate policies to the different ways we
Speaker 2: travel to these cities, everything has an impact on environmental
Speaker 2: sustainability and on our climate.
Speaker 4: An estimate at eleven percent of global greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 4: are due to tourism, and that's predicted to double by
Speaker 4: twenty fifty. It's the year that scientists have forecast does
Speaker 4: the tipping point for all sorts of ecological disasters. So
Speaker 4: how can tourism fix its emissions problem?
Speaker 2: That's where Ryan Spies comes in. He is the managing
Speaker 2: director of sustainability at Alaska Airlines. He was at the
Speaker 2: festival to talk about sustainable aviation fuel.
Speaker 15: So for sustainable aviation fuel is yeah, it can be
Speaker 15: almost like a miracle drug, but that doesn't exist in
Speaker 15: any quantities that we really need today. Sustainable aviation fuel
Speaker 15: can be made from things like fats, in greases, oils.
Speaker 15: That's primarily what we're seeing today. But the next generation
Speaker 15: of those things is really where the fund science comes
Speaker 15: into play and where the carbon emissions comes down quite
Speaker 15: a bit.
Speaker 4: Is it always made of byproducts or are there certain
Speaker 4: crops that it could be grown just for producing this,
Speaker 4: So we.
Speaker 15: Haven't seen any crops grown directly for producing it. You're
Speaker 15: usually using byproducts. But the future technologies is actually all
Speaker 15: about pulling CO two out of the air and transforming
Speaker 15: that with renewable energy and renewable hydrogen into jet fuel.
Speaker 15: It's something that can be dropped right into two planes today,
Speaker 15: which is really exciting. Right You're not worried about, you know,
Speaker 15: taking the farm.
Speaker 4: And making it into fuel, Okay, I mentioned it's just
Speaker 4: a drop in the bucket right now. The aviation fuel
Speaker 4: management software provider I six Group says that only one
Speaker 4: tenth of one percent of all jet fuel that's used
Speaker 4: worldwide is sustainable aviation fuel, and that has remained level
Speaker 4: in the last four years.
Speaker 8: You know, that number is definitely growing.
Speaker 15: It's it's certainly we're seeing in about one percent right
Speaker 15: now and we're actually having demand much more every day.
Speaker 15: And so what we're seeing and what the challenge is
Speaker 15: is how do you scale up industry that is three
Speaker 15: to four times more expensive in the industry that exists today.
Speaker 15: And so you know, we're thinking about technologies and investments
Speaker 15: and where can we as an airline which doesn't have
Speaker 15: incredibly robust margins, spend our dollar wisely and spend the
Speaker 15: dollar of our guests wisely, so we're making the right
Speaker 15: choice for them.
Speaker 8: But also the planet really challenging.
Speaker 4: So one gallon of sustainable aviation fuel is literally three
Speaker 4: to four times more expensive conventional.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's right. Okay, where are you getting it right now?
Speaker 15: So primarily we're getting it out of a group in
Speaker 15: Montana that's doing FATS, oils and esters, and we're sending
Speaker 15: that to our Los Angeles Airport and Sentencisco report.
Speaker 8: How do you bring these costs down? It's a great question.
Speaker 15: One is investment, but really the idea here today is
Speaker 15: finding great partners. So innovation happens in a lot of places,
Speaker 15: and that's why the Bloomberg Greenfest being here is an
Speaker 15: amazing opportunity to meet with our partners, folks like Microsoft,
Speaker 15: folks like Amazon that have a vested interest in how
Speaker 15: do they bring their emissions down when they're traveling for
Speaker 15: it with their employees, and so finding those partnerships to
Speaker 15: help us offset that green premium is part of it.
Speaker 8: It's the deal with any scaling.
Speaker 15: Operation, right, how do we get more We need to
Speaker 15: induce more demand and we need to kind of keep
Speaker 15: that train rolling and having partners that help.
Speaker 4: Us long, but are you just able to induce that
Speaker 4: demand by getting large corporate customers to pay more.
Speaker 15: No, And that's actually a really exciting thing that Alaska
Speaker 15: has done. So we've engaged our guests on this journey
Speaker 15: as well. Back in December, we offered a promotion that
Speaker 15: if you bought a sustainable aviation fuel with US, you
Speaker 15: got some elite qualifying miles. We sold over a half
Speaker 15: a million gallons of staff in December alone. In May
Speaker 15: of this year, we just offered that to our guests
Speaker 15: to do it in the bypass, So the first US
Speaker 15: company to do that. Where when you're buying your ticket,
Speaker 15: if you want to offset a piece of your flight five, ten,
Speaker 15: twenty percent, you can do that. You can help contribute,
Speaker 15: and every sort of piece helps. That's not the only
Speaker 15: thing as well, right, It's not just how do I
Speaker 15: get a guest to help me pay for this, or
Speaker 15: how do I find a corporate to help me balance this.
Speaker 8: It's also thinking about policy.
Speaker 15: Policy is incredibly important and one that we've seen on
Speaker 15: the federal level with the Inflation Reduction Act that certainly helped.
Speaker 15: We want to take that a step further, we see
Speaker 15: credits expiring, how do we extend those? So there's so
Speaker 15: many levers that we need to be really engaged with.
Speaker 8: And at Alaska we are.
Speaker 4: Does the lever need to be pulled by the government
Speaker 4: out by governments outside of the US as well as
Speaker 4: by governments in the US.
Speaker 8: You're seeing both, right.
Speaker 15: So in Europe it's much more of a stick approach,
Speaker 15: mandate on percentages of staff that you have to use.
Speaker 15: That's just sort of come into place. So we'll see
Speaker 15: how that market develops. Obviously, we're a much more caret
Speaker 15: focused market here in the US, and so you see
Speaker 15: incentives for building you and see incentives for delivering, and
Speaker 15: those are a different approach, and we're.
Speaker 8: Both going to see how this plays out.
Speaker 15: But I think both are really important and so it's
Speaker 15: exciting to see how this industryald growing.
Speaker 4: You sometimes hear terminology that doesn't exactly match what people
Speaker 4: think it means. So when you talk about sustainable aviation fuel,
Speaker 4: is it actually sustainable?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 15: I mean you look at the life cycle. The science
Speaker 15: is certainly there behind it. But the challenge is is
Speaker 15: not all saff is equal, right? Each one might have
Speaker 15: a different carbon content or a life cycle carbon emissions
Speaker 15: associated with it, and so explaining that level of detail
Speaker 15: is challenging. We're always trying to think about it not
Speaker 15: in just gallon, a dollar per gallon, but dollar per ton.
Speaker 15: How much does it cost to reduce a ton of
Speaker 15: CO two? And we're thinking about that number, and that's
Speaker 15: what our guests are thinking about, and that's what our
Speaker 15: corporate clients are thinking about.
Speaker 4: So what's the byproduct that's created when an engine burns
Speaker 4: sustainable aviation fuel?
Speaker 15: It is CO two, so it's still burning it. The
Speaker 15: thing about sustainable aviation fuels, you're looking at the entire
Speaker 15: life cycle of how the fuel is actually made, right,
Speaker 15: whether you're pulling fossil fuels out of the ground, which
Speaker 15: is traditional jet fuel, or you're using some lower carbon
Speaker 15: material in the production and process and transportation of that fuel.
Speaker 15: So at the end of the day, you're still burning
Speaker 15: some CO two. But if you look at the full
Speaker 15: life cycle much reduced with SAPPS.
Speaker 4: So how much does it decrease the carbon output traditional
Speaker 4: flight if it's still emitting CO two?
Speaker 15: Yeah, so you're looking at you know, with with with
Speaker 15: SOA today about a forty percent reduction if you're putting
Speaker 15: that a plane in the in the total life cycle.
Speaker 15: Our hope is to get up to eighty or one
Speaker 15: hundred percent with the e fuels that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 4: Is this the only part of the solution when it
Speaker 4: comes to it, is it is the fact that airlines
Speaker 4: have on the climate.
Speaker 15: It's the I would say it's the short and medium
Speaker 15: term solution for many flights and the long term solution
Speaker 15: for long haul flights. We believe in battery technology, but
Speaker 15: we believe that there's an opportunity for hydrogen to play
Speaker 15: a part. But those things don't scale quite at the
Speaker 15: same rate. If you think about flying from here in
Speaker 15: Seattle to New York, by the time you land today,
Speaker 15: or if you you took that flight, the weight of
Speaker 15: the aircraft has gone down tremendously.
Speaker 8: If you do that with batteries, it's still the same weight.
Speaker 15: So you're really fundamentally fighting against something that's physics. And
Speaker 15: so we think that for those short and medium term
Speaker 15: medium hall flights, new technologies will absolutely start to take
Speaker 15: take old staff will be there for.
Speaker 8: The long term. What about hydrogen.
Speaker 15: You know, we made an investment and actually donated a
Speaker 15: plane to zero avia.
Speaker 4: So they're looking at Yeah, we're joined by the CEO
Speaker 4: and founder later on the program.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it's super excited and an incredible talking to that
Speaker 15: we're all anxiously waiting for. You know, that's a technology
Speaker 15: where we think, hey, there's some promise here. There's still
Speaker 15: a lot of infrastructure challenges with hydrogen. There's still a
Speaker 15: lot of how do I get that to my airport?
Speaker 15: But we are investing and encouraged by it. But we'll
Speaker 15: see where it plays out.
Speaker 4: Not to mention the production of the actual hydrogen and
Speaker 4: persons be energy intensive too.
Speaker 8: Very energy intensive.
Speaker 15: But that's the case with all these feels at this point,
Speaker 15: right and so we're encouraged by renewable energy obviously dominating
Speaker 15: every new piece of energy that's going in the market,
Speaker 15: and that would help on the hydrogen side as well.
Speaker 4: So right now, if you look at the fuel usage
Speaker 4: of Alaska airlines, what portion is sustainable aviation?
Speaker 8: To you?
Speaker 15: We are about one percent, and like most airlines here
Speaker 15: in the US, our goal is by twenty thirty. To
Speaker 15: hit a ten percent goal will be a challenge without
Speaker 15: all of those levers pulled at.
Speaker 8: The same Is it a realistical I think it is.
Speaker 8: I think it is. I think the challenge is today.
Speaker 15: I think that there are absolutely opportunities to get us there.
Speaker 8: Not going to say it's going to be easy.
Speaker 4: It's also if you think about the sustainability element, you said,
Speaker 4: do you have a facility in Montana that you work
Speaker 4: with and then you have to get that fuel then
Speaker 4: to the West coast? Yeah, that's not exactly you know,
Speaker 4: carbon neutral.
Speaker 15: Right, it's the infrastructure challenge is it's its own beasts.
Speaker 15: Especially here in the Pacific Northwest. We have some real
Speaker 15: challenges with getting saff into seatak. So how do we
Speaker 15: solve those working with policymakers, working with partners, working with
Speaker 15: traditional oil and gas to solve some of those challenges.
Speaker 15: But yeah, I mean most people don't ask where they're
Speaker 15: getting their jet fuel from in the start.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that certainly makes sense.
Speaker 4: Do you think that we'll start to see traditional energy
Speaker 4: companies that make conventional aviation fuel get into this market?
Speaker 8: You know, I think they've dabbled.
Speaker 15: I think they're a bit waiting on the sidelines to
Speaker 15: see is the demand really there?
Speaker 12: Is it?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 4: It sounds like it is, because if the goal is
Speaker 4: twenty thirty, that the demand is there the.
Speaker 15: Demand is the intention is there, right, but the demand
Speaker 15: to pay for it is still developing right, And now
Speaker 15: I think that'll be the biggest challenge. And honestly, if
Speaker 15: you're looking at the loan gas markets, they're worried about
Speaker 15: their margins too, so they're doing they're doing what they
Speaker 15: need to do well.
Speaker 4: One of our Bloomberg Intelligence Commodities analyst, Mike mclohan always says,
Speaker 4: the cure for high prices is high prices. So if
Speaker 4: you have something that's high priced, you get more people
Speaker 4: coming into that market.
Speaker 8: It's just basic economics. Right.
Speaker 4: Do we get to a point where you get so
Speaker 4: many people coming into the market because they see demand
Speaker 4: for it that you see price to fall in the
Speaker 4: coming years.
Speaker 15: Absolutely, And that's where I think engaging our guests and
Speaker 15: engaging corporates and telling those stories about the demand that
Speaker 15: we have will encourage and will, you know, hopefully incent
Speaker 15: production in the places that we need in numbers.
Speaker 4: Ryan Spiece, Managing director of Sustainability at Alaska Airlines, here
Speaker 4: from the Bloomberg green At Festival in Seattle. Ryan, thanks
Speaker 4: so much for joining us.
Speaker 8: Thank you this much. We really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 1: York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Here's something you're not going to want to hear as
Speaker 2: you pack your bags for your summer holidays. Tourism has
Speaker 2: a dark side.
Speaker 4: It's not just the climate impact over tourism also an issue.
Speaker 4: Unmanaged crowds ruined destinations for locals and travelers alike, and
Speaker 4: high visitor numbers they don't necessarily translate into benefits for
Speaker 4: the local economy. Ven has implemented a new entrance fee,
Speaker 4: and anti tourism protests have sprung up in places like
Speaker 4: Barcelona and in the Canary Islands.
Speaker 2: This is where Jeremy Sampson comes in. Jeremy is CEO
Speaker 2: of the Travel Foundation. It's an independent charity that works
Speaker 2: with tourism companies and organizations to make tourism benefit both
Speaker 2: the environment and the communities where it's happening. We continue
Speaker 2: our coverage from the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle this
Speaker 2: past week, the.
Speaker 5: Industry has been talking about sustainability and in some ways
Speaker 5: as an end points, but really sustainability as a you know,
Speaker 5: is not a is not a thing you can actually
Speaker 5: achieve as a tick box. It's a it's a continuous
Speaker 5: process of improvement and working towards you know, reducing negative
Speaker 5: impacts and increasing increasing the positive ones, and creating a
Speaker 5: better balance.
Speaker 9: And I think.
Speaker 5: Ultimately that's that's the goal, and absolutely that's possible. Defining
Speaker 5: what good looks like in a place is a whole
Speaker 5: other discussion.
Speaker 4: Is it on the radar at all to people who
Speaker 4: are booking trips right now?
Speaker 5: We that's a great question, is and you know, we
Speaker 5: do see quite a few research, you know, surveys showing
Speaker 5: that people are interested in sustainability as a as a
Speaker 5: key driver of you know, of their decisions. But we
Speaker 5: see a huge gap between intention and action when it
Speaker 5: comes to their you know, their actual purchase you know,
Speaker 5: purchase choices money almost always, and location and sort of
Speaker 5: those kinds of things are such such important drivers. And
Speaker 5: the industry has been waiting for this demands to increase,
Speaker 5: and our thought on that is that actually the business
Speaker 5: case needs to be reframed away from that demand piece
Speaker 5: and more towards the risk that businesses face in the
Speaker 5: long run as things like climate change start to ramp
Speaker 5: up and become even more serious.
Speaker 2: Remind us, for those who maybe are not familiar with
Speaker 2: your organization, what you guys are doing and what you're
Speaker 2: looking to really solve.
Speaker 5: Sure, you know, we exist primarily to represent a voice
Speaker 5: that is often not represented in the travel in tourism sector,
Speaker 5: and which are the communities that host travel, that host travelers.
Speaker 5: And the environment in which the industry depends on the
Speaker 5: eighty percent of travel and tourism is actually coastal, and
Speaker 5: so you know, the beaches, the marine infrastructure that the
Speaker 5: industry depends on has often not been so kind to
Speaker 5: which is potentially not good business sense. So we've been
Speaker 5: advocating for those two stakeholders in a sense by helping
Speaker 5: to enable bolster the enabling environments for sustainability, climate action,
Speaker 5: increased equity, and the tourism economy to thrive. The sector is,
Speaker 5: like many, very focused on growth, very focused on.
Speaker 2: Especially after the pandemic.
Speaker 5: Right well, it's been peaks and valleys for years. There
Speaker 5: was nine to eleven, there was the economic downturn in
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight there was COVID. Each of those
Speaker 5: took the industry to its knees, and then there's been
Speaker 5: a great recovery story ever since. And oftentimes those recoveries
Speaker 5: have butted heads with issues of sustainability. But at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, we believe that sustainability is not
Speaker 5: a not a side show or a tick box, but
Speaker 5: rather something that to be integrated into day to day
Speaker 5: decision meeting.
Speaker 4: Well, some companies have integrated it to try to get
Speaker 4: consumers to make decisions. You can go to certain online
Speaker 4: travel agency booking websites when you're booking a flight. I
Speaker 4: think actually ours does this ferrol internally when you get
Speaker 4: a flight, it has how much carbon that's is released.
Speaker 4: I got a confession to make. I completely ignore that number.
Speaker 4: Am I a bad person?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I look at the time. I look at the time
Speaker 4: of the flight. That's like what I listening.
Speaker 5: Listen. I'm probably one of the world's most well known
Speaker 5: experts in sustainable travel, and I have a horrible time
Speaker 5: making good decisions about sustainability when I when I do
Speaker 5: my own personal travel. Why the information is either you know,
Speaker 5: too confusing, so you want to you want to find
Speaker 5: I find out the basics about a place or about
Speaker 5: a business, and it's buried somewhere. You have some information
Speaker 5: that's coming to you, but it's usually not contextualized and
Speaker 5: is part of a much wider range of decision making
Speaker 5: that you're doing as a as a person. And ultimately,
Speaker 5: we don't really believe that individual you know, individual decisions
Speaker 5: are are really where it's what it's all about. But
Speaker 5: what rather systems change within the industry and and designing
Speaker 5: sustainability right and right into the system and things that
Speaker 5: are unsustainable out because there's no reason we should even
Speaker 5: be offer things that are destroying the climate too tart
Speaker 5: to the end user, Jeremy.
Speaker 2: One thing I wonder like, I think about it when
Speaker 2: you order food now, right, the calories are up there, right,
Speaker 2: And I think about when I buy some products or food,
Speaker 2: I turn around and I look at the labels more
Speaker 2: than I've ever before. Is there some kind of labeling
Speaker 2: or metric that you can really apply across the travel
Speaker 2: industry that will make us all kind of think differently
Speaker 2: and be more concerned. So this is coming and change
Speaker 2: our habits.
Speaker 5: This is coming. And there's been a there's been a
Speaker 5: great movement, especially among the travel tech space, so the
Speaker 5: online travel agents like Booking, dot Com, ex Media, Airbnb
Speaker 5: to have a common framework for reporting to consumers. For
Speaker 5: many years there were there was a badge here, a
Speaker 5: leaf here, a circle here. No one knew what it meant,
Speaker 5: and we really did a poor job of aligning those
Speaker 5: you know that communication.
Speaker 8: I always assume a leaf is good. Yeah, it seems good.
Speaker 5: It seems good.
Speaker 9: It seems good.
Speaker 8: Who doesn't like leaves?
Speaker 5: But actually it actually responds to one of the big
Speaker 5: the big risks there, which is that most people associate
Speaker 5: sustainability with tree hugging. Okay, we we uh hung up
Speaker 5: our towels and.
Speaker 2: We used we didn't use planted a tree exactly. Problem solved.
Speaker 5: The challenge is much more holistic when it comes to sustainability.
Speaker 5: And it's also the industry is incredibly fragmented, so it's
Speaker 5: not a sector at all. It's really a bunch of
Speaker 5: sectors mashed up into one. So on any given trip,
Speaker 5: even a basic one, you might be traveling with a
Speaker 5: carbonontal agency, a hotel, an activity provider, several restaurants you know,
Speaker 5: and each of them are trying to take responsibility for
Speaker 5: their piece of the pie, and there's not a lot
Speaker 5: of alignment and convening that brings it all together to say,
Speaker 5: you know, here's the experience that you're having, and here's
Speaker 5: the things that really matter.
Speaker 8: Where does government come in.
Speaker 5: So tourism has long been the most unregulated sector in
Speaker 5: the world, even behind oil and gas, and part of
Speaker 5: that comes from the the this fragmentation. It's it's reallyallenging
Speaker 5: to regulate something that is so fragmented and really could
Speaker 5: sort of could sort of beat the system in many ways.
Speaker 5: And the concentration of sort of power and influences has
Speaker 5: shifted because now it sits with the big tech companies,
Speaker 5: which for a long time said we're not even in
Speaker 5: the travel industry, we're tech platforms.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: So government is increasingly needed, actually, I think find to
Speaker 5: set those limits. Until the sort of twenty ten time period,
Speaker 5: it was easier to manage the capacity in a place
Speaker 5: right like you had only a certain number of hotel
Speaker 5: rooms and a certain number of people could fill them,
Speaker 5: and you were sort of at capacity. Then two things happened.
Speaker 5: Airbnb and short term rentals really changed the game. All
Speaker 5: of a sudden, there were infinite rooms in a place
Speaker 5: and short short haul flights became very cheap, especially in
Speaker 5: Europe where you had people flying to London Barcelona for
Speaker 5: ten quid for the weekend. Which, while it made it
Speaker 5: more accessible and people could do that, you know, is
Speaker 5: a nice thing for your pocketbook, it actually changed the
Speaker 5: game in terms of numbers. All of a sudden, Barcelona, Venice,
Speaker 5: these places were totally overwhelmed with people. It's all possible.
Speaker 5: You can manage a whole lot of people, but there
Speaker 5: has to be the planning in the background to be
Speaker 5: able to make sure that the demand does not outstrip
Speaker 5: the resources and capacity that are available.
Speaker 2: What is the worst thing what makes tourism so bad
Speaker 2: for the environment? Have a list for you. Is it planes?
Speaker 2: Is it cars? Is it cruise ships? Is it food
Speaker 2: and food waste? Is it garbage? What are the biggest
Speaker 2: contributing factors or is it kind of all above?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we've done the research on this and when it
Speaker 5: comes to climate change specifically and carbon emissions, you know,
Speaker 5: air travel is particularly polluting. We know this. Air travel
Speaker 5: is also one of the most difficult to decarbonize. We
Speaker 5: also know this right now, sustainable aviation fuel is only
Speaker 5: able to fuel the fleet of airplanes that fly around
Speaker 5: the world for less than one So we're nowhere near
Speaker 5: the scale of the solution that will be required for
Speaker 5: air to decarbonize. Electrification might help, but it's you know,
Speaker 5: to replace a fleet of planes. It's not an easy
Speaker 5: thing to do. Yeah. In our report, which I think
Speaker 5: we'll get into in a moment, what we're suggesting actually,
Speaker 5: and we've done the modeling, is that there's more nuance
Speaker 5: than has been than there has been in this sort
Speaker 5: of debate. It's not just a de growth versus growth
Speaker 5: conversation or a flight shame you should never fly. And
Speaker 5: we were able to show that the industry could actually
Speaker 5: achieve its climate targets by simply maintaining growth at around
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen levels of long haul long half.
Speaker 8: Flights, so it's a long half flights that it's a.
Speaker 5: Long half flights. Shanghai to Sydney is about the sort
Speaker 5: of average long half flight that we studied.
Speaker 4: One thing that I'm really interested in this is this
Speaker 4: idea of over tourism and the idea that a tourist
Speaker 4: dollars spent somewhere doesn't necessarily go to the local community.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: This is a new part of a conversation that's happening
Speaker 4: because for years we were taught, oh, we should go
Speaker 4: here because it supports the local economy.
Speaker 8: Not that simple, right, How do we quantify.
Speaker 2: That this is climate justice?
Speaker 13: Right?
Speaker 2: A little bit?
Speaker 5: Well, a little bit. I mean, there's a couple other
Speaker 5: issues that play here that I think are really important.
Speaker 5: On the overturism front. Overturism itself is a symptom rather
Speaker 5: than a root issue. What you see there is again
Speaker 5: places that have been stripped away from their ability to
Speaker 5: manage that the fact that that the demand and number
Speaker 5: of people is outpacing the resources that are available. Overturism
Speaker 5: could be one person. If that one person is in
Speaker 5: the wrong place at the wrong time and the community
Speaker 5: is not ready to provide them with the wastewater and
Speaker 5: energy services for example, that have that, they will need
Speaker 5: to be a visitor in their in their community.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take much. We've all been in developing world
Speaker 2: right where you're somewhere and it's just the systems all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 5: You feel you feel it, you feel that it's broken,
Speaker 5: but it is solvable actually, and it's not just about crowds.
Speaker 5: When it comes to this issue of equity. Uh, you know,
Speaker 5: the industry has long had this platitude that travel is
Speaker 5: a force for good. I tend to leave actually that
Speaker 5: the industry can be a force for good. But it
Speaker 5: doesn't do so just by showing up in a place
Speaker 5: that's trickle down economics and and trickle down economics. I'm
Speaker 5: afraid you know has has has not necessarily worked. It
Speaker 5: doesn't just show up and sort of rain down profit
Speaker 5: and and wealth on local people. Interestingly, small and medium
Speaker 5: sized businesses are the beating heart of travel and tourism.
Speaker 5: When you go to a place, right, that's who you
Speaker 5: interact with. So when destination management organizations, when businesses are
Speaker 5: acting with intentionality about spreading that well, spreading the value
Speaker 5: of the tourism dollar. There are ways to make that happen.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't just happen without some real thought into
Speaker 5: how to how do you maximize that equity and make
Speaker 5: sure that those communities are are actually feeling that love.
Speaker 2: If you could change one thing in the tourism industry
Speaker 2: just quickly, what.
Speaker 5: Would you I would cut marketing budgets because.
Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong on them, don't break in
Speaker 2: more travelers.
Speaker 5: No, not necessarily, I believe in marketing, but the balance
Speaker 5: is way out of whack. We have an industry that
Speaker 5: markets itself to death and spends very little on issues
Speaker 5: around around climate change, which to me pose a great
Speaker 5: threat to business. So I think shifting that balance just
Speaker 5: a little bit would make a huge difference.
Speaker 2: All right, listen, So glad we got some time.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, great, Thank you so much. You're
Speaker 5: welcome having me and appreciate the thoughtful conversation.
Speaker 2: You bet, good luck a greed.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Sampson, CEO of the Travel Foundation, Live from the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple, car Play and and Broyt Auto with a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business at or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg Business Week, including more insightful conversation and from
Speaker 2: this week's Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle, Washington, we'll check
Speaker 2: in with the chief scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund
Speaker 2: on how a highly specialized satellite can spot emissions that
Speaker 2: other satellites cannot.
Speaker 4: Plus, speaking of taking flight, we're joined by the founder
Speaker 4: and CEO of a company that says it's building the
Speaker 4: first zero emission engines for commercial aviation.
Speaker 6: First up this hour.
Speaker 2: As we've mentioned, the Bloomberg Green Festival this past week
Speaker 2: in Seattle was all about bringing together innovators, policymakers, entrepreneurs, artists, activists, musicians,
Speaker 2: folks from business, government, all kinds of leaders to explore
Speaker 2: new solutions spanning the entire climate spectrum.
Speaker 4: Two of those voices are the chief sustainability officer at Amazon,
Speaker 4: Kara Hurst, and the WNBA's all time winningest player and
Speaker 4: co founder of the media and commerce company Together and
Speaker 4: the production company A touch more we're talking about Sue Byrd.
Speaker 4: They joined Carol for a panel on using platforms to
Speaker 4: affect change.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say these two are pretty incredible
Speaker 2: and they have unique I just want to do a
Speaker 2: little quick setup. Karraspearheaded the Climate Pledge, which was co
Speaker 2: founded by Amazon back in twenty nineteen, group of more
Speaker 2: than five hundred companies. I think it was five hundred
Speaker 2: and three, to be exact, per your website, forty five
Speaker 2: countries around the globe. They've made a commitment to reach
Speaker 2: net zero carbon emissions by twenty forty. Amazon purchased the
Speaker 2: naming rights into what is today the Climate Pledge Arena
Speaker 2: that was back in twenty twenty. Sue is a member
Speaker 2: of the ownership group of the WNBA team, of course,
Speaker 2: the Seattle Storm.
Speaker 11: The Storm was.
Speaker 2: The first w NBA team to actually sign the Climate
Speaker 2: Pledge and the second North American professional sports team to
Speaker 2: do so, so pretty cool. The Storm plays home games
Speaker 2: of course in the Climate Pledge Arena, and Sue, by
Speaker 2: the way, won her fifth Olympical metal in Tokyo in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, So I'm just kind of tying it all together.
Speaker 2: Another connection that these two have is really phenomenal platforms,
Speaker 2: And that's where I kind of want to start, because
Speaker 2: when you have a platform, you kind of have a
Speaker 2: responsibility to use it.
Speaker 11: So Car, I want to start with you.
Speaker 2: For you guys at Amazon, it is largely but a
Speaker 2: lot of things, but for you sustainability and the climate.
Speaker 2: How do you think about the value of having Amazon
Speaker 2: worldwide known, huge firm, huge company, massive platform. How do
Speaker 2: you think about the responsibility of that platform and how
Speaker 2: do you prioritize the things you want to do.
Speaker 16: Sure well, I could be more excited to be on
Speaker 16: this stage and this conversation today, so thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: It is it's a.
Speaker 16: Huge responsibility and also a really exciting one because one
Speaker 16: of the things we get to do at Amazon is
Speaker 16: to use our scale and really the speed also that
Speaker 16: we go at to send really big demand signals for
Speaker 16: clean technologies, like what was just being discussed to say
Speaker 16: that we want an accelerated fight towards climate change and
Speaker 16: what you just mentioned that we set our intention to
Speaker 16: be net zero carbon by twenty forty that's ten years
Speaker 16: ahead of the Paris Agreement, and we set that looking
Speaker 16: at the science and saying we think we're in this
Speaker 16: decisive decade. We know we need to move faster. We
Speaker 16: have a lot of optimism about doing that, but we
Speaker 16: can't go alone. And we're excited that over five hundred
Speaker 16: organizations and other companies have joined us in that. But
Speaker 16: we want to send these really strong demand signals and
Speaker 16: we want to also put our own resources towards that.
Speaker 16: So we've been doing things like purchasing renewable energy. We're
Speaker 16: the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.
Speaker 16: We have been for the last four years. We announced
Speaker 16: yesterday we've actually hit one hundred percent renewable energy across
Speaker 16: our global.
Speaker 11: Operations, which is a huge feat.
Speaker 16: We have over five hundred projects zachly around the world.
Speaker 16: We've got twenty four thousand electric delivery.
Speaker 11: Vehicles on the road already.
Speaker 16: We've got one of the world's largest charging electric charging
Speaker 16: infrastructure kind of operations going.
Speaker 11: We've just got.
Speaker 16: You know, we look at all the different aspects of
Speaker 16: our operations and think about how do we make it
Speaker 16: more sustainable on behalf of our customer. We want to
Speaker 16: reduce waste. We took out those plastic air pillows. We
Speaker 16: took out ninety five percent of those in North America.
Speaker 16: So we want to make a sustainable company and do
Speaker 16: it on.
Speaker 11: Behalf of our customer.
Speaker 2: So I want to bring you into it. You are
Speaker 2: part of a group of very elite athletes, and when
Speaker 2: we use the word legendary, it doesn't apply to everybody,
Speaker 2: but it definitely applies to you. So krudos. The platform, though,
Speaker 2: has been a couple of decades in the making, and
Speaker 2: then some how do you think about your platform and
Speaker 2: the responsibility of how you use it.
Speaker 17: Yeah, women's sports is at an interesting moment, you know,
Speaker 17: especially women's basketball, and for a good interesting right yeah, no, great, interesting.
Speaker 17: But what's interesting about it, maybe in a negative sense,
Speaker 17: is while the coverage has increased, what I've noticed is
Speaker 17: it's not always accurate. And it's really had me take
Speaker 17: a step back and be like, first of all, what
Speaker 17: else is inaccurate out there being told to us, you know,
Speaker 17: by trusted you know, places, trusted other trusted platforms. So
Speaker 17: I think for me when it comes to my platform,
Speaker 17: for so long while I was playing, it was about,
Speaker 17: you know, bringing a certain understanding to the game, right,
Speaker 17: using my platform for all kinds of good. Now I'm like,
Speaker 17: wait a minute, I got to make sure the stories
Speaker 17: that are being told are accurate. I got to make
Speaker 17: sure that when people are tuning into a game, they
Speaker 17: have a full understanding. So that's really where I feel
Speaker 17: like I can use my platform now as a retired player.
Speaker 2: It's also the way women women athletes have been portrayed.
Speaker 2: Like I was reading some things about the Olympics coming
Speaker 2: up in the Olympic Committee, have they been changing some
Speaker 2: of the standards and updating in terms of how they
Speaker 2: want media representation of women and it's not just how
Speaker 2: they look or kind of superficial stuff, but really.
Speaker 11: Just what they are achieving.
Speaker 6: That's important, so important, so important.
Speaker 17: I think what's beautiful about women, especially women's athletes, is
Speaker 17: we are dynamic. We've had to be, you know, for
Speaker 17: so long, we weren't getting the covers that we deserve,
Speaker 17: we weren't getting the credibility, so we had to be.
Speaker 17: We had to have different parts of us. So I
Speaker 17: think it is great to highlight those things. But to
Speaker 17: your point, not just about appearance, you know, not just
Speaker 17: about these these artificial things.
Speaker 6: So I love that the Olympic Committee is doing that.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about the Climate Pledge.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious, Cara, when you have conversations with companies,
Speaker 2: what is it Is it tough to get them to
Speaker 2: sign on or tell us kind of the environment here.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I think it's a huge commitment to sign on,
Speaker 16: and it certainly takes resources, and so I think it
Speaker 16: takes a leap of faith too.
Speaker 11: Not all of us know how we're going to get there.
Speaker 16: There are some things we know how to do, like
Speaker 16: electrifying fleet, and then there are other things like aviation
Speaker 16: where we know sustainable aviation feels part of it, but
Speaker 16: we don't know all of the solves, and so some
Speaker 16: of it is a bit of jumping into the fray
Speaker 16: and saying we know some of we're going to get there.
Speaker 16: And also we need to partner to figure out some
Speaker 16: of the other ways so which we don't necessarily know,
Speaker 16: and we need to change the game, right, So we
Speaker 16: need to figure out how we're going to come together
Speaker 16: and make new decisions together, put resources together, and also
Speaker 16: public private partnerships are a big part of it. So
Speaker 16: how do we come together and work in the cities
Speaker 16: where we all have employees or we have operations, and
Speaker 16: get cities to change their infrastructure, you know, and build
Speaker 16: differently the buildings that we're in, or put more rail in,
Speaker 16: or change our you know, the ways in which people
Speaker 16: commute and those kind of things as well.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 2: Sue, was it like a no brainer for the Storm
Speaker 2: to sign the Climate Pledge?
Speaker 17: I was playing then, so I wasn't in those rooms.
Speaker 6: But that's true, yes.
Speaker 17: But knowing our franchise, knowing the ownership group, I'm sure,
Speaker 17: I'm sure it was a no brainer. They're very much
Speaker 17: an ownership group. That wants to help the world change.
Speaker 17: I mean it's a big statement, but at the same time,
Speaker 17: when you find the ways that you can have that impact,
Speaker 17: it's really not that big of a statement.
Speaker 6: You can really change the world.
Speaker 2: I always think about, like, you know, we all set
Speaker 2: out on a course, whether we go to school or
Speaker 2: we start working, and we think we're going to go
Speaker 2: this way, and then we start going a different way,
Speaker 2: And I'm curious about so, like what motivates you and
Speaker 2: how maybe that has evolved over the years to where
Speaker 2: you are today.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I'm very lucky.
Speaker 17: I say this from the start to be an athlete
Speaker 17: when you think back to childhood. When I think back
Speaker 17: to my childhood, I was just a kid that really
Speaker 17: liked playing, Like I just loved playing sports. And how
Speaker 17: lucky am I that that led to an actual career
Speaker 17: where I graduate college and immediately I have a job,
Speaker 17: a profession waiting for me. So I was super lucky
Speaker 17: in that sense. But throughout my career, motivations change. Right,
Speaker 17: there's the motivation early of maybe wanting to.
Speaker 6: Prove yourself in a field.
Speaker 17: Right, you haven't in my world, I haven't won the
Speaker 17: championship yet, I haven't won awards yet, so I have
Speaker 17: this grit about me that I want to prove it.
Speaker 17: But then that flips when you have done it and
Speaker 17: now you have to prove that it wasn't a fluke,
Speaker 17: and now you have to sustain and now you have
Speaker 17: to stay, for lack of a better on top with
Speaker 17: that mountain, which has a whole other type of challenge.
Speaker 17: And for me, as I kept doing that, then it
Speaker 17: became Okay, I've won the things, Now how can I
Speaker 17: actually have an impact on this?
Speaker 6: So it's really interesting how through.
Speaker 17: The course of my career I've had these these different moments,
Speaker 17: these different types of mountains, and trying to figure out
Speaker 17: how how to stay motivated. And again, I'm lucky I
Speaker 17: play a team sport. A lot of my motivation came
Speaker 17: within the locker room, within my team. I had teammates
Speaker 17: to look to whether they were pushing me or I
Speaker 17: was pushing them them seeing me succeed, me seeing them succeed,
Speaker 17: And that's really a big motivating factor for me.
Speaker 2: What about for you, Kara in terms of your job,
Speaker 2: and I think about your career too, You've been in
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley, different worlds in terms of sustainability, how do
Speaker 2: you think about, like what motivates you in terms of
Speaker 2: your choices and then wanted to be part of Amazon
Speaker 2: and their mission.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 16: I've worked in angios, I've worked in government, I've worked
Speaker 16: in now corporate America, and I think, you know, being
Speaker 16: on those teams and thinking about the different languages you
Speaker 16: have to.
Speaker 11: Be able to speak.
Speaker 16: I'm impact oriented, So what I really have been motivated
Speaker 16: by is trying to figure out a way I've always
Speaker 16: wanted to make a difference, wanted to make an impact
Speaker 16: on the world. I've worked on human rights issues, I've
Speaker 16: worked on environmental issues, and I want to figure out
Speaker 16: what is like how do I use the resources and
Speaker 16: the scale of whatever I'm working on to kind of
Speaker 16: make that change. And in NGOs you have influence in
Speaker 16: a different way. Government you have scale, you have policy
Speaker 16: changes you can make. In corporate America, you have resources,
Speaker 16: and you have a different kind of scale, and you
Speaker 16: have to kind of speak the language of the different
Speaker 16: team that you're on in the different kind of context
Speaker 16: you're in.
Speaker 11: But you have to remain authentic to.
Speaker 16: Yourself and you know, lead in the way that's going
Speaker 16: to make the folks around you understand the impact that
Speaker 16: you're trying to make and the context that you're in.
Speaker 2: How do you guys think about the next generation in particular?
Speaker 2: And let me go over to you. You know, I
Speaker 2: think about the next You really kind of change change
Speaker 2: the game, no pun intended, in terms of the attention
Speaker 2: that you've brought to certainly women's sports, women's basketball on
Speaker 2: the college level, and then of course on the professional level.
Speaker 2: Like you made a difference, Like it's huge, and I
Speaker 2: think young women need to see that. So how do
Speaker 2: you think about that?
Speaker 17: I mean, I've always taken great pride in that. I think,
Speaker 17: what's amazing about this younger generation? And I can kind
Speaker 17: of tell the story within a story, if you will.
Speaker 17: When I got towards the end of my career and
Speaker 17: we were doing things like CBA negotiations, it was really.
Speaker 6: The younger players.
Speaker 17: So if I'm by the way, at this point, I
Speaker 17: was like thirty seven and I was considered old still, like.
Speaker 2: It's so inert that out.
Speaker 6: I'm like, wait a minute, I old? Am I young?
Speaker 17: But we had you know, the younger players at that
Speaker 17: point in the WNBA were twenty one, So let's say
Speaker 17: twenty five, right, like this this age range, and for me,
Speaker 17: I had.
Speaker 6: Grown up in a era where we were.
Speaker 17: Fighting, but also just happy to have a league in
Speaker 17: a sense, you know, and I hesitate to use this term,
Speaker 17: but we're all very familiar with the shut up and
Speaker 17: dribble krinch.
Speaker 6: But that's really how it was. A little bit. We
Speaker 6: were happy to have a league.
Speaker 17: We didn't want to push too hard because oh, we
Speaker 17: don't want this taken away from us. And now, like
Speaker 17: I said, I'm in my late thirties, these players in
Speaker 17: their early twenties, so this younger generation you're alluding to,
Speaker 17: they were like no, no, no, no, no, Like we
Speaker 17: need charters, we need charter flights. What are we talking about?
Speaker 17: Like no, no, no, this locker room not good enough.
Speaker 17: And they really it wasn't an entitlement as much as
Speaker 17: it was this is what we deserve, right, this is
Speaker 17: what's right. And I think the combination of the two generations,
Speaker 17: if you will, in our last CBA negotiation is really
Speaker 17: what got us to a really promising place and it
Speaker 17: really set us up for the future.
Speaker 11: CAAR.
Speaker 2: For you and I know we've talked about sustainability is
Speaker 2: something that a younger generation looks about I have a
Speaker 2: twenty one year old daughter and she's turning the things over,
Speaker 2: looking at ingredients, Where was this made? What's the carbon footprint?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 11: They matter and they care.
Speaker 2: So how do you think about what you guys need
Speaker 2: to do at Amazon in terms of the next generation?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 16: I think increasingly this next generation they both care a lot.
Speaker 16: They're incredibly passionate, and they have a lot of anxiety
Speaker 16: about what's coming in, what the state.
Speaker 11: Of the world is.
Speaker 16: And so one of the things I think is our
Speaker 16: responsibility is one to act fast, to drive big solutions,
Speaker 16: but also to bring some optimism to it. We have time,
Speaker 16: we don't have a lot of time. We're in this
Speaker 16: decisive decade where we have to act now. We have
Speaker 16: to move very quickly, and so I think one of
Speaker 16: the things that we need to lead on is to
Speaker 16: show that there is there are solutions, but we need
Speaker 16: to deploy them now.
Speaker 11: We cannot wait any longer.
Speaker 16: So one of the things leaders need to do is
Speaker 16: to take those decisive actions. We need to make changes now,
Speaker 16: and we need to make them at scale.
Speaker 2: So I want to ask you, can you stand up
Speaker 2: for a second and show your T shirt?
Speaker 11: Stand up?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 11: All right, look at this shirt.
Speaker 16: This is there is Yes, there's t shirt.
Speaker 2: I'm doing this because Caro, I want you to ask
Speaker 2: the question of Sue. I mean, these are incredible leaders,
Speaker 2: Like I just throw you in a bar and I
Speaker 2: can imagine the conversation.
Speaker 11: What do you want to ask?
Speaker 2: Sue?
Speaker 16: We've already had some really great conversations you about lots
Speaker 16: of things in New York and favorite shows and stuff
Speaker 16: like this. But one of the things is I was
Speaker 16: thinking about is you have so many different passions and interests,
Speaker 16: and we were talking about some of the things you
Speaker 16: could work on. And I'm sure you'll get approached all
Speaker 16: the time with ideas that people have for you, given
Speaker 16: your platform and your reach and how passionate you are
Speaker 16: about things. So how do you go about making decisions
Speaker 16: about what you want to spend your time on and
Speaker 16: how you use your platform and how you you know,
Speaker 16: all the things you could inspire the next generation to do.
Speaker 11: How do you make decisions about where you want to
Speaker 11: spend your time?
Speaker 6: Yeah, great question. Still working on it. You know.
Speaker 17: I'm only retired soon to be close to two years,
Speaker 17: which still feels really fresh and the best part about
Speaker 17: being an athlete was that was it, That was the
Speaker 17: north star, that the priority, and what you could fit
Speaker 17: in around that you would try, but that was always
Speaker 17: the guiding light, and that got you know, I don't
Speaker 17: have that anymore, so in a wonderful way. You know,
Speaker 17: I shouldn't complain. I have a ton of options, but
Speaker 17: like anybody who has that problem, you know there's a
Speaker 17: bandwidth situation. You got to worry about your own mental
Speaker 17: health in that way. So it's been tricky, but I
Speaker 17: think what I learned when I started working with brands
Speaker 17: as an athlete was you want to be aligned with
Speaker 17: your values. So I think that's really become like the
Speaker 17: guiding light. You want the values to be aligned with
Speaker 17: no matter who you're working with, whether it's a brand,
Speaker 17: a company, you know, the people you're going to go
Speaker 17: into partnership in business.
Speaker 6: You want to make sure that align.
Speaker 17: And I found that when that's there, when that's the
Speaker 17: baseline and the foundation, then you can start to maybe
Speaker 17: carve out things.
Speaker 6: You're passionate about.
Speaker 17: Then you can start to carve out things maybe that
Speaker 17: you think are going to have a larger impact. But
Speaker 17: as long as that foundation is there, then you can
Speaker 17: make your decisions based you know, on all the other
Speaker 17: things you might be interested in, and then of course
Speaker 17: the bandwidth part is really that's what I think I
Speaker 17: took on a little bit too much, to be honest,
Speaker 17: and now I'm.
Speaker 6: Littling back soon ash you have to say no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: or no.
Speaker 17: The power of no, yeah yeah, turning the table yeah.
Speaker 17: So something that I know that I've encountered, especially at
Speaker 17: not especially being a woman, is at times I've walked
Speaker 17: into rooms and I've just kind of assumed that maybe
Speaker 17: I wasn't the smartest, so I didn't have enough experience
Speaker 17: of knowledge, and I can only imagine in the corporate
Speaker 17: world what that must be like as a woman walking
Speaker 17: into these different rooms. And I'm wondering if there is
Speaker 17: a either advice you want to share for up and
Speaker 17: coming women in this way, or maybe a moment where
Speaker 17: you were like, oh, no, like what I have to
Speaker 17: bring to this room is just, if not more important
Speaker 17: than everybody else.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'm a.
Speaker 16: Little bit older than you, so I think it's it's
Speaker 16: taken a while, but one of the things I think
Speaker 16: is really important in order to be able to lead
Speaker 16: is to really just figure out who you are first
Speaker 16: and really own that and I think over the years,
Speaker 16: I'm just really understanding what you have to offer and
Speaker 16: the authenticity of your own experiences and just feeling that
Speaker 16: and owning it. And I think once you really live
Speaker 16: that in your own body, actually knowing and owning that experience,
Speaker 16: all that value that you've had, all that leadership that
Speaker 16: you have on the court, how valuable that is in
Speaker 16: any context. And it doesn't matter you haven't had business
Speaker 16: experience or you haven't had experience in xy situation. The
Speaker 16: leadership that you've been able to bring, you know, in
Speaker 16: an Olympic setting, point oh one percent of the world's
Speaker 16: population has been able to, you know, lead under that kind.
Speaker 11: Of a pressure.
Speaker 16: And so I think whatever that translates for for any
Speaker 16: of you, you know, to take a moment back, take
Speaker 16: a breath, and be like, I, you know, I got this,
Speaker 16: I've I can lead in that kind of a situation,
Speaker 16: and then just feel that, take a brath, you know,
Speaker 16: and own it. I think that we all need to
Speaker 16: just kind of remember sometimes who we are.
Speaker 2: All Right, just got fifty seconds, so this could be
Speaker 2: really quick. We started talking about platforms and using your platforms.
Speaker 2: Sue advice to everybody out there, everybody has a platform.
Speaker 2: What's your advice? What do you hope people walk away from?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 17: I think I think at times the word platform can
Speaker 17: be almost intimidating because you think you have to have
Speaker 17: I said it kind of early. I touched on it earlier.
Speaker 17: YE like to say you want to change the world
Speaker 17: is such a big statement. It can be intimidating and like,
Speaker 17: do I have a platform? How big is my platform?
Speaker 17: How am I ever going to do that? But the
Speaker 17: reality is, if it's just one person that's going to
Speaker 17: ignite change. So I feel like at times you have
Speaker 17: to really zoom out from that intimidation factor and realize
Speaker 17: whether it's in your own home, your family, your community,
Speaker 17: whatever ways in which you can impact. Even if it's
Speaker 17: just one person, it's huge.
Speaker 6: Sorry, one Starson.
Speaker 2: Makes a difference. I love it all right, Carara.
Speaker 16: Real quick, I would just say, you know, remain optimistics
Speaker 16: because I think you know the beauty and being optimistic
Speaker 16: can have a lot of power.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna leave it there. I wish we had oodles
Speaker 2: of more time, Sue, Cara, thank you so much.
Speaker 9: Thank you everybody.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple CarPlay and then Broute Auto with a Bloomberg
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Speaker 2: Back in March, you might recall a SpaceX rocket made history.
Speaker 2: It blasted off carrying a special payload. Methane SAT a
Speaker 2: highly specialized satellite that can spot methane leaks from the
Speaker 2: oil and gas industry, the missions that other satellites can't see,
Speaker 2: and with it ushered in a new era of climate transparency.
Speaker 4: The goal to motivate and enable urgent action to reduce
Speaker 4: methane emissions.
Speaker 8: That's a quote.
Speaker 4: Methane SAT is a collaboration between organizations including aerospace companies,
Speaker 4: space agencies around the world, academic institutions, and the nonprofit
Speaker 4: and vironmental advocacy group, the Environmental Defense Fund.
Speaker 2: Steven Hamberg is senior vice president and chief Scientist at
Speaker 2: the Environmental Defense Funder DF. He's also the project leader
Speaker 2: of Methane SAT. He joined us from the Bloomberg Green
Speaker 2: Festival in Seattle.
Speaker 18: So what we need is a global picture, and we
Speaker 18: need to be able to figure out where are those
Speaker 18: emissions occurring, how much is being omitted, and how they're
Speaker 18: changing over time, and we need to do that across
Speaker 18: the entire sector. And we can do that with methane
Speaker 18: set because we designed it with such high precision and
Speaker 18: we are delivering the data as actionable data, meaning we're
Speaker 18: actually doing the processing to get it all the way
Speaker 18: to how much is being omitted from where where is
Speaker 18: this data going to go? So the data is going
Speaker 18: to be posted public, anybody can look at it. It's
Speaker 18: free of charge for any non commercial use. And it
Speaker 18: will also be of course ingested into systems that allow
Speaker 18: it to be able to be integrated into whether financial
Speaker 18: services or whether it's just into regulatory processes. And so
Speaker 18: we have a whole team because just producing data doesn't
Speaker 18: you guys know, it doesn't cause change, right, So we
Speaker 18: have a whole team from producing the data all the
Speaker 18: way through the actions. So there's a whole group that
Speaker 18: works with us on advocacy, ensuring that the stakeholders are engaged,
Speaker 18: that people understand how to use the data, because these
Speaker 18: date have never existed before. We have to get people
Speaker 18: to understand how to use them.
Speaker 2: Are the stakeholders engaged teams? So I'm sure some of
Speaker 2: them are going to be a little fearful right in
Speaker 2: terms of what this date is going to show.
Speaker 18: Absolutely, because it's going to show obviously those who are
Speaker 18: doing a good job and those who are not.
Speaker 13: Right, but absolutely so.
Speaker 18: The oil and gas industry knows that the things are changing,
Speaker 18: transparency will be part of the future. And we're seeing
Speaker 18: also in the financial industry, we're seeing a lot of interest.
Speaker 18: I just spent a lot of time going to many
Speaker 18: of the major financial institutions talking about this, so we
Speaker 18: are seeing engagement, but it's still early days.
Speaker 2: What are the financial institutions want to know?
Speaker 18: They want to know how the data is actionable, right,
Speaker 18: And part of it is a conversation, So we're asking
Speaker 18: what do you need to use it to make more
Speaker 18: informed decisions? And it's not just so we have the
Speaker 18: financial sector, but we also have regulars.
Speaker 8: What do you need to know?
Speaker 9: So we have.
Speaker 18: Multiple different stakeholder groups, including civil society, and we are
Speaker 18: working with those groups to make sure we understand what
Speaker 18: type of data will be most effective for them to
Speaker 18: take the actions they need to take. And that's again
Speaker 18: something no one's ever done before, creating these diverse products
Speaker 18: out of a single data stream.
Speaker 4: What is the action basic in the sense that we
Speaker 4: need to make sure we trap the methane that's being
Speaker 4: released into the atmosphere. Is that at its most fundamental,
Speaker 4: basic level at the point of this.
Speaker 9: Right so there's no need.
Speaker 18: So we know that almost all the emissions that occurring
Speaker 18: from the production of oil and gas don't have to happen.
Speaker 18: The technology exists, The emissions can be reduced cost effectively
Speaker 18: in almost all cases.
Speaker 4: And again we're not talking about the burning of fossil
Speaker 4: fuels as a result of the end user.
Speaker 18: We're talking about the production, the production and the transport.
Speaker 18: Most of it's occurring at the production and so it's
Speaker 18: what we refer to as upstream, and that actually the
Speaker 18: emissions are large enough right now that if you were
Speaker 18: to as I do. I have a natural gas boiler
Speaker 18: in my basement, and if I'm burning that natural gas,
Speaker 18: the impact on the climate over the next twenty years
Speaker 18: of my doing that half of it roughly comes from
Speaker 18: the methane loss before I ever burn it, and half
Speaker 18: from the CO two that's being admitted.
Speaker 2: Stephen, what do you think in terms of the general public,
Speaker 2: if they knew that is happening, like in their own homes,
Speaker 2: how it might change their activity and their actions.
Speaker 18: Well, I think the key is to give them options
Speaker 18: and to make sure that the suppliers of the gas
Speaker 18: are held accountable because you don't. It's it's absolutely clear
Speaker 18: there's a wide difference in these associated emissions, and there's
Speaker 18: nobody producing oil and gas who has to create these emissions.
Speaker 18: This is the technology exists. This is why this is
Speaker 18: not even low hanging fruit. This is fruit on the ground.
Speaker 2: Why haven't they done something? You know, this always blows
Speaker 2: my mind of like doing the right thing. Right, They've
Speaker 2: got to know that they're emitting this into the air.
Speaker 18: So when I started working on this fourteen years ago,
Speaker 18: the companies actually did not know. And as we collected
Speaker 18: data on the ground, not with satellites, there were surprises
Speaker 18: at every corner. And even today, most of the oil
Speaker 18: and gas companies have a very incomplete understanding of how
Speaker 18: much they're being emitted. So the key is to provide
Speaker 18: high quality data. We do not have enough high quality
Speaker 18: data about greenhouse gas emissions across the board.
Speaker 4: Is it just the oil and gas companies or are
Speaker 4: we seeing methane as a byproduct When it comes to
Speaker 4: the decomposition of trash at.
Speaker 18: Landfills, absolutely, so we have to think about all of
Speaker 18: the sources of methane. We focused on oil and gas
Speaker 18: first because of course it is economically so easy to do.
Speaker 13: I mean, it's literally no net cost.
Speaker 8: It's just got to get action.
Speaker 18: But we have to worry about waste and also agriculture
Speaker 18: is a very large source of which enteric fermentation, waste
Speaker 18: from animals, also rice production.
Speaker 9: But again there are tools we can use.
Speaker 8: It's more complicated.
Speaker 18: Because we're talking about many more actors and we're talking
Speaker 18: about a more complex system. But we are working New Zealand,
Speaker 18: who's a partner in the New Zealand Space Agency. They
Speaker 18: have a whole program to collect data from mething SAT
Speaker 18: on agriculture around the world, and we'll again build that
Speaker 18: picture so we can start to get some better action.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that as a partnership. What are the partnerships
Speaker 2: that you already have like in the work so that
Speaker 2: you anticipate are going to be coming in the future
Speaker 2: that will really kind of magnify the impact of this.
Speaker 18: So we have partnerships with the UN Environment Program, the
Speaker 18: International Methane Emissions Observatory, we have partnerships, as I said,
Speaker 18: with New Zealand Space agencies. We're partnering with philanthropic groups, right,
Speaker 18: So the vasos Earf Fund has been an integral part
Speaker 18: of the funding that to make this possible. Because we
Speaker 18: want to be able to provide this free, we also
Speaker 18: have partnership that allow us to get that data out
Speaker 18: into many people's hands.
Speaker 8: Stephen.
Speaker 4: As I mentioned, this was a really big deal when
Speaker 4: the satellite launched back in March. One of the reasons
Speaker 4: it was is because it has a complex set of
Speaker 4: instruments that allow it to see you with no other
Speaker 4: satellite has been able to see before. Talk about the
Speaker 4: tech on board here, like what gives you the power
Speaker 4: to be able to see this through space?
Speaker 18: Well, the real advantage of being here in the United
Speaker 18: States because we're taking advantage of technologies that at the
Speaker 18: very cutting edge, so it's itar protected, right. We have
Speaker 18: all kinds of controls appropriately and so we can provide
Speaker 18: a sensitivity so we can see very very small differences
Speaker 18: in concentration with these very highly specialized detectors. And then
Speaker 18: the kind of technology we have in the ability to
Speaker 18: put it together.
Speaker 13: We worked with Ball Aerospace.
Speaker 18: Now BAE would really the leading instrument maker probably in
Speaker 18: the world. They built the Hubble telescope, the Web telescope
Speaker 18: and really bringing that kind of level of technology and
Speaker 18: working with colleagues at Harvard University and also at Smithsonian
Speaker 18: Astrophysical Observatory. So we just got a lot of really
Speaker 18: smart people leaning in with the world's best technology so
Speaker 18: that we are able to really take the technology a
Speaker 18: major step forward.
Speaker 2: So when do we start to see lots.
Speaker 18: Of data, Well, lots of data will be the beginning
Speaker 18: of next year, but we start seeing data before will
Speaker 18: actually be doing We have an aircraft version and we
Speaker 18: will at the end of the month be actually releasing
Speaker 18: a comparison of oil and gas methane emissions across the
Speaker 18: United States that we collected from the air with a
Speaker 18: very comparable instrument. And then we will be releasing data
Speaker 18: because one of the things we have to make sure
Speaker 18: is that we really are confident that the data is
Speaker 18: solid and that is fully validated, calibrated. So we're taking
Speaker 18: our time because we need to make sure we get
Speaker 18: it right.
Speaker 2: How do you do that? How do you make sure
Speaker 2: because you know they'll ben sayers and probably people challenging you,
Speaker 2: and we do want to make sure you get it right.
Speaker 2: So how do you make sure that the information that's
Speaker 2: collected is accurate.
Speaker 18: So, of course, and we want people to chat just
Speaker 18: as we need to get we're doing something new, you
Speaker 18: want to make sure you get it right, as you said,
Speaker 18: So what do you do? There are sensors around the
Speaker 18: world that actually look up and give you data, and
Speaker 18: you compare what you're seeing down to what's going up.
Speaker 18: We also have data that we've collected in other means
Speaker 18: from places, so we compare our results to those, and
Speaker 18: we also ask because we have to do a lot
Speaker 18: of modeling to get the final result, there's the last step.
Speaker 18: So we already have f teams outside of our team
Speaker 18: taking the data and modeling, and then we compare the results.
Speaker 18: We're right now literally in the middle of a benchmarking
Speaker 18: study working with funding for the National Science Foundation to
Speaker 18: collect very intensive data with aircraft and with the satellite
Speaker 18: so that we can then create a basically a lab
Speaker 18: a laboratory in which people can analyze it and we
Speaker 18: can see how it varies and really learn from each other.
Speaker 4: So if all goes according to plan, what's the conversation
Speaker 4: that we're having ten years from now? Are we talking
Speaker 4: about a decline in the mathane emissions that have been
Speaker 4: released as a result of the imaging technology that you developed.
Speaker 18: Go ten years, five four and two years from now,
Speaker 18: we will have so much more data than well, basically
Speaker 18: we've collected more data in the next two years than
Speaker 18: we've ever collected before. We will have It's like we're
Speaker 18: going to put on a sharp pair of really high
Speaker 18: quality glasses, and greenhouse gas emissions across oil and gas
Speaker 18: will come into focus in a way we've never had.
Speaker 18: We need to replicate that across methane sources and other
Speaker 18: greenhouse gas.
Speaker 8: But are those oil.
Speaker 4: Companies going to just respond by capping their methane and
Speaker 4: mission It's not.
Speaker 18: That's why it's not just me. It's the whole data
Speaker 18: to action pipeline. It has to be about bringing the
Speaker 18: many actors, whether those are financial institutions, governments, investors, policy
Speaker 18: makers collectively. I'm confident because you're already seeing the industry.
Speaker 8: They're not high.
Speaker 9: They're making commitments.
Speaker 18: At the Conference of the Parties last December, fifty two companies,
Speaker 18: mainly national oil companies, all committed to minimizing their oil
Speaker 18: and gas missions. They got ahead of it because they
Speaker 18: realized this is going to affect them well, now we
Speaker 18: will have the data to see great, congratulate them they're
Speaker 18: doing the job, or saying, in fact, you haven't met
Speaker 18: your commitments.
Speaker 2: Just got about thirty seconds LEFTO. So what's still challenging
Speaker 2: though in this mission mission?
Speaker 18: Well, I think the challenging is to provide these kinds
Speaker 18: of high quality data for the first time and make
Speaker 18: sure they're really of that quality. That's challenging the team,
Speaker 18: But everybody's committed. This is a team effort. We have
Speaker 18: people from commercial sector, we have people from academia, we
Speaker 18: have people from government, all leaning in to produce the best,
Speaker 18: highest quality data and provide the very first sector wide
Speaker 18: greenhouse gas emissions profile with empirical data for theirs time
Speaker 18: will actually know what's happening.
Speaker 4: Okay, be honest, did any part If you want to
Speaker 4: ride with that rocket with that satellite, I get motion sickness.
Speaker 8: So no, that's a.
Speaker 9: That's a absolute no.
Speaker 2: Listen. It's one of those things that you need all
Speaker 2: of like public, private, everybody kind of in the game.
Speaker 2: If you will, Stephen, thank you so much. Look forward
Speaker 2: to as the data starts to come out the next
Speaker 2: few months. I'd like they're crucial.
Speaker 8: Thank you for having me, you bet.
Speaker 2: Steven Hamberg, Senior vice president scientist at the Environmental Defense
Speaker 2: Bound Right here at the Bloomberg Green Festival.
Speaker 1: In CM, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast.
Speaker 1: Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern not
Speaker 1: Applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Ad.
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Speaker 4: Long haul international flights are picking up at a record pace.
Speaker 4: According to a Bloomberg Big Take published last summer, international
Speaker 4: air travel's share of CO two output is set to
Speaker 4: climb dramatically as other segments decarbonize, to an estimated twenty
Speaker 4: two percent by twenty fifty from about two percent today.
Speaker 2: All right, that's a big difference. So how do we
Speaker 2: get there? Sustainable aviation? Fuel ev talls or battery powered
Speaker 2: electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft Ernexcus says that the
Speaker 2: only way to get there hydrogen.
Speaker 4: Val Miftakoff is the founder and CEO of zero Avia.
Speaker 4: It's a company that says it's developing the world's first
Speaker 4: zero emissions engines for commercial aviation. He joined us from
Speaker 4: the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle.
Speaker 12: So we develop new generation of engines for commercial aviation,
Speaker 12: large aircraft going long distances taking a lot of passengers.
Speaker 12: So I think the prime solution for that is hydrogen
Speaker 12: is fuel and then hydrogen fuel sales and electric powertrain
Speaker 12: to bring the aircraft into.
Speaker 9: The new future.
Speaker 2: How far can it go?
Speaker 9: It can go?
Speaker 12: Actually, so we have different programs. Yeah, we start with
Speaker 12: a small aircraft and then go larger and larger. The
Speaker 12: largest aircraft so that we can reapower will go the
Speaker 12: same distance as you know London for example, right, So
Speaker 12: we believe that within the next twenty years or so
Speaker 12: we will have engines for aircraft of that size and
Speaker 12: being able to go that type of distance.
Speaker 4: Do you have to build entirely new aircraft or can
Speaker 4: you strap a parodise for.
Speaker 12: Those distances You would have to modify the aircraft. Generally,
Speaker 12: you can get to about half the maximum range off
Speaker 12: the fossil fuel aircraft without modification of the aircraft or
Speaker 12: with minor modifications. Yeah, and that's our first launch will
Speaker 12: be like that. And then we work already with the
Speaker 12: aircraft manufacturers. You know, Airbus is one of our major investors.
Speaker 12: For example, we'll already work with aircraft manufacturers on what's
Speaker 12: called clean sheet design, where they design aircraft around our engines.
Speaker 2: Well why twenty years?
Speaker 12: Well, you know if you look at the current engines, Yeah,
Speaker 12: those beautiful things, huge engines off the wings.
Speaker 9: Of the aircraft from nineteen sixties.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and actually even before that, right, so right after
Speaker 12: the World War Two the first jet engines were.
Speaker 19: Developed, so we had almost one hundred years of development,
Speaker 19: if you will, right, So twenty years is not that
Speaker 19: huge of a time really, right, But it's what takes
Speaker 19: to get to technology up to that level.
Speaker 2: All right, now Mother Earth is calling and saying we're
Speaker 2: running out of time. My point is, if the technology
Speaker 2: is there, is it a case of those engines are
Speaker 2: really expensive, those planes are really expensive, and the cost
Speaker 2: of that changeover is what's holding things back.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's a significant component.
Speaker 12: Yeah, especially in aviation because you know, you look at
Speaker 12: our don't motif market, right, And my previous company was
Speaker 12: in the EV space, electric vehicle space, and there you
Speaker 12: have the lifetime of vehicle is just ten years. And
Speaker 12: we've been already since Tesla delivered more or less, it's
Speaker 12: been already been fourteen years, but we're still below ten
Speaker 12: percent of the fleet, right converted in aviation, it's even worse.
Speaker 12: The lifetime all the commercial aircraft's thirty years. So you know,
Speaker 12: if it will take several generations, then we're not there
Speaker 12: by twenty one hundred, you know, So we need to
Speaker 12: really push from the government side, from the operator side
Speaker 12: for fleet replacement very much.
Speaker 4: Sooner sounds great. You still need to get the hydrogen though,
Speaker 4: Where do you get the hydrogen?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 12: Well, and we're here in Washington State, right, which is
Speaker 12: great because the grad is large and renewable, so we
Speaker 12: believe in breeding hydrogen production. We actually make all of
Speaker 12: our fuel for our testing ourselves.
Speaker 8: So that uses a lot of electricity.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it used a lot of tricy.
Speaker 12: But you need electricity anyway to electrify, right, So you
Speaker 12: need energy, you need primary energy. Now, hydrogen electric approach,
Speaker 12: the approach that we have is the most efficient way
Speaker 12: to use that energy. So think about hydrogen in our
Speaker 12: aircraft is effectually an energy carrier.
Speaker 9: For renewable energy.
Speaker 12: Is that the batteries are to have a fundamentally too
Speaker 12: heavy right, Theoretically you cannot make them light enough for you.
Speaker 9: Can make it a lighter then today.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but it's still not going to be sufficient for
Speaker 12: a large aircraft going long distances. Hydrogen is the best
Speaker 12: carrier of that energy, so nothing else will really work. Right,
Speaker 12: And sustainable aviation fuel you mentioned, Yeah, the small portion
Speaker 12: of that can be made with bio stock by a feedstock,
Speaker 12: but this can repower less than ten percent off aviation.
Speaker 12: For everything else you would have to go what's called
Speaker 12: e fuels, electro fuels which start with green hydrogen and
Speaker 12: then add carbon culture, then adds additional chemical process and
Speaker 12: all that. The cost of that is so much higher
Speaker 12: than utilizing hydrogen and hydrogen electric that we think that,
Speaker 12: you know, we'll have some transition period with biofuels and
Speaker 12: then hydrogen electric is what will take us to the
Speaker 12: real future.
Speaker 2: What do we need in terms of government policy you
Speaker 2: mentioned the government involvement what specifically.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we need and you know we have some
Speaker 9: blooprins the government to lead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have.
Speaker 9: Some blooprint galraty from the ev industry. Right.
Speaker 12: So a lot of the transition was driven by the
Speaker 12: progressive governments like California for instance, right with the low
Speaker 12: carbon fuel standards, with emission standards and then you know,
Speaker 12: there's some examples outside of the US, like Norway for instance. Right,
Speaker 12: great policies to bring ninety percent plus new vehicles being
Speaker 12: sold are electric. So policies like that for fleet modernization
Speaker 12: will be super important. And we are launching our first
Speaker 12: commercial products within the next two years.
Speaker 9: So we're talking to the government saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 9: the technology is there.
Speaker 12: We're now officially in certification with the regulators across the
Speaker 12: world and it will get here before or you know,
Speaker 12: two years, three years out.
Speaker 9: So we need the policies right.
Speaker 4: Now, what does that route look like. We're the operators
Speaker 4: who are taking that plant. Yeah, so we need buy
Speaker 4: in from all constituents here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 12: So we already have over two thousand engines on our
Speaker 12: order book, which is give or take ten billion dollars
Speaker 12: worth of future revenues already pre booked.
Speaker 9: We have announced the production facility actually right here in
Speaker 9: the Everts.
Speaker 12: Our first production facility are going to be in the
Speaker 12: state of Washington, which is straight.
Speaker 8: History.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we're taking over Collins Airspace engine production.
Speaker 9: So it's like a great story, you know, fossil fuel.
Speaker 9: So right, so we already have demands.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 12: So you mentioned the last airlines, right, they're our customer,
Speaker 12: they're our investor. We have United America and British Airways Amazon.
Speaker 12: So ecosystem is already supportive. I mentioned Airbus. Yeah, we
Speaker 12: just signed also the world's largest deal with all three
Speaker 12: mad airports in Canada for example, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto
Speaker 12: plus Airbus and US together to bring them to hydrogen future.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 12: So the ecosystem is getting around this vision. Now will
Speaker 12: need the governments to really push it, help us push it.
Speaker 2: Is that the biggest challenges is it just you need
Speaker 2: the government buy in to be able bit more aggressive
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, and in two ways.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 12: So we are now in certification, which means that we're
Speaker 12: working with government regulators to bring it to the markets.
Speaker 9: And we need the right level of priority to this project.
Speaker 12: And then once it's done, actual help in bringing the
Speaker 12: fleets on.
Speaker 4: Say you're getting on a plane to London. What year
Speaker 4: will that plane be powered by your engines?
Speaker 9: It will be powered. We will have engines like that
Speaker 9: by twenty forty.
Speaker 8: All right, countdown, it's on.
Speaker 2: Not sooner. I told you Mother Earth is come.
Speaker 12: I'm realistic, right, So you know, it's a lot of
Speaker 12: a lot of startups out there. You know they say
Speaker 12: things that they cannot deliver and that they fall on
Speaker 12: their faces.
Speaker 2: You know, well, good to check in look next time.
Speaker 2: Already about Michter, co founder and CEO of zero auvia
Speaker 2: right here at the Green Festival.
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