The business of climate change : the pitch!

Hello there ladies and gentlemen, how are you?

 I hope life has been pleasant and kind to you. I trust and verily hope that you have been keeping well and have learnt a thing or two about life in these few months we have been on break.

 I hope that for you aspiring way makers, change makers have learnt that it’s not all partying and wasting your life away. Have you observed that life is a canvas for you to paint your life story on? It is a teacher, a professor if you will, that teaches and instructs at her own pace and dishes, doles out her snippets as she sees fit.

Therefore, we learn at our pace and each his lesson. Imbibe the wisdom

Right! Ladies and gentlemen you are now young adults. We all do remember how as children we all craved to have the freedom to make our own choices and live by them. As you well understand by now, freedom has to be hard fought; it never is given easily – even the freedom to decide how your life should be.

That is why we as the youth of the world have to forcefully make our voices heard regarding the matter of our future as well as that of our home planet Mother Earth, the Queen Herself. What do I mean by this? Well, we need to create a movement with a booming voice, one that can capture the world’s attention both by its loud sound and by the sense it makes. It is common knowledge that the internet is where our peers are to be found and one of the ways to engage these powerful young minds is on social media. To this end, we (i) now have a hashtag on Twitter known as #youthandclimate around which conversations about the youth’s role in #ActOnClimate are centered.

 I invite you all to participate in the discussion and to give you a little zest, pizzazz I say, ‘I am because we are, and we are because I am’. This is the motto of Ubuntu, an African concept that can be translated to brotherhood or comradeship in English. In other words, we move forward with the participation of the entire team because each of us is a cog or a wheel without which we cannot proceed.

Today’s topic will focus on something close and dear to our hearts, that is, money. Part of freedom means having enough money to support the kind of life you wish to lead. So today, we are going to talk about the business side of #Climatechange and the opportunities found therein.

A lot of us young people are business oriented and especially here in Africa where youth unemployment is a real problem. We have to be the solutions for our own problems and as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Now let it be noted down that we are all in agreement that:

Ø For the sake of our future, we have to be climate friendly.

Ø  Nowadays, any business that does not in some way or another use technology is a rarity.

Ø  And that we need to make money.

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So to start us off, I’d like to point out some of the opportunities to be found in this area.

Let’s start with what I like to call the cap and trade system. (Haha! Kidding. It already had that name but I came along for the ride!). A cap and trade system is whereby the amount of greenhouse gas emissions (this is measured in carbon dioxide equivalent) a business or entity produces by its activities is capped i.e. for a certain period you can only emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases – ‘cap’. Beyond that you will either be fined or you have the chance to buy more emission reductions from another company thus ‘trade’.

An emission reduction is whereby as a business, your activities either absorb CO2/ other ghgs[1] from the atmosphere e.g. forestry, or your business activities take the place of other activities that would produce substantially far more greenhouse gas emissions. That is either zero emission or negative emissions. For example, something that would qualify is maybe a geothermal project used in electricity generation taking the place of a thermal/diesel power plant.

A geothermal power plant does not produce greenhouse gases but a thermal power plant burning either diesel, gas or coal would produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct of combustion. 

Hence a geothermal power plant would qualify for a cap and trade system. It would get a number of emission reduction units and these can then be traded with other carbon polluting entities for money.

But this new project with a lower amount of emissions in some cases has to demonstrate something known as additionality.[2]

Another way this works is; Businesses participating in these systems are allotted a permit or a number carbon credits. If say, business A does not use up all its carbon credits, then it can sell the unused credits to business B which will then have effectively bought the right to pollute further (more than its permit allows)

Internationally there are various markets where these carbon credits/emission reduction units are then sold e.g. the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, as well as the State Of California Cap and Trade System (Uh, this is for Californians only, so you better move there if you want a piece of the pie) In Australia (New South Wales), New Zealand, South Korea etc.

Basically, what you are buying is the ‘right to pollute’ or the ‘right to emit’. To carbon pollute.

Whether this system has been of value or been impactful to the actual global climate in a positive manner remains a matter of heated debate.

A little information to note: We are as of now, at 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, only 0.4 degrees from the rise of 1.5* set by the Paris Agreement 2015.

Right to continue! If a creative young fellow could come up with a way that actually reduces emissions using a variety of methods, then we have a veritable business that is climate friendly.

And then, if we could all adopt these methods, that is, if we would all universally lower our emissions instead of waiting or paying others to do so for us, perhaps we would stride bigger and better when it comes to combatting climate change.

We make money and save the planet.

Another massive opportunity lies in renewable energy sector. The renewable energy sector has been growing exponentially for some time now and is more than making up for the job losses occasioned by the dipping fossil fuel sector.

There is a good business opportunity for architects and urban planners here. A lot of local authorities throughout the world are now demanding that new buildings be constructed with ecological considerations in mind. Old buildings are being retrofitted to suit the new standards.

In other words, we are more into sustainable habitats.

If you are starting a business, think of designing the building in such a manner that it can generate the energy needed or naturally cool itself. This would reduce both the bills paid for electricity from the grid and the amount of power used.

For example, installation of solar panels on the roof of a business premises could provide the required energy to power the business activities.

One can sell excess power to the mainstream grid for a profit. A pretty penny. Let’s for a moment focus on Africa, home in on Kenya. This beautiful blessed country of ours enjoys a massive quota of the sun’s lovely rays, and we are wont to receive more of its light and fire power given that long droughts are slowly becoming the norm.

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Come to think of it, there’s a silver lining in every cloud. It is possible to generate such vast amounts of electricity that we can sell some to our neighbors.

There is also opportunity to be found in building solar and wind farms, a lot of technicians and engineers are needed to actualize this vision especially here in our sunny Africa blessed with sparsely populated acres and acres of semi-arid and arid land.

A young architect gifted and skilled in planning buildings and entire habitations can be very useful and in high demand in this brave new world which is just by the way starting to open up. Take it and ride the wave. Run with it. Be the first of the pioneers.

Hotels can use food waste as a way to generate power from methane gas instead of dumping the uneaten food materials in landfills and warming the climate.

If you as a young person look at this as an opportunity and takes advantage of it to start a business or provide your skills as a solution, then you can both benefit yourself and the planet.

But I would also like to mention that fortune favors the brave, the bold. So put your mind to work, think about it, innovate, and take advantage of situations to create solutions to what other people see as problems.

There are also opportunities to be found in green financing. This is for young sharks who are interested in climbing up the ranks and controlling where the money goes. Green financing means using financial tools such as bonds, grants, loans to finance green projects such as clean energy and increasingly clean tech. This helps a lot in helping to mitigate/adapt to climate change and still brings the necessary financial returns.

A good deed and a good account aye! Not so!?

Be a positive force, an influence to reckon with. Think of Tesla’s Elon Musk.

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[1] Greenhouse gases

[2] Is the project purposely ‘carbon friendly?’ i.e. when compared to the scenario that would have taken place before the ‘carbon friendly’ project, does it actually vastly reduce emissions, on purpose?