Sustainable Views: Phasing out fossil fuels in a volatile world

Welcome to the Sustainable Views podcast, where we discuss all things sustainability related. My name is Philippa Nuttall, editor of Sustainable Views and your host for today. So today we're going to be discussing the rather complicated issue of phasing out fossil fuels in a volatile world. And with us to discuss this issue, we have Reed Sixeira, executive board member and chief financial officer with EDP, the Portuguese energy company, and Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group. So welcome to you both. Thank you for being with us today to discuss this subject. Obviously, a very timely moment as we're recording this, COP16 is happening, and then we have COP29 coming up in a couple of weeks. And so I wanted to start by asking you both a very similar question. At COP28 last year, world leaders agreed the need to transition away from fossil fuels. And there was this sort of, euphoria that this was potentially the beginning of the end for fossil fuels. But it seems a little bit difficult to see exactly what progress has been made since then. There's a report came out this week that suggested that Azerbaijan is going to bring on more fossil fuels. They're obviously the host of COP29. So perhaps, Helen, where do you see that we're going in terms of fossil fuel phase-out and whether we've made any progress since last year?

Yeah, and then the other bit of bad news we had recently was BP pushing its targets back. I think that we are in a very difficult space. We had this language at COP28. But, you know, unless there are plans that come in that say how those are going to be achieved, then it's hard to see what progress can be made. And while we continue to have, you know, companies saying one thing initially, but then rowing back on those commitments, what we really need to see is these kind of detailed plans about how we transition out of fossil fuel economy. And I think some of those questions are incredibly difficult geopolitical questions around who is selling that that last barrel of oil, and we've got to get into that. So, you know, in a way, what progress would you expect a year later? I don't know. What I'd like to see is that sort of deepening of that discussion. We have seen, you know, Colombia is a fossil fuel exporter. It's announced that it's going to end new coal and oil exploration. But then at the same time, as you say, you know, 3 COP hosts, Brazil, next year, Azerbaijan, UAE, which were last year, all upping their production. So yeah, the signs, the language is right in getting there, but there's a lot to do to deliver on that. And we haven't— we need to see that next level of detailed commitment plans.

Rui, the same question to you then from an energy company point of view. And do you see that there's been any change that goes further than language, or do you sort of agree with what Helen's just said?

Yes. What I would say is that I'm not seeing things going backward, but I also believe that we should see things going faster and going forward, just going faster. And the reason why I say this is I think in our perspective, there is no question that we are having electrification of many economies, obviously the most developed economies, but even the those that are progressing well in terms of their development. If you look to even this report from the World Energy Outlook that came out, I think was right now in October, when you look at 2030, you basically have 10 times more of electrical vehicles than you'll have today. You will have renewables probably reaching about 50% of generation mix as opposed to 30%. And we will have obviously, you know, that implies growth in in terms of the solar installations, wind installations, onshore, offshore. Now, more and more, we are discussing the— so there is this debate about what AI and data center consumptions can actually bring in terms of additional demand for power. And those would have to be supported by green power. So I guess there is not a— at least in my perspective, there is not a fundamental change in terms of what the endgame will be, which is much more of a renewable system and much less of a fossil fuel system. Having said that, I think it's, you know, how quickly can we accelerate that transition is probably what is at stake today.

And in terms of how quickly can we sort of speed up the transition, I mean, do you see from an energy company point of view that there's more of a focus on renewables at COP28? There were these 3 targets. There was the transition away from fossil fuels, but there was also the tripling of renewables and the doubling of energy efficiency. Rui, do you see it's easier in a way for energy companies to focus on the renewable side of it rather than sort of deal with the fossil fuel side of it?

The answer is yes. I will share what sort of challenges we still need to address to actually accelerate that. I think that nowadays, and again, if you look to many economies like Europe, United States, even China, the last number I got was about 600 gigawatts of renewable capacity installed. Half of that was in China. So we can see also how China is really accelerating on this transition. But when we look to the particular markets where we operate in Europe and in the United States, where probably we are seeing the biggest bottleneck or the two bottlenecks is A, all the permitting process. And there has been some improvements implemented, namely in Europe, but not to the point that we can say what can be 10 years from, you know, start of development to end of construction of one of these projects. By the way, the construction will only last for maybe 12 months. So you have 9 years to develop a project in many markets in Europe that needs to be collapsed into a third of that so that we can accelerate really that deployment of new capacity. There's a second bottleneck, which is access to the grid. More and more the grids are not ready or they have not been developing as fast, or there has not been investment as, as, as we would like to actually accommodate all of this new capacity. And the fact that we will have more and more a decentralized nature, both in terms of the demand, which is already part of the, on the, on the supply side with much more of decentralized generation, smaller units to generate as opposed to the large coal stations or the large nuclear stations that still exist today. So I think those are the two main bottlenecks. There's a third one, which I think is not structural. It's more cyclical, which has to do with access to capital. So in moments where interest rates go up, obviously, investors think about the returns and to what extent that may have some limit, or they may limit some access to capital. But as we know, that goes much more in cycles. So as we are now expecting to go in a cycle where interest rates will go down, access to capital will get easier. So I don't see that really as a structural— I don't see that the access to capital will be a structural element. I think it's much more about unlocking both the permitting processes as well as the green investments.

And so Helen, from what Ruiz just said, I mean, those are the issues that you've just raised are more around renewables necessarily than fossil fuel phase-out. I mean, Helen, you were saying that we needed these detailed plans. I mean, do you see from a business point of view that businesses in your network are waiting for governments to come forward with some form of detailed plans so that they know kind of where to go and where potentially funding will come from to help them through the transition. Is that the bottleneck for you or is there something else?

Well, actually, I agree with a lot of what Rhys has just said because, so we run something called the RE100 campaign, which is corporates committed to 100% renewable electricity. And, you know, when they are, you know, they're ready to switch and they often have investment ready to go. But what they're running into is exactly the sort of problems set out there, which is, governments that don't have the plans in place that say— so they've committed to trebling renewables but haven't got into the kind of how we're going to do it. So markets like— we're doing a lot of work in South Korea and Japan, those sorts of markets where there's a lot of companies that have made commitments, but they're finding it really hard to purchase renewables. And those are exactly the sort of regulatory issues raised. So things like in South Korea, solar PV projects are restricted by regulations, things like in a lot a lot of the districts, you can't put solar within 300 meters of residential properties. Well, when you think about how solar has been rolled out, say in Germany or somewhere, it's all on residential properties or on kind of car parks and things. So there's regulations which are on the books for whatever reason. And maybe, I don't know, maybe no one even remembers why that regulation was in place, but it hasn't moved with the times. And I think people are— we did this report we put out at COP28 looking at the G20 and ACE, the countries, and saying what would need, what would you need to triple renewables? And it's all this kind of regulatory kind of siting issues. And I think, you know, one of the things that's happened is the renewable revolution has taken place as we've, you know, at the beginning, it's like, well, if we all kind of put the demand there and with productions there, you know, we'll get the markets clear efficiently, which we know they don't. You run into exactly these problems around grids, permitting and siting. You cited that example there. We're finding exactly that in terms of timing. I heard one example in China, they can actually get, you know, a solar project up within 3 or 4 months, and that would take 3 or 4 years here. That's crazy. So, you know, those are things that governments have to go after. And I think when you say, well, the problem is regulatory, you know, everyone sort of starts to yawn a bit. And, you know, we want it all to be about innovation and capital flows, but these are the kind of real nitty-gritty that governments governments need to do and to work with business because business is ready to invest and is saying to governments, you know, if you move this, then we are ready to invest in renewable electricity. I think that the other issue, and sort of we're getting into that a bit there, is there are two sides to the coin. Well, there's three with energy efficiency, but there's the, you know, renewables can go up and up and up, but we also need fossil fuels to come down. And I do think that is the kind of harder side of the ledger in that sense. Because while electricity demand continues to grow and we need to electrify everything, you do get a lot of discourse, kind of particularly coming out of the fossil fuel industry around energy security and all these things which, you know, are sort of muddying the waters.

Indeed.

Yeah.

And from a business point of view, I mean, what power do you think business has to kind of push regulators in the UK, EU, US, for example, to change? Because we're hearing a lot of discussions at the moment from certain politicians who are kind of saying, well, we can't move too fast on regulation because actually it'll harm businesses. But what you're kind of saying, Helen, is actually businesses would move if the right regulation is in place.

Yeah. And, you know, we recently, you know, we had Climate Week NYC, which Climate Group sort of runs in New York. And there was a report put out by University of Exeter on positive tipping points and sort of particularly looking at what sorts of regulations help and found that to create what they're calling these positive tipping points where sort of markets will move. And that, you know, one of the biggest recommendations is that mandates really, really work. And we've seen that in the electric vehicle space. You know, it's not all about kind of let's change something tomorrow. It's setting out these vehicle mandates that say by this date, then that, you have to have done that by this date, then, and then the combustion engine will be gone. And that then allows the manufacturers to have a very clear route. This is where you've got to get to. You've got this amount of time. This amount of innovation to be done. And if you can set regulation like that, mandates work because they allow businesses to still compete on their competitive edge but give them a kind of clear route into the future, which is the same for everyone. And I think what's difficult is when, you know, in the UK we had, oh, well, we're going for a 2030 end date. People's business models were set around that. Then the government, the last government, for very political reasons, you know, by-election story. Maybe not everyone knows that in the world, but the government had won a local election and it was thought it was all to do with electric vehicles and suddenly moved the end date to 2035. Well, that caused all these other ripples from companies like vehicle leasing companies that need there to be a secondhand market for their vehicles and set their models accordingly. And suddenly they're saying, well, hang on a second, we knew what was coming. We 'Even if they didn't like the date in the first place, at least it was firm.' And that sets all these kind of ripple effects. And actually, the first letter the government got complaining about it was from Ford, who are not like notably the kind of big green car company, as it were. But they were saying, 'Hang on, we knew what was going to happen.' And so what we hear from businesses is consistency, clear timeframes, tell us what you need to do by when, and they're supportive of that sort of regulation.

And Rui, from what you were saying about permitting and grids, I mean, we have seen more work on that, especially at an EU level. The UK as well now is sort of consulting on what it needs to do to make sure it can have clean power by 2030. Do you see there's enough progress being made or how can more progress be made? I mean, is it just because issues like grids and connections and permitting are a bit boring and it's much more interesting to announce a massive wind farm or a nuclear power plant or something? And how can— I mean, is there a way that COP29, you know, this is supposedly an implementation COP now, you know, the negotiations have happened, that globally there can be more of a push to have a focus on issues which are perhaps, you know, traditionally less exciting than, than big, uh, you know, infrastructure projects.

So what I'd say is, I mean, from a political perspective, and, and obviously we'll need to discuss, I mean, there are different political standings depending if you're talking about Europe, US, and China, South America. So I mean, one side does not fit all, but let me just address US and as, as well as, as Europe. What we saw in Europe, I think, was really good because Europe and the European Commission basically said for different reasons, because of climate change, to actually be an engine or a lever to recover the economy from the post-COVID, on the post-COVID moment. And even more recently, because of security of supply, given the dependence on Russian gas and the invasion in Ukraine, basically Europe set a very ambitious target. To get to 2040, 2050 with effectively a system that would be substantially supported by renewables. And therefore, that phase out of fossil fuels— by the way, the coal phase out is happening as we speak. The gas phase out, we all believe that has to be a transition because gas will have to be there. But there's a transition, not necessarily structural for the future. And it's, it's already good that we have those, I would say, high-level ambitious targets. And even when we translate that into these, the national defined contributions, I think it's really good because each member state is committing to a specific target. I mean, if you compare also with the US, US is different. US is not that they set out a federal target, but the Inflation Reduction Act basically set a, a very comprehensive framework about how to support a growth in renewables that would allow for reduction in greenhouse gases. And then at each state level, for many, many years, they already have what is called a renewable portfolio standard. That is basically the definition that what is the level of renewables penetration that each utility has to comply with. So I would not be extremely focused on revisiting those targets. I think they are already ambitious enough. What the states have to do is what internally each one has to internally, but not disconnected. So this has to be in Europe, has, should be really a pan-European. Even in the US, we should have a federal view, definitely on the, on the transmission side, on the, on the grid side. So then is what needs to be done from a member state perspective within the context of the pan-European view. About how do we accelerate the permitting because the permit goes all the way down to the community level. So it's not about a state definition or state level definition for 2030, '40, '50 target. It's really about what then needs to change within the administration structure so that you go all the way down to the community, to the municipalities, and therefore so on. So my point being that that should be the focus, what each state needs to do to actually accommodate the faster response time on the permitting side. When we have a clear framework about the regulation, about the rules, we react to that. And the business tends to be super rational, super value-driven. So from a business perspective, we'll accelerate investment and we'll make our business investment decisions if we have clarity on how that is progressing. If we don't have that clarity, then of course we retract. So I think that business will be there as long as we really work from a state member state level, both governmental in the administration as well as on the regulatory side.

Okay. And you mentioned the idea that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. What differences did you see within the different countries? So especially in terms of between emerging markets and sort of Europe or the US and how the fossil fuel phaseout should be, should be managed.

Yeah. So the data that we have is that emerging markets and again, China is not an emerging market, but by nature it's a very growth-driven market and as I said, is actually leading right now in terms of renewables installation, but they account for only about 15% of the clean energy. So the first comment is, yes, there is a lot yet to be done to bring the emerging markets to the point where we would see them as a real contributor. Secondly, the— so at the end of the day, this is a capital-intensive business. We are investing in infrastructure. Different type of infrastructure, broad concept. So how the business risk is perceived is really important. And we have been— at least I have been advocating for this— is that we will have emerging markets where development banks, either regional development banks or global development banks, they will need to play a very important role to provide that perhaps that layer of certainty or mitigation of risks that any investor might not be 100% comfortable just considering what is the country risk profile and the context of that developing market. So what I would say is that in order to bring those developing countries into this equation, and they will be super relevant, it's going really— at the end, it will boil down to how investors will be comfortable to actually make substantial investment decisions in a type of asset that you cannot carry away if something changes into the future. So that's why I think that we'll have an important role also from development banks.

Great. Thanks. And Helen, coming to you now, in terms of, I mean, we're discussing phasing out fossil fuels in a volatile world. Both of you, I think, have mentioned, you know, the potential business risks, the need for energy security. Rui mentioned the need to keep the lights on. Do you see that businesses are perhaps less sure or less confident than they were before to take risk in terms of phasing out fossil fuels because of the general sort of geopolitical insecurities we're seeing and they're not sure what's going to happen next? Or does that have less of an impact on what they're doing with their energy policies than more sort of nitty-gritty things like grid accession, etc.?

Yeah, I don't know. It's quite hard to answer because I don't really hear a lot where it's like, well, we're going to wait and see. I think the kind of direction of travel is pretty clear. And then the other thing we hear a lot is, you know, global companies saying, well, actually, we're driven by EU regulation. So you might be a US company, but you're still, you know, responding to regulation from the EU or you're an Asian company. It's got to think about CBAM. So, you know, those are the sorts of things that are tending to be driving action. But I think then what's happening is companies saying, well, we don't know, you know, maybe how do we meet our energy demands? And I think that is— you're seeing some sort of, from the leaders, some sort of kind of exploration. We've had some kind of announcements recently from the States around nuclear, which is quite interesting coming from companies, right, saying, well, we need to look at this. So I think you're seeing a bit more of of that rather than necessarily companies holding off because they've got obligations. Now, the energy companies are a different matter. I'm talking about the work that we do is on the demand side of the market and trying to understand how they're going to meet needs and where supply is coming from.

And how do you work with businesses in terms of that matching of demand and supply side sort of measures in terms of phasing out fossil fuels? I mean, you mentioned before BP's pushing back, Equinor's profits out of oil and gas today are absolutely enormous again. You know, is there a concern from the company side that the energy companies are not shifting as quickly as they need them to shift to sort of phase out fossil fuels?

Yeah, again, so the work that we do is on the demand side and the commitment specifically. We've got two, we have a commitment to renewable electricity, RE100, and we've just started doing some work on what's called 24/7, which is how do you, I mean, kind of how do you match your energy demand with 24/7 carbon-free sources, which is a kind of leading group. And I think for companies in there, they are much more focused on renewable energy purchase than they are sort of saying, you know, getting into that fossil fuel phase-out piece, if that makes sense. And I think that is a bit the problem we've got is that, you know, those things are sort of slightly held separately at the moment. And I think that means that maybe there isn't the pressure that there ought to be on the fossil fuel companies because it's a bit like, well, let's get focused over here. Now, you know, cost and price signals are going to then play into that as we wind through the transition, which will be difficult.

Indeed, yeah. And Rui, as an energy company, how do you sort of see this match between, you know, the increasing renewables and the phasing out of fossil fuels? You've mentioned the very sort of concrete issues in terms of grid connections, but what more generally in terms of sort of the ethos of a company or the actual, you know, signals? Is it EU regulation that's going to push this change? Is it pricing within the markets? I mean, obviously at the moment companies are making a lot of money out of fossil fuels, but a lot of people say that's just, you know, post-COVID effect. And then actually, you know, renewables, it will become more affordable. So, so yeah, what do you see as really being the sort of touchpoints here to move the discussion more within the energy companies towards a phase-out of fossil fuels and not just this focus on renewables?

Yeah.

So let me just give you one data point. So if you look to earnings, so net profit in 2023, and you rank all the oil and gas European companies, oil and gas companies, I mean the major ones, the smallest of those, so the one that ranks the lowest is more, their net profit is higher than the net profit of all the electrical utilities if you sum all of those in 2023. So it's just to see how massive this, I mean, you have in terms of the earnings generation at oil and gas as opposed to the power companies. And a big part of that is because you do have also some regulation that actually it does not allow for additional earnings to be captured by the power business. And the reason why I'm highlighting this is I think it's not— so if at some point companies are looking much more to the short, medium term, I understand that the focus is likely to be on create value from fossil fuel business. If you actually start looking to the long term, you say no, actually there is— we need to invest much more and more in the renewables, into the— and into the transition. So my view is that what we will currently— and again, this has been a longstanding debate, which is whether you're solving for the short term or you're really solving for a more fundamental view, a more long-term view and therefore how you have to, to, to, to accelerate that transition. In the US has been always different. Oil and gas companies, as they have always stated, we are not in the renewables business. We are in a fossil fuel business. And that's how we will remunerate our shareholders. In Europe, we have seen waves. I mean, there are moments in time where you see the oil and gas sector moving into the renewable space and then exiting, and probably they will come back again because I do believe that not only about— it's not only about the regulation, as you were just asking, but also really about consumer behavior. So there is an important reason why you see the technology companies all saying that whatever data center they will bring online, they want to make sure that they will meet their carbon positive targets or carbon neutral targets, depending on the company. And they will need to meet that by having additional renewable capacity to supply for their energy needs. In the US, we have even more recently seen these tech companies dealing and having long-term contracts with nuclear facilities. It's not a renewable, those are existing facilities. It's more towards the clean rather than the green aspect of it. But the reason why this is happening is not because of regulation. I mean, in some countries there will be regulatory restrictions, for example, Singapore. A data center to be a new data center to be built or to be approved will need to show that is being sourced 100% green. So there will be some, you'll have some markets where there is some, some regulation actually forcing that the transition, but it's also about consumer behavior because the reason why data centers and tech companies are basically saying we want to be carbon neutral or carbon positive and therefore we are only contracting 100% green power to supply our needs is really because they see, they see that as a positive in terms of how they position themselves towards different segments of consumers. So I would say that is more the reality in developed economies, may not be that much in emerging markets, but in Europe, United States, and some other OECD countries, I'm sure that is also driving this transition.

Great. Now, it's really interesting, the force that consumers potentially have. So, I mean, obviously you've mentioned the EU, the US, but obviously this is a global transition that needs to happen. You know, emissions need to come down everywhere, which means fossil fuels need to be phased out everywhere or phased down. Do you see a role for the UNFCCC or the COP process to help move this process along? I mean, we have the agreements that are made, but they're obviously non-binding. The NDCs are essentially non-binding. So countries are signing up to certain pledges, but actually, you know, what's being implemented may be quite different from what's signed up to in these pledges. And so now we're sort of in this implementation phase. And there is quite a lot of discussion or increasing discussion about whether COP should be reformed in some way. I mean, do you see that there is something that could be done differently to move the fossil fuel phase out along globally?

Yeah. I mean, just also Taking a view on these COPs, I mean, the COPs at the end of the day, they are still a really important moment when you actually have countries committing. And, you know, we can debate if the commitment is strong enough or if the commitment is ambitious enough. But we have seen that trend. I mean, if you think about the evolution that we have pre-COP15 and or the Paris COP to what we will have now, I mean, what we had last year in in Dubai and right now that we'll have this COP 29. I mean, there has been progress. I mean, if you look, the trend is actually a positive one. So what I would still expect that, you know, having these sort of commitments from the different states globally is really important. Then the discussion really goes into, you know, if you have the main economies again, if you have Europe, if you have China, if you have US, if you have Brazil really delivering on these high-level targets, it will be a matter of time until you basically also bring everybody on board. To me, the big discussion is how fast are we doing that and if we can accelerate that or not. I don't think that we will get that from the COP itself. Then it has to be much more on the regional level and then at the country level. To really get that implemented.

Great, thanks. And Helen, the same question.

My sort of glib answer is like misquoting Voltaire: if COP didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. You know, I think if you look at the kind of counterfactual, if we hadn't had Paris, we would have been in a much worse trajectory, right? So it has this moment, it's a kind of forcing moment of coming together. And I do worry in the, you know, you hear this in the discourse, well, if COP was better, then we'd be okay, or if this was, you know, if 'If climate activists were more polite or less polite,' you know, so it's never the fault of everyone else. It's that we haven't sort of set the architecture up correctly. This is a really kind of complex, you know, is the problem of the age kind of thing. And it's a really complex thing to solve. And yeah, COP is not perfect. It's not much fun. But, you know, I think it's probably better than not having it at all. And certainly I wouldn't want us to see a load of energy put into governance at this point. So I think you've got to take what you've got, which is that process, and use it the best you can. And I think there are, there are some things that have improved it, you know, sort of having the kind of champions. We're doing a lot of work on something called CHAMP, which is about bringing national governments together with subnational governments and saying that, you know, the national government needs to listen to its subnational partners— cities, states, regions, and so on— in order to drive implementation, because actually a lot of it will happen at the local level. So I think it is just about taking the architecture we have and utilizing it as best we can rather than sort of spending a lot of time navel-gazing.

And that idea of really using it the best we can, I mean, you've mentioned governments being brought together with subnational governments, but the other sort of, you know, if you could wave a magic wand and sort of, you know, force something to happen in Azerbaijan next month, you know, are there a couple of things that you would make happen that you think would really sort of move forward on the fossil fuel phase-out?

Yeah, I mean, the things that we're sort of looking for is that point. So one of our asks is really that governments talk to their sub-nationals and we're sort of setting up meetings and so on to sort of bring them into that and allow the sub-nationals and their ambition to drive stronger NDCs. We are looking, and I know there's a lot of focus on finance, so we're supporting that call for a post-25 climate finance goal. And then kind of more specifically, we're doing work around increased ambition on methane. So at Climate Week NYC, we put out a global to-do list, so 7 actions for the next year. And we're still talking about that because I think we think there were things like set up an international body to regulate methane that's actually got to audit and look at emissions and actually would have some teeth, calling for real credible energy efficiency targets, both at the kind of governmental level and the business level, because there's— we're trying to get from these global, you know, big, big picture down to what are the specific things that governments or companies can be doing.

And Rui, what would, what would you be sort of your wish list if you were in charge of what was going to happen at COP29? What would you wish to see changing?

I mean, I always look at these COPs as a moment where obviously you have the government election. I think it's really important that more and more there is a a much more interactive or much more iterations between governments, the financing, the business, you know, regular and government. I'm also considering that there will be some regulators within those, I mean, within that group. But the reason I'm highlighting this is that, I mean, we, we see this COP not only as a moment where governments commit, but also where businesses commit. And you see, you know, forming alliances. You see, you know, different sectors getting together about what sort of targets, what sort of goals can we consider as a business, as a sector. You see the, on the financing side, on the capital side, you know, how equity markets, public equity, private equity, banks, they can also join and commit to And I think really the strength comes from that, from, from these moments where actually people get together to discuss how we will be implementing. Again, I would not say that I'm not expecting that in COP29 we will have sort of a plan to accelerate any fossil fuel reduction. But as long as we stick with the goal still is there. So we need to bring this, you know, to carbon neutral, to carbon positive. How we are going to do that. Again, bearing these different perspectives— government, business, financing. That's what I think is really the best that we can extract from these COPs.

Okay, so we keep plodding along and hope that everything comes together in the end. Okay. Thank you very much for speaking to me today and being with us. That was a really interesting discussion. And let's see what happens at COP29. The Sustainable Views podcast today was recorded in conjunction with the progressive business coalition We Mean Business. Us. If you wish to listen to any of the other Sustainable Views podcasts or to read any of our news and views, please go to sustainableviews.com.