COP26: Transformative Climate Solutions & Impact on Capital Markets

Can we envisage a situation where the concept of owning a car can be challenged? Not that people can not buy it or car companies have run out of business and stopped production but just that our cities and life style has become transformative, which does not necessitate personal mobility. It may be possible if future cities are designed to be compact and connected through low carbon emission public mobility which reduces the need for personal mobility to a larger extent.

Global Innovation Hub will be working to solve the future issues. In order to drive a more ambitious climate action and sustainable innovation, UN Climate Change has initiated A digital Global Innovation Hub. The current level of reduction in greenhouse gas emission is much shorter of achieving the ambitious reduction and maintaining the global temperature @ 1.5C.   This requires a Co2 reduction of 45% in 2030 which requires some serious, urgent and innovative actions from the World Community.

The Innovation Hub will provide solutions which are not only need based but also transformative in nature and more holistic one as the current approach which has tended to be incremental, sector focussed as well as problem oriented. The hub is a digital platform that will be hosting a database of demand for solutions and related solutions, tools for determine the impact assessment related to climate action and financing of climate solutions.

The hub will focus on developing climate friendly responses without focussing on single set of solutions. The agenda will be broad based e.g. mobility, power, social connection and goods and services. The scale of innovation can be vaguely estimated from the fact that it will challenge the need of mobility for access products and services, and developing solutions by replacing trips for getting product or a service, similar to the way online shopping has changed the behaviour to visits shops.

Further the hub will also act as a platform for providing financing solution for implementing the new ideas. In future lot of money will be moving towards designing carbon neutral product and services. The future cities will be green and compact, interconnected by shared mobility and will have reduced carbon footprint. Clearly these are early trends however with time, size of ESG funds will keep on increasing and those companies which are in the green material spaces, clean shared mobility etc will be beneficiary of these developments.

Indian Capital Markets will be privy to the big upcoming development, that will happen across the Globe as well as India.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi in address to COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, committed to achieving target of Net Zero by 2070. This will involve adding non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030, accounting 50% of the total energy requirement. A global carbon market for trading carbon emission will become more wide-spread and money will move from developed economy to developing economies for financing the climate initiative.  

Bureau Galactik Views

Related articles