Leverage points for exponential climate progress

01 - Economic system: December 2.nd - Leverage Points for our Economic System - A Roadmap for Systemic Change - inspired by the amazing Donella Meadows Transcending Paradigms: 🌐 Cultivate new economic theories that extend beyond traditional capitalism and socialism. Paradigms: 🔄 Shift our perspective to value economic growth as a means to enhance well-being and ecological balance. Goals: 🎯 Adopt broader success metrics like GPI or GNH that reflect environmental and social health. Rules: ⚖️ Enforce environmental regulations to support sustainability and punish detrimental practices. 🤝 Promote fair trade that benefits workers and the environment equally. Self-organization: 🌱 Foster local businesses that are environmentally and community-oriented. ♻️ Encourage a circular economy to minimize waste and maximize resource use. Structural Elements: 🏗️ Invest in green infrastructure and collaborative platforms for sustainable business practices. Information Flows: 📊 Demand transparency from businesses regarding their ecological and social footprints. 📚 Educate on sustainable practices and operating within planetary limits. Balancing Feedback Loops: 💡 Provide incentives for sustainable practices and penalties for environmental degradation. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: ✅ Establish systems that reward businesses contributing positively to the environment and society. Buffers: 🔋 Create economic stability measures to protect long-term environmental and social goals during crises. Delays: ⏳ Support investments with sustainable long-term returns over quick-profit ventures. By integrating these concepts with a focus on visual and symbolic representation, we can guide our economy towards a model that is robust, equitable, and harmonious with the Earth's ecosystems. We're in transformative times and courage is contagious.

Energy-Related Climate Action Goals 🌎 Energy is one of the most critical levers for climate action—and one where companies can make measurable progress through structured steps. A practical framework by Schneider Electric outlines how organizations can evolve their energy strategy from compliance to leadership across three pillars: efficiency, decarbonization, and renewable energy. The starting point is regulatory alignment: conduct energy audits, ensure site-level consumption tracking, and report GHG emissions in line with established protocols. These are foundational steps to gain visibility and stay compliant. The next level involves more active management. Introduce submetering, set targeted reductions by site or process, upgrade outdated equipment, and disclose your performance through recognized platforms like CDP. Advanced organizations go further—using real-time energy data to optimize systems, committing to ISO 50001 or EP100 standards, and deploying on-site solutions like EV infrastructure, microgrids, or renewable heat. Efficiency becomes part of the value chain. Decarbonization begins with measurement. Track your full GHG footprint and set initial emissions reduction goals—whether absolute or intensity-based—to anchor your roadmap. Strengthen your decarbonization strategy by assessing Scope 3 emissions, setting long-term, science-aligned targets, and reporting emissions using both market- and location-based methods. Interim carbon neutrality goals may still rely on offsets. Leadership means setting net zero targets without offsets, aligning with the 1.5°C pathway through SBTi-approved targets for Scope 1, 2, and 3, and working closely with suppliers to decarbonize the full chain. Business models begin to shift around low-carbon value creation. On renewables, early actions include purchasing Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) or using green tariffs to cover Scope 2 emissions. This provides a credible but indirect solution. More advanced steps include direct procurement through onsite or offsite sources, replacing Scope 1 offsets with clean technologies, and engaging your supply chain in renewable energy efforts. The goal: 100% renewable energy, achieved through real transformation—not accounting. Source: Schneider Electric #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #climatechange #energy

Super-leverage points Will the low carbon transition be driven by policy or the market? This question, which I heard again last week, is like asking whether the outcome of a game of sport is determined by the competition between its players or by the rules. These are not independent variables: one is shaped by the other. Competition in a game of football leads to different results from competition in a game of cricket, because the two games have different rules. Policy changes the rules of the game in the economy, so that competition in the market leads to different results. A policy brief published today: ‘A positive tipping cascade in power, transport and heating’, based on a modelling study, finds that in general, regulations are likely to be more powerful than either taxes (carbon prices) or subsidies for accelerating progress towards the tipping points where clean technologies outcompete fossil fuels, in the power, cars, trucks, and heating sectors. Two regulations in particular: a coal power phase-out, and a zero emission vehicle mandate, emerge as potential super-leverage points for the transition – capable of substantially accelerating progress in other sectors as well as their own. These regulations are not an alternative to the market; they are our most powerful way of shaping the market. As always, there are many caveats, interesting exceptions, and more that could be said. Read the policy brief if you’d like to find out more: https://lnkd.in/ebj9FHjQ  

When you're facing 10,000 connections, where do you begin? That was the challenge we faced when mapping the global food-energy-water stress nexus. Our network of experts initially identified 300 important factors. After clustering and refinement, we were left with about 100 core nodes, still yielding 10,000 potential interactions. That kind of complexity can paralyse action, but it can also sharpen your focus - if you know how to look. With help from a complexity scientist, we analysed the network to identify the most influential nodes, those that shaped system-wide behaviour the most. Five major leverage points emerged: - Smart & Sustainable Design: especially in cities, which remain the key influence in the entire network - Policy & Pricing: aligning incentives around carbon, water, energy and emissions - Technological Innovation: not just renewables, but also hydrogen, carbon capture and waste-to-energy - Resource Nationalism & Constraints: from dammed rivers to rare earth bottlenecks - Population & Prosperity Growth: the foundational driver behind most food, water, and energy pressures No single factor holds the key, but some matter more than others. This kind of work doesn’t deliver simple answers. What it can deliver is clarity about where it’s worth focusing your time, energy, and investment. And in a world of tangled systems, that’s a start. P.S. This is a topic I covered in my bi-weekly newsletter, The Dodo Club. If you’d like to learn more, the link to sign up is in the comments.

We don’t have a capital shortage. We have a coordination failure. A risk perception problem. An imagination deficit. The truth is: we already have the money to regenerate the planet. What we lack is the architecture to move it. Blended finance — where public, philanthropic, and private capital come together to de-risk impact — is one of the most underutilized levers we have to scale climate and sustainability solutions. But it’s still not moving fast enough. In 2024, we saw $18.3B in blended finance deals. Sounds like progress, right? Yet we need over $1.3T annually just to meet emerging market climate goals. We must shift from scattered pilots to exponential blended finance ecosystems: - Philanthropies acting as first-loss catalysts - Governments mandating regenerative investment vehicles - AI-powered deal platforms that match capital to verified impact in real time - Multi-country megafunds for biodiversity, clean energy, and resilient infrastructure Blended finance must go exponential, because the planet can’t wait. This is our Apollo moment. Let’s fund a future that heals. #BlendedFinance #RegenerativeEconomy #ClimateCapital #SustainableInnovation #ImpactInvesting #FinanceForTheFuture #CapitalMobilization #ClimateInvesting