In this podcast, we speak with Liza about their mission and how she got to co-founding Carbon Equity. It started from the desire to create an investment product that would have a real climate impact. They focussed on a set of about 100 climate technologies, working on the IPCC trajectories that will lead to a net zero emission. Many of those still needed to scale and become cost-competitive, so for Liza and her team it was clear that's where the money was needed…
One of the interesting things we touch upon is the inability of people to grasp exponential growth and the challenge that it presents us with. As humans, we seem to have difficulty doing so, as we are more linear focussed:
'...try telling a car manufacturer company seven years ago that electric vehicles are on an exponential growth path and they need to uproot… We wanted to tell that story, but when we showed them an exponential growth path, they didn't believe it…’
Speaking of opportunities and challenges we look at what exciting technologies are out there at the moment and I have to say learned some interesting things such as the fact that 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world come from making cement… But there are exciting solutions out there. For instance the discovery of bacteria that love to eat limestone and poop out cement! One of the companies in Carbon Equity’s portfolio is looking into a way how to scale this…
With all these fantastic initiatives I was obviously curious about what kind of return on investment people are looking for, and what drives them.
‘So we talk a lot about when do our customers have a successful experience? When do they feel they achieved with us what they wanted to achieve?’
Besides the financial return on investment, one thing that really matters to the investors is what they are investing in.
As a current investment with Carbon Equity starts at Euro 100,000 this might be a bit too much for some, hence they are looking into ways for the future to have a lower threshold portfolio.
Whilst this is under development, we discuss what we can do to make an impact in the broader sense. According to Liza - based on research, voting is the number one thing on the list we can do when it comes to making an impact on the climate.
One other thing is that we can all decide how we spend our time… Since we work for 80,000 hours in our life, how is that time spent? Do you use it to make a meaningful contribution? In the Netherlands for instance, a big initiative was just launched, the School of Moral Ambition. They invite you to think about how you are spending your time and what you are contributing towards… a super interesting initiative that shows that there is more and more momentum to do things differently.
I went into the podcast recording session with a great deal of curiosity and came out inspired by all these great initiatives and viewpoints. Listen to the podcast and get inspired too!