-: Hi, I'm Mai-Britt, and I'm here in Davos together
with Alan Thomson, who is leading
BCG's global energy practice.
Hi, Alan.
-: Hi Mai-Britt, what a delight
to be with you this afternoon.
-: You've been in many conversations,
and sustainability is certainly
on the top of the Davos agenda this year.
What interesting insights can you share
from the conversations you've had with leaders
from all over the world?
-: Sustainability, absolutely has been top of mind,
and particularly the focus on climate change and carbon.
Those have been paramount priorities in many
of the conversations I have had.
But I've also heard a broader view of sustainability,
which isn't just climate and isn't just carbon.
It includes the reality that many people
in the world are suffering
from not only economic poverty but energy poverty as well.
And the need to balance the reality of climate change
with the need to continue to provide energy sources
to many people around the world.
An interesting statistic I heard - that three billion people
today live off of effectively biomass fuel sources,
so this is wood, crop byproducts, animal dung.
And it's a reality for many of the people in the world,
and in one of the tragedies of this,
is that two million people per year die
from indoor-air-quality-related complications and issues.
And so this is a real tragedy that is fundamentally related
to how people use energy and an opportunity
not only to deal with the climate change issue,
but deal with this tragedy of energy poverty
around the world.
-: Absolutely, I agree.
So the sustainability agenda is much broader.
Climate is one pillar, but there are lot of challenges.
-: Indeed, and I think we have
to have a broad enough aperture as we think
about sustainability, and look at all of these issues
in the context of a global challenge for our clients
and society, and for BCG.
-: Yes, we need to think about it end to end.
From a CEO perspective, now you talk with many CEOs
and those that you work with.
How do they craft their agenda around sustainability?
What are the key topics that you see?
-: Well, I guess there are three things that come
to mind that are consistent across many of the clients
in the energy practice that, within the oil and gas sector,
and the power and utility sector.
Number one, a real commitment to reduce the emissions
and the contributions from existing assets
and existing operations.
So this is running a more energy-efficient asset,
it's dealing with leakage in infrastructure,
it's running the types of fuels that contribute
to a lower carbon emission.
And that's something we seek,
consistently across many clients right now.
Technologically it's achievable,
economically in most cases it's obvious they should do this.
So we're seeing a strong focus
on reducing own operations emissions.
Number two, we're seeing significant portfolio choices
around being more carbon friendly for the future.
On the utility sector side, it's reducing the dependents
on coal fire generation.
Growing renewables, whether that's solar and wind,
nuclear, hydro, and making the portfolio more attractive.
For oil and gas companies, it's really thinking
about not investing in oil sands and focusing
more on natural gas, and in some cases
also investing in renewables
as part of their non-oil and gas portfolio.
The third area we see a lot of common themes,
is really one of dealing with technology,
and the importance of carbon capture and sequestration
as an important enabler for the broader carbon agenda
and climate change agenda.
And all of our clients have a vested interest in seeing
that technology proliferate, scale,
become more cost effective,
and becoming a true part of the solution going forward.
-: Wow, it's very ambitious.
It's a very bold agenda, it must require a change
in leadership behavior, more risk-taking,
and betting on that investors will also recognize.
-: Absolutely, and you're spot on.
The challenge in doing all of this, is doing it in a way,
where it's financially accretive,
shareholders will reward these companies
that are leaders in this area.
And the CEOs and the executive teams
of these companies get recognized and rewarded
for the decisions they're making,
the risks they're taking, and most importantly
the impact they're contributing to.
-: Yes, I fully agree and I think the biggest challenge is
that some of these initiatives will play out
in the medium to long term and not in the short term.
So we need to have that long-term horizon.
-: Exactly, and just to summarize
I think we need a wide aperture.
And we need enough of a runway
to really make things impactful for the world in the future.
-: It will be an exciting future we are looking into.
Thanks for being here.