Name: Carbon Confidential with Marisa Drew
Uploaded: 2026-05-07T16:16:52.197Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 8 s
Description: Carbon Confidential with Marisa Drew

Transcript for "Carbon Confidential with Marisa Drew": Hello, everybody, and welcome to the very first Carbon Confidential. I'm Gabriel Walker. I'm cofounder and chief scientist of Qurate. Just as a quick word about Qurate, we are a a market making platform for carbon removals. We solve for risk, for availability, for for price. We construct portfolios. We help companies work with their, climate strategies to see how carbon removals ought to fit into that, and we also do, carbon financing. And that's the context in which I started to work with our very first guest on this series, carbon confidential. So carbon confidential, we decided to do a series of, of webinars where I get to talk to some of my favorite people about their long and fabulous history in the whole climate and sustainability space and what they've learned. So I've been working on climate change for more than thirty years, and I've seen a lot of things come and go. And every so often along the way, I get to meet someone exceptional who's really made a spectacular difference in this space. One of my favorite things about this new series of Carbon Confidential is I get to choose who to speak to. And so with that, our very first guest is the unbelievably brilliant, Marissa Drew. So for anyone who hasn't come across Marissa, she's been bridging, capital markets and impact investing in a spectacular way. She spent two decades in leveraged finance at Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse before making a deliberate bet in 2017 to bring that expertise to bear on sustainability. What's interesting here is that many of the sustainability leaders that I speak to are trying to bring sustainability into business and finance. And what Marissa decided to do was to bring finance into sustainability. She's now CSO at Standard Chartered. She leads a 125 person team, working towards a 300,000,000,000 sustainable finance commitment, which we'll hear a bit more about later. She's been recognized by Time as a top climate leader and by CNBC as one of the 50 female change makers who materially shaped global business. Marissa, it should be obvious by now. I am delighted to have you here with us as our very first carbon confidential guest. Welcome. Well, thank you so much for having me, and I think it is a mutual admiration fest, and, I'm humbled by that wonderful introduction. So thank you. Thank you for having me. You bet. So let's get into it. So, I found this brilliant quote from you. So you once described yourself as an intellectually curious person with a lot of energy and a short attention span. So the dynamics of finance, you said, and the capital markets has been the perfect career match. And I think I I I love that because the dynamics of how things are changing in the sustainability space must also be a perfect career match too. So in the context of that, I I I'd just like us to start with that 2017 pivot. You made the move into sustainability from mainstream investment banking. Why on earth would you do that, and why did you think that finance was the tool to bring into sustainability? Well, thanks for the question, and I wish I could tell you and your audience that this was a very deliberate pivot at the beginning. Sometimes I think in a career, you need somebody else who knows you well to give you that little nudge. And in my case, I was in a very comfortable position having quite a linear path to leading, the investment banking practice for EMEA for my former bank. But, but it was my CEO who actually provided that nudge. He called me into a meeting, and it was one of those fateful moments where you get a phone call from this, you know, to say, come come meet me. There's something I wanna have a chat about. And he put on the table in front of me this proposition, to consider looking after a new business for the bank, which was associated with the merging of purpose loops and profit, bringing finance to help solve big world challenges and so on. And and at the time, there was not such a position as CSO. It was pretty early days in the field of sustainability, at least for the finance community. And my initial reaction was one of cynicismism, if I'm honest. I I thought that he was articulating something that was more of a marketing role, And I I gave him quite a bit of a challenge, and I sort of cheekily said, well, hang on a second. I'm a I'm a P and L person. I build businesses. This is what I'm about. I'm a markets person and so on. And, and he actually did, stop me and and prompted me to look into this a little bit more depth. And and that is exactly what I did. And he had a wonderful way of framing things when he wanted to to see an outcome, prevail. And the way he put it to me was he said, this is going to be the future of finance, and this is gonna be highly, highly strategic to this institution. You don't have to do it, but I encourage you to think about it. So that provocation was was enough to get me going. And then I began to really look into the field of sustainability in a very considered way. So, I did a lot of research. I was talking to the thought leaders in the industry at the time, the academics, the scientists. And, through that exercise, there was a moment, and I always say sometimes, you know, in your career, you have a light bulb moment where I just saw it and I thought, wow, this actually, I get what he he's he's saying, and this is gonna be big and it is going to be critical and important. And perhaps the skills that I've accumulated along, you know, near thirty year path could be brought to bear and deliver something really, really meaningful and impactful for the world. And what a wonderful legacy that would be if I could jump into that and actually deliver on the promise. So that's what got me started, and it's been an incredible journey since then, which I'm sure we'll get into it a little more detail. That it has. We definitely will. So so what can you pin it on what was the light bulb moment when you thought because that that's an extraordinary. statement. This is the future of finance, not this is impactful. This is something you can do for the world. It's time to give back, but this is the future of finance. Can you can you unpick what what made you actually put there? Sure. Oh, you know, prior to to that moment, my role was about mobilizing capital. It was about delivering for clients, providing I always articulated in this way that it was the lifeblood capital to help businesses, communities, economies thrive and prosper. But the lens through which I had been doing that for all of those years preceding, weren't solving some of the biggest world challenges. You know, the environmental challenge, the social inequity, the wealth divide that we're seeing, which is has manifesting in a lot of the conflict that we see playing out around the world, etcetera. So the traditional financial system and the way it was operating and the outcomes that it was achieving were creating, in some ways, bigger and bigger problems or contributing to these challenges. And with this additional lens, by being purposeful about where that capital is deployed and what outcomes you want to achieve and what impact you wanna make, perhaps that was a different way to take some of the historical financial tools that I had, you know, been experiencing and building over many years and applying them in a different way. And that that intersection was my light bulb moment where I said, actually, this purposeful capital can do something incredibly meaningful. And And that experience I've had along all these years, there's a lot of read across. So often I say, what I'm doing now was what I have been doing for some thirty five years with just a sustainability overlay. So it isn't always, you know, reinventing the wheel. It is just taking that that experience and applying it in a in a very, very deliberate manner. I think I'd like to come back to that point about this not being reinventing the wheel. Many people who look at sustainability climate in my field of carbon removals kind of thing seem to treat it as if it's some kind of weird exotic creature. Whereas in fact, it is helpful to look at what what's already out there and and and how we apply it. So I'll come back to that in a moment. But before I do, I just wanted to reflect because I I remember the moment I've been saying for years and the the keynotes I was giving, the people I was speaking to in businesses, the CEOs that I was engaging with, I've been saying this is coming. This is the future. And and and it was hard for it to land because they still wanted to see this as something that was for tree huggers. And I remember the moment where it really shifted, and and it was a moment sort of in the in the probably the late twenty teens, mid mid to late twenty teens when it began I think it began to dawn on more and more people that this is a material risk to financial stability. So it came from a risk lens rather than necessarily an opportunity lens. So it's the direct risk to assets, the risk from the transition. And and people have asked me since, given that we then had we had COVID. We had the Ukraine War. We have what's happening now in in Iran. We're definitely gonna come back and unpick some of these. But just as a as a big overlaying lens, someone asked me the other day, why is anyone still still engaging with this in the financial sector? And I said, because it was already evident that this is not about tree hugging. This is this is material financial risk, and therefore, it's material financial opportunity because the risk is what gives you the upside. We completely agree with you, and it is really two sides of the coin. So often you may enter a space through the risk lens and particularly in finance where you're looking at what are the downside threats to the business or possibilities that you might have a loan impairment if you're in the lending business or what have you. But unless you can translate that into why this is relevant to your business from a strategic point of view as a private sector actor, you know, we're in business to deliver business, right, to to provide capital, to generate revenues, to deliver for our shareholders. Unless you can translate that risk into that opportunity, this is destined to fail. And I think that has been the journey that we've been on where perhaps this may have been resident in a very virtuous ambition and articulation of why this is a good thing to do without actually being able to articulate how this was core to the strategy of a business. And if there were to be a challenge to the ecosystem over these last eighteen months, it was how can you communicate that this really is a business driver? Yeah. And and if you aren't able to do that, I think that is where this this goes off sides. If you can do that, which is, something that I'm very proud we've been able to do, you touched on the 300,000,000,000 ambitious commitment to mobilize that capital over ten years. But what I'm actually really excited about is something we delivered on last year, which is an ambitious commitment to deliver a billion dollars equivalent of sustainable finance income. So that is an underwriting capital. That's income to the bank, coming from essentially nothing when I arrived at the bank. So if you think about 0 to 1,000,000,000 in a pretty short period of time, particularly with all that's going on around us, you touched on geopolitics, you touched on conflict. You know, with all of those headwinds, we were able as an institution to rise the occasion, and that billion dollars of revenue is approaching 10% of our overall corporate investment banking revenue. So that's really material and it's accretive revenues to the bank. So that is what we mean when we say it's core to the to the business, but also it represents such an incredible value creation opportunity and growth part of our business. So. yes. Well, that brings me beautifully to the next thing that I wanted to talk about. So you you you have been very clear and you were very clear now, sustainability only scales when it makes commercial sense. So tell me more about what that means in practice when you're structuring deals, when you're assessing risks. How how do you how do you make that money? Because if you've got a if you've got a 10%, income stream, if you've got a billion dollars that you can point to, that that you don't need to make an argument. You've made your point. But how do you how do you get to that place where you when you're structuring deals or assessing this? Sure. Well, when we started it, it wasn't obvious. Now there was there was a great deal of work that had to go underneath that ambitious commitment to have our organization rise to the occasion. We needed to up skill our partners within the bank, whether they be on the front line out there interacting with clients every day because in many cases, this was a new topic to our clients, particularly for a bank like ours. We operate very much, while we're a global institution and in 52 markets, many of those markets are developing in developing world. So emerging market or even frontier markets, and this topic was relatively new to those clients. And whilst intuitively, they knew that climate change was affecting their business or or they were seeing business interruption happening as a result of extreme weather events or what have you, it it it wasn't sort of as relatable. And so we needed to spend enormous amount of time expressing why, we could partner with our clients to help them either address risks or seize that that opportunity that we're talking about where it could become a competitive advantage. So but we needed to upscale the thousands of frontline coverage officers to be able to have those dialogues with clients, and my organization could provide that SME, that subject matter expertise at the center as sustainability professionals to equip our partners to be able to have those conversations. Equally, our functions, which support the efforts of the bank, our risk function, our credit function, many of the the transactions that we're talking about are financing newer industries, which don't have a long history and a, you know, a credit profile through cycles of twenty years where you can point to what that would look like from a pure comfort point of view as as providing credit and and understanding, you know, what a cash flow profile look like and say, a new breakthrough technology that is gonna help to unlock some of the harder to abate sectors. So, you know, all of these things are the plumbing underneath, the big ambition that we had to work our way through over these last several years. But, with that that very, very clear direction and that that goal of ours, we were able to get that done by essentially partnering with all aspect all parts of the bank, but not expecting them to be sustainability experts. You know? I I view this CSO function that I'm looking after as a change agent function or transformation function. And so we're here at the core in the center with that expertise, but then we want to leverage that out across the bank. And then how do we think about it commercially? So we are commercial actors. We are in business to generate, profits for our shareholders. So I do need to look at all of this with the lens of, when we are engaging in a transaction, how can we ensure that is accretive to the revenue or the returns that we're seeking to achieve as as an institution? Now that's where it gets really tricky because there are certain aspects of sustainability where it isn't intuitively obvious or you don't generate always a market rate of return. So perhaps I can point to something like conservation finance. While it is critical and necessary, the economic system doesn't price in the value of nature from a pure revenue point of view. The intrinsic value of a healthy forest isn't something that we've effectively been able to price. So we've needed to think about new financial models, new tools, new ways of thinking about what value is in some instances. In other instances, we've had to partner or have wanted to partner with those who could provide a different form of capital, which might be concessionary or even philanthropic capital to blend in with commercial tranches of capital to make a project viable and ultimately, economically make sense for us to pursue and for our partners to pursue. So it's very complex here, and and if it were easy, everybody would be doing it, and that billion dollars would have been, you know, a cakewalk. But, but part of this exercise, we talked about a little bit, we're not reinventing the wheel. In some ways we aren't, and I view my job almost as in two bookends. In one way, it is to scale what's already working, and that isn't reinventing the wheel. That is taking what is working, you know, the infrastructure finance and solar, for instance. It's a scale game. It's just do a lot more of what's already working. And then on the absolute other side is how can we experiment and pilot and think about innovative new structures and forms of finance that are gonna create unlocks for those harder areas that ultimately are gonna be critical and necessary. So it's a little bit of both of those worlds, a foot in both camps. So this is there's a lot to unpack there. So let me let me have a crack. So first of all, I I love this description of how you're you're there. You're providing the information. You're providing the the learning, if you like, for the people who can then go out and find the deals. But there must have been a I mean, I've I've had these conversations myself many times with with people within banks and and and it's, you you know, you've got a you've got a deal numbers you gotta make. You've got deals you gotta make. You already have a conviction in your head that this is something that is probably not gonna make money and is kinda tree hugging. And so what what sort of how how did you go about that? What sort of things landed? What what caught. people's attention and changed their minds in the way that you were talking to them to get them behind this? I have I have more things I'd love to unpack in what you just said, but but that's my first entry know it's it's it's it's a really great question, and this is my second bite at the CSO apple, so to speak. So, the first time around, you know, this was truly, truly new. You know, hadn't been done before in my organization, and I had not been down this road before. And when I first began to speak to my colleagues about this idea of sustainable finance or impact and purpose and profit, in some cases, I definitely did get a fair bit of resistance. Yeah. You know, the the ability to interpret that, what's in it for me? Yeah. What's in it for my clients? Is this putting my clients in a risky position if it if you couldn't articulate where the returns were, or would we get, I call it, organ rejection from clients as we brought up a topic that was foreign to them and had to figure out a way to make it relevant to the various stakeholders. And as ever on the great bell curve of life, I always say, you know, you'll always have your early adopters and you find those sorts of people in your organization that really believe your mission and the vision. And, you know, you adopt them and they adopt you, and they become a little bit of of your acolytes that can help you spread that message, you know, from that from that core at the center. You have a whole group of people, probably the bell curve, the big part of the bell curve in the middle that are curious but cautious, and then you'll have your resistors. And for each one of those those groupings, you you might interact with them in a different way. You could speak about the risk. You know, if you don't engage with your clients on this topic, someone else will. You know, there's that little bit of competitive tension that gets juices flowing. In some cases, you might appeal to your stakeholder by saying, this is an enormous opportunity. You know, if you are able to link this purpose and profit with an equally minded ambitious client who who feels the same way, about these topics, boy, what an incredible conversation that is. You know, that is that is a relationship on a completely different level because it's more than transactional. You know, it is it is long term. It it it could be in the wealth business, a legacy discussion. Those are very different types of discussions than a transactional one, And perhaps this is that very topic that you can engage on. So in some ways, you know, you can be very tactical and strategic about what is in it for those stakeholders to push them over the edge to allow them to engage with you. And then once you hit that type of a moment or that tipping point, then it all begins to flow. And that's sort of been my experience. So I say when I started out, I was the annoying agitator. I was running around trying to get people to pay attention to the topic or to embrace the topic. And slowly, slowly, we got to the point where, you know, more and more people really understood what we were articulating, almost like my light bulb moment. And then it went from a push to a pull. Then it was I knew it was successful when I was racing to keep up with the demand. And that tipping point was a was a big moment for interesting, actually. I remember when I was teaching, I was teaching environmental science writing at Princeton. once, and I remember asking all those very bright kids, you know, what if you're gonna write something or what what's the the one thing that you that you need to know above everything else? Is is, like, the content or the length or the whatever, and it's like it's no. It's your audience. Who are you actually speaking to? And I love that description of how, obviously, we're we're all we all know this. Different things will will will capture different people. Different things capture us. So speaking of different people and how you need to capture them, I I this this is something I get asked all the time, and many of the sustainability teams that I'm working with are saying, I get it. I understand. You know, in the carbon removal space, I get that this has to be part of the solution or, you know, across the climate space. But what do I tell my CFO? And that and that's where it still feels like there's a disconnect. There's still a kind of the sustainability side, which is we wanna have impact, and the CFO that says, yes, but what about the money? The so in this space, we talked about how the two can can combine, but what's your experience of how you would engage with. the the CFOs in this? What might what might land and and and and and and the boards as well who might otherwise sort of stop this? How do once again, you wanna look at what is important to your stakeholder and see how this topic is relevant to them. So from a CFO seat, particularly, you know, a lot of a CSO's time in the most recent past was on disclosures. We're a regulated entity, so the enormity of the disclosures that were, imposed upon us, from TCFD, the task force for climate disclosure. So this is just essentially at its heart disclosing your your green and brown business. You know, that manifests in needing to understand your carbon emissions and accessing that data and assuring the the rigor of that data, the ability to document where you got that information from, the integrity of the information and so on. I mean, that is at the heart of what, you know, the CFO function is very focused on. They're typically responsible for the financial accounts and, you know, books and records is a very well trodden tried path. And, you know, public institutions will have third party audit insurance. So there's a third party looking over, you know, those processes and so on. So perhaps I can give you an example. When I started in this field, most of the way you would express your sustainability work was through the CSR report, the corporate social and responsibility report, which then morphed into what was called the sustainability report. And you had that report here, and then you had your financial accounts over here. And one of the observations certainly of our regulators early on was, well, we actually don't want a whole set of public numbers in some sustainability report here and books and records of the company over here. We'd actually like to see these two things come together. That was a little nudge from our regulator with, it was perfectly understandable because in my way of interpreting that nudge was that they wanted to see the same rigor applied to these reports as they saw for the financial accounts. That was novel for the CSO CFO function, and they didn't feel that they had the expertise, to put those those things together. So instead of, you know, sort of, I'd say, lording it over them or forcing it upon them, the approach we took was, well, let's partner with you. And the regulator's giving us a nod nudge. It's not mandatory. It is voluntary. But what if we went down this journey together to partner on merging these two reports so that eventually when it likely becomes mandatory, we will have built the muscle to do this, long before we have to? And I I think that resonated very well with our our CFO colleagues, And then we basically subdivided the roles and responsibilities about who's responsible for the numbers, who's responsible for the narrative, but we did it in partnership. So year one of bringing that report together, I can tell you, was enormous lift. I think we had 50 people on the working list, rightfully so. Right? You you know, any numbers that have that kind of financial lens to them have to have that rigor. And then the second year got easier and easier and easier, and it's been just a great impression of a partnership. And now our CFO function are some of our biggest champions to the point where, you know, within CFO, our treasury function, have been amazing at adopting the more progressive end, that opportunity end. And they were the biggest supporters in the treasury function of our inaugural green bond and which was a billion euros and our inaugural social bond. I mean, that was our treasury function saying this experience has been such a good one that let's go out and be more bold about the opportunity side. So so that was finding that that space where we could speak the same language. Boards are very different. You know, boards very much focused on, I'd like to many back to the CFO for a moment. I I I do wanna come back to the boards, but you just said something incredibly enticing. So I have to interrupt and ask you about. it, which the, I I I love the way you described how you melded the documents, how you brought the brought the the the two together and and how hard it was at first. And and I wanna come back to that general approach of of build the muscle before you need it, which I think. is increasing the importance as we we're gonna look at where the holes are. But I I just wanted to know when when the CFOs when they were loving, like, you the green bond, let's do more of them, what was it about it? Was it the numbers? Was it the story? Was it the impact? Was it the combination? What was it that made them so supportive? All of the above. And and if you think about it, again, putting yourself in the shoes of someone in our treasury department, you know, to to do a green bond is a lot more work for them because, regular issuance, which we do all the time, doesn't require you to track the assets of where you're deploying them, doesn't have the framework around it of how to define where those proceeds are going and matching the assets to, you know, to the capital, etcetera. So asking them to take this on is really asking them to take on a whole lot more work they don't have to do. But yet, the experience that we had and the reaction that we got as we brought our sustainability and financial reports together, our external stakeholders were extremely appreciative of that and, you know, talked about that effort as being best in class and leading edge and so on. And that halo effect, I think, you know, helped to, bring our our businesses or parts of our business closer together. And there there was that trust and that relationship that was built. And then when we said, well, how do we go further faster? This idea of coming up with a sustainability issuance was one that was a, a very smooth path. We went to the CFO at the time and said this is our idea. We think it will, again, be a statement of intent. But also perhaps if we get this right, it could be a differentiator both from a cost of capital because whenever you issue securities, if you have more demand, than supply, then you've got some price tension and you could make get a more favorable cost of capital. But almost more importantly, by having that signal of intent, we might attract a whole different group of stakeholders who are investing in our securities, who deeply care about, green issuance or the sustainability aspect of of what we're doing, and they can express that through investing in these securities. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. We had price tension. We had new investors come into our book, and I would be willing to bet, although I can't prove it, that those investors are going to be stickier if you wanna put it in those terms because, you know, they they see the mission and they wanna support the mission and that capital has a purposeful outcome associated with it and it's and it certainly is less transactional. So, you know, those those experiences have been very positive, rewarding, and that creates that positive virtuous circle for us to consider to keep challenging ourselves to have to do more together. That's absolutely brilliant. You know, I was just taking notes, and I wrote down makes relationships stickier. And then you said it. So, yes, powerful there. The question about actually, before you said before I ask you about the boards, I just wanted to throw in something that I heard recently, which I was fascinated by that really reinforces what you were just saying. I was speaking to, someone from a big, a big heavy emitter, sector company who were trying to do a particular deal in the in the climate space, and had managed to get everyone on board and were just almost almost to the end of doing the deal. And then, a new CSO came along and said, well, I don't see why we're doing that. Let's just connect. So years worth of work and and and the the the sustainability team, the rest of them were really disappointed. But then it got rescued, and they got rescued. And the very unlikely cavalry who came over the hill to rescue it was the treasury. It was a finance. who had dug into it, who thought it made sense. He could see how it fitted into the rest of the strategy, but who also had engaged in the project, got excited about it, wanted to be part of it. So both the kind of the tangibility of the project and the way that it made sense meant that it was the finance team who rescued it. And I so I think that really it does reinforce. We we we seem to think that there's these two wildly separate buckets that have to speak wildly different languages. But it's actually where the where the where the humans come together that the the magic. And, you know, that's that's one of the joys of sustainability, if I'm honest, is that, you know, it is purposeful and and there and it's very provocative. Right? There's an emotion attached to this. I I say, you know, the people on my team that are deliberately coming into the field of sustainability, they want to make a difference. So the ability to marry your, shall we say, your day job, you know, with this passion to try to make a difference, you know, when you have an intersection of those two things, you know, it is a very, very powerful and rewarding and self actualizing place to be. And I do think that the more of our partners that we can attract and and deliver for, the more that is self reinforcing. So I see how proud our CFO partners were when we issued our first inaugural social bond. I mean, it was it was a wonderful thing, and it was so such a fun. And then this might lead us into a nice segue to the board, is that we were so excited about that inaugural bond that we named it after our chair our chairman. And our chairman is passionate about social topics. Our former chairman, he co chaired something called the UN GISD, which is really, was trying to promote the UN sustainable development goal. So he co chaired that effort. And, you know, in his name, you know, we we issued that bond. So it's called the Jose Vinals bond. And, you know, I could see the CFO team, they couldn't wait to produce the tombstone, and, you know, we had all of that, and it was just a really proud shining moment of that form of collaboration, but also, you know, bringing that passion to bear in in a really successful outcome on an issuance. So, yeah, good stuff. I just that, you know, it's David Attenborough's hundredth birthday this week, and, apparently, he's had a he's had a parasitic wasp named after him. I think I'd rather have a green bond than to us. So then so then, yes, the, the boards. So how do you get how do you talk to the boards, and and what what have you learned about that? Yes. So boards, you know, have a very specific role. They've got a very, very, clear fiduciary role. They need to look at risk. They are there to to challenge, to bless to, you know, oversee and bless the strategy of the organization. And sustainability for us being able to articulate, you know, how does that strategy manifest itself in delivering for shareholders, which is ultimately, you know, the board's primary responsibility, but the board is also focused on broader stakeholder, groups. You know, we I always say a multi stakeholder lens is part of the job of sustainability. You know, we have a client lens. We have our shareholders, of course, but we also have our communities, we have our regulators, we have our employees, and the board you know, good boards take a holistic look at that. And, I do think sustainability has a nexus to serving all of those stakeholders. And, you know, the historically, I'd say conventional view of there is only one stakeholder and that's the shareholder. Yeah. I do think that that misses a lot. So. sustainability answers to all of those stakeholder groups, but articulating that to a board of how having a sustainability agenda both meets the opportunity growth deliver for shareholders side, but also helps you mitigate risk because you're aware of what environmental and social risks exist in your business, how they could threaten your business model, how they continue to give you the license to operate as the case may be in your communities and markets. Because if you are a bad steward, by doing the wrong kind of business, that can also shut you down, and that is a risk for for any board. So I think if you just like anything else, the same story with, partnering with our our CFO brethren, it is if you put yourself in the shoes of what are the objectives of those partners, what is it that, you know, are their set of objectives or KPIs, and how can sustainability meet them or support them in achieving those objectives, then that's how you you find that connection. We've had a wonderfully supportive board. I do think because we have led with sustainability and it's been a core part of our strategy, which is one of the attractions for me to join the organization because we had a very committed chair when I joined in a very, very publicly committed and progressive CEO on sustainability topics. And now with our new chair, our who just took the helm, officially, and we had our AGM today, you know, was so articulate and clear on the topic of how sustainability matters to our organization is a competitive differentiator for us, as well as, you know, a source of risk mitigation. You know, it it all comes together. So I do feel very fortunate to work in an organization where we have such support from board on down, but but it only comes with the expectation that we're gonna deliver on on those ambitious commitments that we've set for ourselves. Yeah. And and admissions commitments that aren't just about sustainability, but are about financial growth and commercial success as well. That's that's a sweet spot, isn't it? So I I want to come now to, the question of what's missing. So I I have a general question for you on that and then some specific things that that I'd love to talk about from my own area. So first of all, what what's your big picture? What's still missing from the financial architecture that we'll need to deliver net zero? Net zero. Yeah. So this is, you know, exceptionally complicated. The ambition is clearly there. And in fact, you know, despite headlines, I would tell you that, there was just a report that came out that some 75% of corporations hunt are absolutely there, committed to their net zero communication, commitments, targets, etcetera. So despite perhaps headlines that would suggest otherwise, you know, the the royal world, you know, is still on the program, so to speak. But the execution of this is enormously difficult. And then when you layer in what is actually going on right now, you know, the the global conflict, geopolitics, etcetera, you you will have shocks to the system that require an immediacy of your attention, and that is right and that is necessary. You know, if you're in a crisis or in shock, you've got to respond, to what is in front of you, and sustainability is a long term game. It is a multi, multi year game. And so those are the challenges, I think, that we face. So when you ask what's missing, you know, I guess, in some ways, it is the ability to balance both of those two things without going so far one way that you forget the other. Right? Because if if you leap to the immediacy of a of a crisis when the next one comes, whether it's COVID or war or whatever, and you drop the investments that you're making in that long term game, you know, we will be looking back, you know, five years from now and saying, I I missed a trick. Because climate's not going away. These, you know, if you believe the science and we see the weather events happening and the business interruption, financial leakage that's associated with all of this, which is why the commitment to net zero is there is to reduce carbon emissions in the global atmosphere to try to stave off an ever warming planet, you know, we can't afford to do that. And so I think what's missing is often the ability to balance that short term, long term. But if I'm also self critical of the ecosystem sustainability, until very recently, I think there was almost, a belief that, the community was on the side of right and that we were just gonna steamroll through all of this and that, you know, everybody was on the program, so to speak. And the train was, you know, heading in one direction and everybody better jump on board. The reality is that so many people didn't understand what was in it for them along this journey. And I can speak at that at an individual level where, you know, an individual might think that the sustainability agenda was a tax on them. It was costing them something out of their pocket or or in some cases and in some of my markets, the belief was it was going to take away their jobs. And and and that then creates rejection. And I don't think there was as strong a recognition and appreciation for how many people didn't see how sustainability was gonna work for them. And therefore, you then got rejection at the polls during the global election cycle where green parties were voted out or or people resisted all of this. And yet at the end of the day, if you ask any individual, what do we want? We want a healthy planet that can thrive and survive and sustain us, and we want a, a healthy world for our kids and our grandkids and all those sorts of things. Nobody's gonna argue with that. But in the near term, was sustainability delivering for everybody? And I think that was what was missing. Yeah. What I is happening in the here and now is that what we see, and this is relates back to net zero, is that those economies without a diversified energy mix have been subjected to the extreme shock that has manifested from the conflict that we're seeing play out now. So at a $120 oil, you know, the cost, the inflationary cost is crushing to so many people. Their businesses can't function at that type of cost. Or with the conflict, so many companies that were importing their energy source and they had it stuck in a different part of the world, you know, they and especially in my emerging markets and places like Southeast Asia, you know, we're at a place where we are having to we see them cutting production or allocating energy to citizens. I mean, that is just untenable. And so a recognition that, this is this is why a green energy, you know, direction of travel ultimately getting to net zero, having energy security, ensuring that you don't aren't subjected to such price volatility, you know, is is a byproduct of of what we're seeing right now. And I think that maybe if I'm hopeful, I see, you know, maybe this is a moment to I've heard it the other day. Somebody said take back the narrative and and really bring a much wider group into what's in it for me. Yeah. I I heard this quote the other day, which is light from the sun has to travel 93,000,000 miles to reach the earth, and none of it goes through the Strait Of Hormuz. There you have it. It's straight. said. But I also think, so I I saw, my friend, Bennis Lee, who wrote a brilliant piece in in the Financial Times sustainable views the other day saying, people think we're comparing, a transition to stability, but, really, we're comparing a transition to wild instability. And and we should be thinking not so much just in time as just in case when we're actually thinking about how we should frame all of this. And so I do like I I sometimes talk about this being a kind of acute and chronic issue. We if you you need to treat what's acute, but if you don't. continue to treat the chronic illness underneath it, you just have more and more acute crises. And so that's that's the balance that that we certainly need to get better. So now I want to pick up on that analogy, by the way, because, you know, we often in the medical field, they will tell you all the time, that it's far cheaper to prevent. you from getting sick than to fix you when you're sick. Yeah. And yet that concept, you know, doesn't seem to resonate always in sustainability. You know, maybe if I can just touch on just a minute, I'd love to bring into the field because we talk about reduction of carbon emissions, and that's where, rightfully so, so much of climate finance has gone because we needed to reduce and still need to reduce carbon emissions in order to protect ourselves from a warming planet. On the other hand, the warming planet is happening, and very, very little to date finance, certainly on the private side, has gone toward adaptation and resilience, and that is a necessary part of the equation too. And and when we have the conversation about adaptation, you know, the the requirement, the investment needed to adapt to this changing planet, it gets exponentially greater the higher the temperature scenario and the longer you wait. And and it isn't linear. It's truly exponential. And yet we're not investing now to protect ourselves against, you know, what can become a massive gap or disaster in the future. And that we need to square that circle. And back to your what's missing, I think the ability to understand and appreciate that that investment now to protect you from getting sick or disaster later is is absolutely critical. Which brings me very neatly to my own pet topic for now. So as I said, I've been working on climate change for more than thirty years, and almost all of that until about 2017, 2018 was working on just that, trying to reduce the emissions that were going into the atmosphere, trying to trying to stop this whole problem getting worse. But I did realize this a big missing piece, which was carbon removals, negative emissions. And and that's it really shocked me when I first I first looked at the scale of the problem because, you know, it was one of the things, you know, yeah, we need to do that, and we need to do this. We need to do lots of things. And then I I had that ball, and when I came back, I realized that the amount was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Every year, we didn't reduce enough. Was it that the problem was getting bigger, and the number of people that were paying attention to it was really quite small. So that's why I switched, and that's why I cofounded Curate. And, but when I did my my TED talk on carbon removals back in 2021, there's only very small number of companies. And now we're tracking, what, more than more than 2,500. So this ecosystem, which has become incredibly exciting with all these amazing projects, many of them in the global sales across emerging economies, ones that have co benefits, which, by the way, I'd like to start calling core benefits because I think they're just as important. So core benefits for for health, for community benefits, for for biodiversity, for, for cleaning up oceans or cleaning up rivers. There's lots of projects out there, but it's hard to get them money. And so I I just wanted to come back to some things that you mentioned earlier. You said, you were interested at Sandshark in in looking at areas where there's no there's no data history. So this is this new industry that's coming from scratch. How can we engage in that? The the the externalities are not yet priced in, and so you can't make an immediate, an immediate commercial argument for why it should be now. And you talked about things like, finding early adopters to help you with that. You talked about things like looking at the risk. If you don't do this, someone else will or there's enormous opportunity. I think all of those things, it feels like they apply to this entire area of the need to build capacity for billions of tons of removals out of nothing right now. And I have to say, it's the hardest thing I've ever touched, but it's also the most exciting thing I've ever touched. And one thing we did at Curate was we did this, forward financing, third kind deal with you, Marissa, and with Stanchard. So tell us tell me a bit about why you wanted to do that. This was a we we did a deal with with you. British Airways provided the offtake, undue, an enhanced rock weathering company provided the, the carbon removal. But we were doing it to to make a point to show that this was an opportunity to get money where it was needed to help to grow this. Tell me why you wanted to do it, what you saw in it. Well, it's funny because I think we are like minded souls, and I'm so filled with admiration of your journey too, by the way. I think you started with a preamble on me, but I have, you know, equal respect for, the hard graph that, that, you know, you've undertaken to to try to build this market. And by the way, this is not atypical of building markets. So the one thing I have learned by being in the capital markets for, you know, all these years is that as you're building an asset class, I might call it an asset class, you know, it is never a linear journey. It's got its ups and downs. And, you know, often just like, a venture capital investment, you know, version one point o isn't the final version, and there are many rounds in between before you finally land on the thing that really scales the market. So that is a backdrop. One of the reasons we did that transaction with you, Undo, British Airways, was because we felt and do feel very strongly that that there has to be a carbon market if we're going to achieve the net zero ambition. There is just with all the will in the world and all the technological innovation and all the ability to operationally try to decarbonize, there is gonna be a last mile that is going to be hard to abate within the time frame that we're all committed to to try to keep to that Paris agreement objective. So with that in mind, you know, we have been an active participant in the carbon markets, stemming from the early days of what's called the VCM or the voluntary carbon markets. You know, just getting the idea going, making an investment in one of the first exchanges, trading the credits, trying to set the standards and so on. But where this really comes together is when you have bold bold market participants taking forward action to help support the market. And you referenced British Airways as an offtake. You know, the airline industry does have a very big challenge. It is a hard to abate industry with a high level of carbon emissions, and the technological innovation, which is sustainable aviation fuel, is still nascent and is gonna take a lot of investment, a lot of feedstock, and a lot of other things to come together to the point where it can scale and be the solution to help decarbonize aviation. And so British Airways, who's equally committed to their sustainability net zero objectives, you know, has seen that coming and I think believes, if I were to speak for their CSO, that, that that some form of carbon credit needed to be a part of their equation in the absence of, you know, the ability to convert over to SAF a 100%. So, therefore, they wanted to have a forward purchase to ensure their supply of credits to meet their their net zero objectives, and they turned to us for a financing facility to help those forward purchases. And that's where Curate came in as an amazing partner, but it was really about piloting this project. This was novel for us, even the rock weathering, which was the form of carbon removal, for those of you who aren't familiar with that, that is where, for all intents and purposes, you sprinkle quarry dust on an agricultural field, and when it rains, that field absorbs more carbon. Beautiful solution for a rainy place like The UK and British Airways, which is a British brand name. All those things lined up in a in a really wonderful way. But what was important about that transaction was it was very much a pilot. We went into it experimentally with a very big ambition to try to create an unlock. And this was in a moment in time where there had been some very public challenges and very public negative headlines about the voluntary carbon market system, if you will. And that caused a number of active participants to step away from the market for fears of reputational implications by sticking with it. And yet the very thing that we need to support the industry were those off takers willing to step forward. So the statement that we made by doing this together in partnership, a brand name that is well respected like British Airways, a big bank like Standard Chartered coming together to say, you know, we we believe in the market. We're going to try this this pilot together. And if this works, we hope to replicate in scale, sent a signal. And it it really was amazing for us because the market was had been pretty stuck up until then. We announced that transaction, and I have shared with Gabrielle and and the team that my phone started to ring. And there were so many corporates, some of whom we didn't even bank, saw that transaction. So, well, gee, you know, if you're willing to do this together, two very respected brand names, and you're not afraid of of this, you know, negative halo on the market, if you're doing the right deal with high integrity together, then maybe there's something in it. And I and I feel very proud of that because that did help jump start the market, which as we say is is a necessary part, I think, of this equation of getting net zero. Thanks. And, you know, it's an evidence of your your boldness and your desire for for being provocative. I think that's the word they used earlier that that really helped with us as well. But but I do I think, I I I want to make a distinction here between general credits and specifically carbon removals because, you know, the the logic of net zero is that we need to get to a place where everything that that goes up has to come down. So, basically, if you haven't reduced your emissions, whatever you haven't reduced, you'll have to remove. When I started in this, the the the time horizon for that was was at the sort of 2050. It's basically when we get to net zero, we need to do this removals. And and I think many of the standards sort of behaved as if we we just needed to, you know, get to twenty forty nine and a half. Yes. And then, miraculously, all the removals says 10,000,000,000 tons of this incredibly big, sector is gonna spring up like mushrooms out of nowhere. And that's changed, obviously, happily. And I know that later this summer, the SBTI is going to bring out their revised standard where they're going to say, you need to stop buying removals by 2035. The ISO net zero aligned organization is gonna bring out a standard which will say, you need to have a a removals target for within five years of whenever now is and a plan to get there. So I think we're also seeing The UK talking about bringing removals into their emissions trading scheme, the EU doing the same. So I'm describing this as a time of kind of pre compliance where we're getting these signals flooding in from the future to say this is what this should look like. However, if you if you're looking at now and next, this year and next, which is when the projects actually need the money, need the off takes, need the commitments, you still don't have a kind of you have to do it now. So I'm wondering what what's your thinking about how to how to make that balance between now and the early twenty thirties to make sure we can really get this market going. And I I want to put one I I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it's words that came out of your mouth. I was so intrigued. When you talked about marrying the CSR report and the financial report, and you said you did it because you knew it was coming. And this way, you could do the pain. You could you could build the muscle. You could get the trust so that you were ready. Is there something of that to apply now to how we need to engage in carbon removals? Yeah. I I think that's you you hit the nail on the head, but also, pure economics. So imagine let's just imagine that scenario that all these companies around the world, this is a global phenomenon of the largest, you know, corporates and financial services providers in the world committing to net zero. If you waited to on a 2050 commitment to wait until 2049, imagine what that price would be for the removals. It's classic economics of supply and demand. If everybody wants it in a moment in time, think of the cost of that credit to to help deliver on your net zero commitment. I think the forward thinkers are saying, let me get started now and and think about that, buy it when the market is favorable, and have an average cost over time. But, also, the more buying that happens, the more projects that will get funded and the more supply there will be. So in some ways, you're also providing, if I can put it in financial terms, an insurance policy against a both a supply that you're going to need in the future, but equally helping to manage the price. Sure. So that's just good business. Right? That's just good logic. Don't go chase when the market's at its absolute top because you're gonna pay way over the odds. So I think we're all invested in making sure the market's a success if we're gonna deliver on that 2050 ambition. I love the way you put that. The way that I'm saying this is if if you wait until everything is certain, you will certainly pay over the odds. Got that right. Absolutely. That is you know, we don't need to lean forward in any market to see that phenomenon. Right? You know? Look backwards and you can see in history how many times, you know, when you chase a market, you know, there's there's, you pay so much more, and there's only downside likely. Well, we've had a slew of questions that have come in, but we've been answering them as we've gone along. So I think I think so far, the the one question that we haven't actually answered is, what what what we we we touched on this for the straight of homies and the and the solar power, but just can you talk about the geopolitical downturns and its impact on sustainability priorities? The the question was particularly for US firms, everyone stampeding towards AI. How is this changing how think people are thinking about sustainability? So AI is is an absolute phenomenon that came, I don't wanna say, out of nowhere, but if if I think about the curves of what organizations that most of us refer to when we're thinking about our scientific pathways or the direction for our own modeling of what the world should look like from an energy mix supply and demand point of view, AI in some ways did come out of nowhere in terms of the extraordinary adoption and, therefore, the demand for power and energy that's gonna be associated or that is associated with that adoption. You know, that it's just you know, it's exponential. And so one of the issues certainly that we face is how do we supply that energy and do it in a clean and sustainable format rather than, accelerate fossil fuels investment. And that is a challenge. There's no doubt about it because today's existing renewable infrastructure, green infrastructure can't satisfy all that demand. So this is, you know, a transition, and you, you know, can't pick up a newspaper without, you know, looking at, you know, the capital t word transition. That is exactly what we're in the middle of is is there is a transition that has to happen. And none of this happens overnight. I do think the current conflict to bring it to the realities of today is a moment though where it is it is making it very clear that, to have an imbalanced energy mix is putting yourself at risk to the point that you talked about earlier, that you you now that you know how exposed you are, if you're relying on energy that gets produced somewhere else or if you're relying on an energy mix that's based on commodity price fluctuation, that can spike from 50 to a 120. I mean, just the implications of that really are are pretty profound. When you have an alternative that can be consistent energy once you make the investment and that isn't subject to price volatility, the direction of travel is clear. So I I think we all have to have the the courage of our convictions. And if we needed a proof point, it is here and now. And I do think this is a moment where sustainability will accelerate. And the reason I'm confident in that is if I look across our markets at Standard Chartered, where this has been disproportionately, I would say, you know, affecting, many of our economies. We just pointed maybe Southeast Asia. I have seen country after country come out with very clear pronouncements. In some cases, they're bringing their targets forward. In other cases, they are fast tracking renewable projects that it might have been on the slow burn. They are making very bold, ambitious, you know, policy changes. All these sorts of things have literally happened as a result of this crisis. So that gives me a lot of confidence because often policy is the enabler for then, you know, markets to draft in behind. So I think the direction of travel is clear, but it is a transition. And so in the near term, we also have to acknowledge that if you're in acute energy shock in, say, one of my markets that has been historically dependent on coal and was seeking to turn coal off, If you've got to meet the demand of your citizens in the year and now and there is no other alternative, we may see in the short term fossil fuels in particular, some of my markets coal, be the source in in in this moment. So, this is, you know, none of this is simple and straightforward. It's all nuanced. But I think we need to look at the longer intermediate to longer term, and the economics are clear, and the energy security and affordability point is is pretty important now as, the the world realizes, you know, what, what the risk is of of sticking with the old system. Yeah. Completely. And I think that it comes back to the thing where we discussed in the old kind of acute and chronic issue. And and at the same time, there's gonna be a lot of bumps. But I I think I I wanted to finish up. We're almost at time. You know, I I I've been at such a long time. I've seen so many ups and downs and rounds about, and and yet I find that now playing this role of really being at the heart of building an entirely new set of climate solutions, a whole industry, which is really gonna help buyers time back, and and it's gonna be needed by everybody in the world. I I feel more excited even though it's such the headwinds seem to be on all sides. I don't know. Maybe when I was a kid, someone dropped me on my head or something, but I do feel very excited about what's coming. And and this this process of building QA is one of the most exciting things I've ever touched. So my last question to you is, you've been doing this a long time. You you you you and reasonable people will be getting tired by now. You still seem to have as much energy as anywhere as ever before. What are you excited about? I have to say this this job gives me energy because the intellectual challenge is enormous, and I get energy out of keeping my brain engaged. But equally, it is the I you know, I get energy out of the innovation that I'm seeing. I'm literally seeing innovation everywhere in every sector, every market sector, every geography, the amount of intellectual capital that is being applied to solve these big, big challenges, which is why I got in this in the first place, is happening everywhere. You know, all the bright young minds in university that I get to meet every single day that have a new solution for green cement or steel or packaging substitutes, what have you, but also our traditional industry clients. You know, I have enormous respect for our energy clients, our oil and gas clients, you know, who are trying to balance all of this, you know, who are generating wonderful profits at at at high oil prices and then reinvesting those in solutions in their own transition. And, you know, we want to be very balanced because this transition isn't straightforward as you say. Nothing's, you know, nothing is a straight line. This will have its fits and starts. And the energy supply that we have to power this wonderful thing we're calling AI, which is gonna make us all productive. And in the end, I think it will actually help us to optimize how we consume energy. And net net, that will be an offset to the increase in energy requirements. It's gonna make our grid smarter. It's gonna produce all sorts of things. So we wanna have all of these things. And I think whatever the industry is, whatever the client type is, whatever the government is, you know, I have the enormous privilege to be able to engage across the entire spectrum, and what a privilege that is. And, you know, at the end of the day, I feel really that my job is incredibly purposeful because I can see every time we deploy a dollar of capital in the sustainability field, whether it's all the way green or in transition, the outsized impact that it has on the planet and people is enormous. And that multiplier effect, you know, does hopefully leave this world in a better place. And as I said to my CEO when I finally took the job, if that's what's on the epitaph, then maybe I had a good career. I had a good run. Well, let's keep at it. It's not over yet. There's plenty more to do, and there's plenty more to be excited about. Marissa, thank you so much for joining for this inaugural Carbon Confidential. Thanks to all of you for for tuning in. Thanks for all your questions that I was asking as we went along. Our next Carbon Confidential will be, our next victim. Our next guest will be Paul Palmer, former CEO of Unilever. So so watch this space for for that coming on. And in the meantime, Marissa, thanks for all you do. Thanks for a fascinating conversation, and I'd look forward to doing much more work with you in the years ahead. Thanks. Thanks so much for having a really great pleasure. And, as I said, it's an equal admiration fest because the work you do is, really, really important work. So, always here to support. And, your next guest is fascinating and another person I admire. So well done you for, for teeing up on some great conversations. Yep. Thank you. If we continue. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye now.