5 realisations from the World Green Energy Summit

We round up our top five takeaways from the World Green Energy summit.

Trillions is needed to meet climate change targets

“Estimates are in the region of around $100 trillion to be spent over the next 15 years to build infrastructure systems that will enable us to achieve the targets in the Paris Agreement, namely the two-degree [climate change mitigation] goal. Clearly, unlocking that capital is going to be a huge challenge for us all,” Zoë Knight, managing director and group head of HSBC’s Centre for Sustainable Finance, told delegates at the summit.

If all was equal, everyone would choose green

Green entrepreneurs need to make an attractive business case if they are to stand a chance of attracting finance, a panel of experts told the summit.

“If there is a choice between two investments, same return, one of which is a green investment, I don’t think I have met one hedge fund manager who would not choose the green investment,” said Lars Kroijer, founder and CEO of online capital finder AlliedCrowds, which matches projects in the developing world with investors. “They are not intrinsically bad people.”

Don’t focus on green, focus on the returns

“When you meet an investor, you have 10-15 minutes to convince them to invest in you. If you spend all of this talking about the environmental impact then you are going to lose some of them. Talk about the business case first,” said Sam Manaberi, founder and CEO of Trine, a firm which focuses on bringing solar power to developing countries. “Money is not the problem,” he said, “It is proving the risk.”

Planes will have to rely on fuel for some time to come

When people think sustainability they often think of the fossil fuel dependent aviation sector, but this could be one of the last sectors to move away from fuel-based energy solutions as developing the technology is some decades away, the summit heard. “When we started looking at the energy system that will feed our future need for fuel, or the industry’s need for fuel, we realised two things: We were going to need liquid fuels for a very long time and we [will] probably be one of the last sectors that will be using liquid fuels and therefore we want to make sure that those fuels are meeting our strategic needs in the industry,” Darrin Morgan, director of sustainable fuels strategy at Boeing, told the delegates.

Rich countries need to do more

Developed countries must bear more responsibility for climate change and should honour a pledge of $100 billion per year to help developing countries tackle it. “If we don’t help the developing countries to achieve their goals, we are going to suffer more and more from climate change,” Mohamed Mubarak bin Daina, CEO of Bahrain’s Supreme Council for Environment, said during a panel at the summit.

For more info on the World Green Energy Summit click here.