Dr Gabrielle Walker: Unleashing capitalism on climate change

Dr Gabrielle Walker, founder and director of Valence Options

Dr Gabrielle Walker is an knowledgeable environmental strategist and the founder and director of Valence Options. She works with world corporations at boardroom-level, analysing rising developments, difficult typical pondering and driving significant motion. Via its partnership with the UNFCCC Excessive Stage Champions for Local weather Motion, Valence Options participated in lots of COP26 occasions in Glasgow. Dr Walker can be a TED speaker, the writer of 4 books and has introduced quite a lot of TV and radio programmes. She is the closing keynote speaker on the GBTA Sustainability Summit going down in Brussels this month.

BTN Europe: We’ve a critical problem on our palms to scale back carbon emissions globally and aviation has an enormous function to play in that. The place are we on that journey?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: In the meanwhile aviation is an enormous problem – together with many different so-called “hard-to-abate” sectors like heavy business and transport. Mainly we don’t but have technological local weather options on the scale we’d like. I believe we have to speed up funding in alternate options corresponding to electrical and hydrogen-fuelled planes, and we additionally must look a lot tougher at how the aviation business can speed up the event of a large-scale carbon removals business.

BTN Europe: Carbon offsetting, sustainable aviation
gasoline, hydrogen-powered plane, electrical plane… what’s aviation’s
long-term, sustainable future going to look?
Dr Gabrielle Walker:
I believe it is going to appear to be a mixture of all of those, with a gradual
transfer in direction of hydrogen, electrical and carbon removals. Notice that I don’t
assume conventional offsetting actually helps right here. It’s not about paying
another person to keep away from their emissions. Any further the one strategy to be
actually web zero is to scale back as a lot as attainable of your emissions, and
pay to take away what you possibly can’t cut back.

BTN Europe: You speak about ‚unleashing capitalism on local weather change‘. Are you able to elaborate on that?
Dr Gabrielle Walker:
Companies and the capital markets are essential in relation to fixing
local weather change. Capital markets will drive the finance the place it’s
wanted, and companies would be the supply arms of the options. Whereas
governments are necessary to set the enabling coverage, give a measure of
certainty for the enterprise fashions and degree the taking part in fields, and
civil society want to provide the companies their customized, assist,
problem and licence to function, I believe the one means local weather options
can scale on the tempo we’d like is that if companies take a number one function.

BTN Europe: Do you assume corporates are waking as much as their environmental duties? Are present reporting necessities enough?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: I do assume many corporates are waking up. Two years in the past nearly no person had a dedication to web zero emissions on the newest by 2050 and now greater than 80 per cent of world GDP turbines have both their very own web zero goal or are primarily based in a territory with one. However present reporting necessities are nowhere close to enough. There’s an excessive amount of confusion and a scarcity of requirements and methodologies depart an excessive amount of room for gaming the system and greenwashing. We have to get quite a bit smarter about this.

BTN Europe: For a lot of corporations, enterprise journey accounts for a major share of not solely their Scope 3 emissions however their total carbon footprint. Grounding all enterprise journey will not be real looking, so what measures can companies take to scale back the environmental influence of their journey exercise?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: Take trains or different alternate options to flying the place attainable, solely do the journeys which are actually mandatory, and select lodges and native transport with local weather in thoughts. Loads of lodges are massively decreasing their emissions and water, and there are rising choices for electrical autos. When you could have diminished journey emissions as a lot as attainable, pay to take away the remaining.

BTN Europe: Flying for enterprise is commonly mandatory however leisure journey is extra discretionary. Ought to we be pondering extra fastidiously about our personal private decisions?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: I believe we should always all be pondering fastidiously about all of our decisions. However even private journey brings many advantages together with to the elements of the world that depend upon tourism. That’s why it’s necessary to speed up the tempo of decarbonisation on this sector. It is a transition.

BTN Europe: Lengthy-distance and high-speed rail journey is getting rising assist from some European governments. Would you prefer to see extra of that?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: A lot, way more! Not solely is that this sustainable, it’s additionally a stunning strategy to journey. I might take a prepare over a aircraft any day if I might.

BTN Europe: What’s your message to enterprise journey professionals?
Dr Gabrielle Walker: We have to look local weather change within the eye, not ignore it. After which put all of our efforts into discovering and scaling the options. Enterprise journey is usually a huge a part of this by supporting the suppliers which are taking local weather change severely and have a superb local weather plan with quick, medium and long-term targets. And particularly by supporting the event of the brand new applied sciences – in aviation and in carbon removals – that we might want to get to web zero in time.