PURPOSE, INC.

Michael Young:

Welcome to the Purpose, Inc., the podcast where we discuss corporate purpose and stakeholder capitalism. I'm your host, Michael Young.

My guest today is Heather Clancy, Vice President and Editorial Director at GreenBiz Group. GreenBiz is the must-read media platform that examines climate change and other global environmental issues as threats to business and society. Heather is an award-winning journalist who chronicles the role of technology in enabling corporate climate action and transitioning to a clean, inclusive, and regenerative economy. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune, The International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times. And Heather, in your work, you're both tech positive in that you see tech as a solution to the climate crisis, but I'd also say you're a clear-eyed skeptic in that tech won't solve all our problems without corporate ethics, government action, systemic social change. And I hope that's a fair reading. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Heather Clancy:

Well, thank you for having me here. And I do think that's a clear reading, although only more recently have I gotten over to the place where I can be a skeptic. I will say that I do have a Pollyanna tendency. I see the good in everything but have been more lately just recognizing the systemic and societal changes that need to occur in order for the technology to actually do what it's supposed to do. So I appreciate that you recognize that I'm moving in that direction.

Michael Young:

Well, I think we all are indeed because there's no question there's a need and a desire and a rapid need, but not everything that's been laid out has really come to pass and come to promise. So maybe just to kind of dip into that, how are you thinking about the intersection between sustainability and social justice and environmental justice? And I know that's a very large surface area. But like how are you thinking about that now post-pandemic, post-George Floyd, post everything we've heard about net zero commitments, on and on and on?

Heather Clancy:

Yeah. So there's a couple of different paths I can take us down with that answer. So I will start first with the realization during the pandemic that the sustainability profession which I admire and I obviously cover, I think corporations have a huge role to play in addressing climate change. After all, they're the ones that kind of got us into the situation, and many of them recognize that they need to be part of the solution. But I think one of the things that became just vividly clear during the racial justice awakening, if you will, was that this sustainability profession is not diverse. I mean I'm not going to start spouting statistics because I don't have them at my fingertips. But just suffice to say that the people that are being affected by climate change in communities around the United States and around the world tend not to be the ones holding the roles within corporate America that are coming up with the policies for addressing climate change. So that for me was a big sort of aha moment, was just understanding that we have a lot of very well-meaning environmentalists in some cases pushing solutions and ideas and technologies into places without having conversations with those communities about what they really want, first of all, but what would be appropriate in those communities. So that for me was one of the big realizations and revelations of that moment. And for me, that means that the sustainability profession needs to be a whole lot more about the S, the social, right?

So sustainability and environmental, social, and governance are the two themes that are really kind of being talked about a lot in corporate America right now. So you have the whole ESG, environmental, social, and governance movement, and that's what the investors are calling for. They want to see more issues and policies and procedures and processes in the companies they're investing in. But a lot of the metrics and everything that are available and that the sustainability movement has focus on is really the E part of that, the environmental part, right? So a lot about compliance and regulations and so forth. There isn't as much on the social side, and that's where for me the intersection really needs to happen, is we need to not only address those communities, but we need to include those communities in the solutions. And so that’s how I see this this playing out right now at this moment.

Michael Young:

Yeah, yeah. Great. And I think back to the sort of splashy commitments that have been made over the past couple of years, I think we on this podcast talk a lot about say-do ratio and accountability and really putting not just a PR stake in the ground but actually changing business models and changing executive compensation and really looking at the systemic issues, whether that's in the financial world or in just straight up extractive industries, etc., etc. And just from where you sit as a writer and editor and thinker in this space, like how would you calibrate the information that's coming at you from corporations? Is there sufficient introspection? Do those organizations really see maybe the gaps and the flaws of their arguments? Or are they just kind of coming at you with we're all about racial justice and social justice? And then I think the famous counter to that is please post a photograph of your board of directors, right?

Heather Clancy:

Yep, yep.

Michael Young:

So how's the flow of information to you as someone who I'm sure gets a lot of that?

Heather Clancy:

So I could parse a couple things here. One is that I think corporations are realizing that they can no longer speak in estimates and in approximate reduction. If you're talking about greenhouse gas reductions, I mean the reality is—and you and I both have the technology world in our background—but a lot of this stuff is still done on spreadsheets, and it's not very systemic within the organization. It's not part of the operational ethos. It's not embedded into the enterprise software. The good news is that there's a lot of tools coming out that will allow more for that real-time access to data. The bad news is right now still a lot of it is guesstimates, right?

So I think the first thing to realize is that yeah, when companies are coming out with these big, bold commitments, a lot of the time—and I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing—a lot of the time they're doing them as kind of like an aspirational thing, right? So that's where they want to get to. How they're going to get there is less clear. And so when I get bombarded with commitments, my first thing, my first course of action is to look at what are all the short-term goals towards that longer-term commitment. So I look very carefully at the actual road map and how realistic that road map is and what metrics they're using to get there. Like so what organizations are they working with? Are these targets based on science, right? So have they actually calculated what their impact is by industry, by their location, and so forth? And how did they calculate that? Are they using one of these newer tools that’s out there now, one of these newer software applications or platforms? Or are they just kind of, like I said, guesstimates? So that's one of the things that I look at.

I do think that there is more realization from the corporate world now that they are going to get called on things, especially in Europe, right? Where there are regulations about greenwashing. It is harder to make a commitment without actually having the real plan in place. In the United States, it's still a little easier to do that. You can just kind of say, we're going to do this and we hope we can get there. And I think it's incumbent upon journalists and activists to call people on that, to call the companies on those commitments. And you're seeing much more of that. You’re seeing a lot lots of people following the money trail, right? So okay, you say you do this, but hey, you put your money over here. Like what does that mean? So that's kind of where I am right now. My arc of my career as I moved away from the Pollyannaish to the I am going to look far more skeptically at any claim that comes out. So that's how I filter my inbox.

Michael Young:

Nice. That's great. Well, and I think you mention or you unpack the dimensions that tech plays. One you talked about which is just better software, better tools that can aggregate and give everyone a clear picture. And I think that's a huge opportunity. I think maybe we could dip into some of the positive innovations that are coming out of tech because there are a lot, EVs and carbon capture and many, many, many tech companies are focused on positive solutions. And I think we'd be remiss not to talk about some of the negative externalities of tech as it relates to climate. And I'm not just talking about massive data centers that are sucking out tons of electricity, but some of maybe the false flags that have been put out there. And I mean I think Web3 yet to be determined, but it doesn't seem to have much utility beyond a lot of hype. So maybe just unpack that if you would.

Heather Clancy:

Yeah. So there's several things that I'll try to unpack here. So first of all, I already kind of alluded to the information technology that is coming out at this time in the form of better analytics, artificial intelligence, accounting systems, if you will, even if something basic, that is super important for where we are in this moment. So from an accounting standpoint, it gets the data more real. It's tied to actual systems of records. It's tied to actual transactions. And we really do need these tools, and you're going to see I think a huge probably consolidation in that space. There's a lot of startups, a lot of startups there that have received millions if not billions of dollars of funding over the past like say five years. And now you have all the big enterprise software companies also going after the space. So SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, others are really focusing in on these systems of record for companies. So that's one thing, right?

As far as the Web3 moment, if you will, I think there's actually kind of some interesting potential applications I haven't quite worked through my head yet. But if you think about blockchain. So I'll give you two examples here. One is blockchain. So the blockchain ledger that underlies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, that system is potentially important for supply chains, right? So to get to trace, if you will, the prominence of a thing all the way up through to the corporation. And that's one of the trickiest parts of dealing with climate change right now is that scope 3, the stuff that's in your supply chain that you don't control but that in many cases is a huge majority of a corporation's emissions footprint, all of these business partners along the way. So I feel like there is definitely potential for that type of technology to play a huge role in there. And to just take that a little bit further, it also plays a role in helping some of the, if you will, unbanked, the people at the end of these supply chains that aren't getting credit for their role to be maybe paid in a different way. So if you think about maybe a decentralized way of making sure that a waste picker, if you will, someone who's picking up plastic in an emerging economy could be compensated for that and recognized in a way that they're not recognized now. And further, to just take this traceability and this credit a way of creating value, you could also see this playing a role in maybe carbon markets, right? So if you turn a carbon credit into a verifiable token of some sort, there could be a more disciplined form of trading for those markets. And so that could be a that could be a place where that plays a role. So that's something on the whole like information technology web side.

On the applied technology side—and this is where you get into things that are questionable, right? You mentioned electric vehicles. The big one, the big hot button right now for many climate activists is carbon capture technology. Like their thesis is we don't want this stuff. It perpetuates the fossil fuels economy, right? We don't need these things. Why are you investing in these things? They're bad. They’re a distraction. They’re not helping. I am in the middle on this one. I can see that point. However, the fact remains that we are not going to just flip off these fossil fuels plants right away. They are going to be operating for a number of years into the future because you can't just turn the electricity off. You will turn the entire economy off. So in terms of getting a transition to happen, we absolutely need that technology to remove the carbon, like to prevent us from putting any more carbon into the atmosphere. So I feel like there's a role for that sort of technology. That's my perspective. You might have a counter perspective. But there's a lot of pushback on that sort of technology right now. And I think that's probably the most controversial that in geoengineering, which I guess some people believe that carbon capture technologies actually are part of the geoengineering. And again, I can see that criticism. But anyway, so there's a lot of exciting things happening in climate tech. Obviously, the EVs are a huge talking point for many right now. But the thing I follow most closely is the carbon capture partly because we need to reduce, yes, and that's happening. But we also need to remove, and that’s where that will play a role.

Michael Young:

Yeah. And I don't really have a strong, strong opinion on carbon capture unless—and I don't know enough about it—but it to my mind sometimes falls into that sort of ethanol category where the energy needed to produce is greater than the effect that it achieves. And I'm not sure that's true in carbon capture at all.

Heather Clancy:

It depends on what's obviously fueling it, right? So if it's a fossil fuel plant. Yeah.

Michael Young:

Yeah. But I think nuclear falls into that scope, into that space as well, right? Which is there's been a lot of innovation in nuclear technology over the past 30 or 40 years, and yet I think this is where environmentalists have come down very strongly against nuclear for its obvious catastrophic effects. But it is arguably the cleanest way to produce electricity that we've discovered to date. Dams which were solar. But at scale, nuclear really does the job. And again, there's been a lot of innovation, a lot of positive clean tech innovation there. But it is one that is—I mean talk about a terrible PR problem.

Heather Clancy:

Yeah. I mean actually I'm glad you brought that up because you do have utilities that are talking about nuclear as a part of their low-carbon portfolio of power. And I think it's definitely important to have that conversation. There have been some environmentalists that have come out and sort of recognized that they need to take another look at this technology, and there's certainly a lot of money going into it at the federal level, like in terms of R&D, but also, some of the investments from companies like Breakthrough Energy, I mean Bill Gates certainly is putting money into nuclear as an option, the small reactors. And you’re probably right. That probably does deserve a lot more attention than it gets. But part of the reason it doesn't, people are leery of writing about the upsides when that's definitely something you have to spend a lot of time writing about, balancing as far as coverage. I mean it kind of like brings in the not in my backyard kinds of people, and that’s a hard thing to hand to think about right now because some of the most staunch environmentalists, I mean again, I'll go to the to the diversity issue in in sustainability, is absolutely equally and maybe more so true in the environmental movement where there's been these well-respected environmental organizations that aren't thinking about the impact beyond their sort of small world view, and the boards definitely for those organizations need to change and be more diverse as well in terms of gender, in terms of region, in terms of race. Because I use that word diversity, I mean like I was at a conference last week, and I was thinking, wow, if I was someone who was visually impaired, I would have a really hard time here. So whatever. I think there's just so many dimensions of diversity that don't get—we tend to think of it as the black versus white issue I think in the United States. But depending where you are, that word has lots of different meanings.

Michael Young:

Yeah. For sure, for sure. All right. Well, look, so tech can't solve everything. It's trying to solve what it can. In your view, Heather, how do you think about the other dimensions—and we've touched on a few of those—but sort of corporate governance as one, kind of what's below the surface in the business, what's the business operations, and maybe policy and broader social action. How are you seeing these coming together or indeed flying apart?

Heather Clancy:

So I do think that corporations in general are more willing and open to having the climate discussion internally, and not just in this one small sustainability team. If you think about it, if you talk to the most clear-minded, practical sustainability professional, they'll tell you that what their goal would be is to have their team not really need to exist because it would be everywhere, that they don't need to have sustainability in the title. It's just this happens to be a function of the procurement team, of the financial team because they're investing in projects that that recognize the climate risks. I mean every business decision should be including that risk. And if it doesn't, it's an irresponsible business decision. So I think that there are C-suites that have recognized this, and you're not going to put a plant into a place in a part of the world where you might have a water risk as an example. I was talking to—is it okay to mention company names?

Michael Young:

Absolutely.

Heather Clancy:

Okay. So I was talking to Procter & Gamble because they recently have updated their water strategy, right? So they recognize that their manufacturing operations and their products consume a lot of water. And this is not just water like that goes down the sink. It's the things that get evaporated, the consumption versus use term is a very explicit one. But when I was talking to the Chief Sustainability Officer about that, I asked, so how do you justify these investments? And they have now—I mean I guess you could call it a shadow pricing—but they have a mechanism now where if they're making a capital investment, it has to include the metrics related to these certain climate areas, like water being one of them but also, things like emissions and like the power supply and so forth. So that's kind of embedded into the decision-making process right now, and I thought that was a great strategy just happening as part of the regular process. And I think it was relatively new, but it was to me an important indicator of a company trying to actually make this systemic.

And I also think—and this is something that I get excited about—I think that the young professionals coming into this world that are graduating from MBA school in this moment and over still like the next five years, they're programmed to think about this. They are coming into—so as the workforce embraces these younger professionals that have kind of grown up with this reality of climate change and they think about this much more I think in just sort of their regular day-to-day actions, it's easier for someone to take a behavior that they've learned at a young age into the future with them. Like if you've been recycling or just thinking about plastic or thinking about reducing your footprint or thinking about I want an electric vehicle or thinking about all of these different personal choices, you're going to bring that mindset into your workplace, and I think that to me is exciting because as you see younger professionals becoming leaders in their own right that that will pervade. That sort of mindset will pervade. So I get really excited about that when I think about what's possible.

Michael Young:

Yeah. No, I do too. And in particular, both on the worker, the employee side, but also on the consumer side, right? Just the young people are making decisions about the brands that they're going to follow and buy and invest in for the rest of their lives, and much of that has to have a sustainable footprint and a sustainable viewpoint. Yeah. And I think that is positive. I also sort of in the back of my mind, I also think about this question of how do systems replicate, right? And why, even though after, let's call it 40 or 50 years of progressive change, do counter arguments to those changes continue to replicate? And indeed, we're seeing real now quasi-political but also capitalist driven, hyper capitalist driven counter arguments to sustainability. And I always kind of bracket that under the Peter Thiel woke capitalism attack, right? And I think we're starting to see that, right? Is that there are ways to divide people along environmental and sustainability lines, which seem very on one hand counterintuitive and completely unnecessary given the threat but really as a way to, again, continue to protect and privilege capital above labor, above the environment, above consumer protection, etc., etc.

Heather Clancy:

I think that is one area where this sustainability movement has done a really bad job, right? Is in not demonstrating the value and the job creation value of a lot of these new industries. I mean nothing ever static, right? There's always an industry that's going out of vogue as another one comes into vogue, right? I mean like think about like when cars—I'm going to just kind of spitball on this one—but when cars came into the scene and the hackney drivers and the people that were running stables and all of the livery services in the literal sense that were put out of business as people started buying cars and taking trains and buses and sort of as the transportation movement changed. So like what were you going to do? Not have the cars come into place? I mean so I think we just have really done a terrible job at showing the value. Because even in many of these states, I mean think about it. So Tennessee is one of the biggest states for EV manufacturing in the United States. Did you know that?

Michael Young:

I did not know that.

Heather Clancy:

Right. So like why? And if you think about all the investments that are also going to place in Kentucky and Tennessee but by Ford in the future, they’re planning to make one of the biggest battery recycling centers in the United States in that area. That's the sort of thing that we should be talking about more, showing the opportunity I think and also, PS, helping with the training. I think that's the other thing that historically the United States has not done a good job at training for the next generation and helping individuals get the skills they need. And we really need to rethink how those skills are developed. Is it through apprenticeships? Is it through degree programs? What will get these folks into a new—I mean this is a lot of opportunity, and I think that is a story that needs to be told in a much more different way in a much more effective way.

Michael Young:

Yeah. And right, the positive economic externalities of a change to a low-carbon future has not been well articulated. And yes, the entrenched interests are beginning to push back. And so it's always that tension between the future and the past. And I think back to technology, technology is really the vanguard of change and evolution. Well, look, we're coming up on time. This has been an amazingly fast half hour. I just looked at the clock. Maybe just some final thoughts that you have just from where you sit again. And if you have them, being, as I said, when we were offline, I sort of grew up pitching you at ZDnet. And what advice do you have for those in the sustainability world who want to get their story out and even my colleagues in the PR profession? How would you advise them to craft a story and bring a story to you? What are you looking for?

Heather Clancy:

Well, I am looking for the practical nature of it. I want to hear about solutions that are real, that have tangibility to them. So when I'm pitched by someone that's trying to talk about new technology, I need to know who's using it, I need to know what's behind it, I need to know is it in beta is, what is it, what exactly. So it needs to be tangible, and it needs to have a tangible benefit to corporations. So when you think about GreenBiz, our audience is the business world, and we tend to be business-to-business. So as much as a lot of consumer technologies excite me personally, I don't write about the things that are very focused on individuals or home/residential stuff. We're very focused on business-to-business development. So new materials, new technologies, and so forth. I think that also the way to get my attention is to not just talk about the speeds and feeds but just to make it real, just to maybe straightforward, to put it into context of social justice and environmental justice, to put it into the context of job creation, to be able to look at the bigger picture. I can tell when someone's pitching me that they don't know anything about what they're pitching because I ask the simplest follow-up and they can't really respond. But having context around what you're pitching I think is super important. So like context, think practical. And also, that all being said, if something's a crazy idea, I'm also okay with hearing about that. Because crazy ideas aren't so crazy sometimes, and you think about all the wacky things you heard about in your past that you were like, nah, that would never happen and then like five years later, it was in everyone's hands.

Michael Young:

So true.

Heather Clancy:

Yeah. So anyway. I do try to look at my inbox, and I definitely delete the things that are completely off base. But I keep a lot of things for future reflection and in context. So I don't know if that helped anyone who's listening. But that's me.

Michael Young:

Excellent, excellent. Well, I'm going to keep all of that for future contemplation and listening and training purposes, right? Listen to this audio clip from Heather Clancy before you pitch her or anybody like her for that matter. Awesome. Well, look, I can't thank you enough. It's so great to talk to you, and I really appreciate the conversation today.

Heather Clancy:

Well, thank you for inviting me.

Conclusion:

The Purpose, Inc. Podcast is a production of Actual Agency, helping innovators communicate in a changing world. More at www.Actual.Agency.

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