This page is archived

Links to external sources may no longer work as intended. The content may not represent the latest thinking in this area or the Society’s current position on the topic.

Sci-Fi: bridging climate science and green finance

21 July 2021 12:00 - 15:50
Building Exterior, Built Structure, City, Cityscape,

This Royal Society meeting explored climate science and the technologies that show genuine promise towards net zero emissions, as well as barriers to the flow of capital and solutions to funding such technologies.

 

A report summarising the meeting is available online (PDF).

Background

Achieving a net zero carbon society that is both resilient to climate change and inclusive requires the development and widespread deployment of both disruptive and existing technologies, supported by public and private funding. Responding to climate change has historically been seen as the realm of government policy, however, there is rising expectation that the financial sector should contribute to managing the risks associated with climate change. In June 2019, at least $30.7 trillion of funds were held in sustainable or green investments, an increase of 34% from 2016 according to a report by the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance. However, closer integration is needed between the physical and social sciences, financial professionals and institutions, innovative start-ups and global industry to support a low-carbon future. 

This Transforming our future meeting was held by the Royal Society in partnership with the Green Finance Institute. This unique interaction between science and finance brought together leading experts from across industry, government and the wider scientific and financial communities. Speakers explored recent developments in low carbon technologies across sectors which have been the target for ‘green finance’: hydrogen and ammonia, heating and cooling, batteries and energy storage, nuclear energy and digital. The meeting also explored opportunities and challenges to commercialising these technologies and potential solutions to channel the world’s finance into their widespread implementation. Speakers discussed the measurement of risk of new scientific technologies for the financial community and how to mitigate this.

In dedication

During the planning of this event, Sir Roger Gifford, a key member of the organising committee, sadly passed away. His family were keen for the meeting to go ahead, which was held as a dedication to him. Sir Roger leaves a strong legacy in this important area of climate-linked financial services, and contributed significantly in the development phase and to shaping the agenda and content of this important event. Dame Sue Ion DBE FREng FRS and Professor Peter Bruce FRS led the organising committee in his stead.

About the conference series

The conference is part of the Royal Society's Transforming our future conference series, overseen by the Science, Industry and Translation Committee and generously supported by AstraZeneca. These meetings are unique, high-level events that address the scientific and technical challenges of the next decade. Each conference features cutting edge science from industry and academia and brings together leading experts from the scientific community, including regulatory, charity and funding bodies.

Organisers

  • Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS

    Dame Sue Ion GBE FRS FREng is Hon President of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear. She was previously Chairman of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board (NIRAB). She represents the UK on a number of international review and oversight committees for the nuclear sector including the Euratom Science and Technology Committee which she chaired until late 2018. She was the only non-US member of the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee on which she has served from 2005-2020.She currently serves as a member of the Office of Nuclear Regulation Independent Advisory Panel.

    Sue spent 27 years with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer in 1992, a post she held until 2006 when she assumed a number of mainly voluntary roles in Science and Engineering, including membership of the UK Council for Science and Technology and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). She was Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2002-2008 and chaired its MacRobert Committee 2013-2019. Sue was Deputy Chair of the Board of the University of Manchester until September 2018 and currently serves on the Board of the University of Central Lancashire.

    Her core expertise is in materials science and engineering associated with the nuclear sector. Sue is a member of the Chief Scientific Advisor for Wales’s Science and Innovation Advisory Council. She has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College since 2006, holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester and is now Chair of the Royal Society Science, Industry and Translation Committee.

  • Professor Peter Bruce FRS

    Peter Bruce is Wolfson Professor of Materials at the University of Oxford. His research interests embrace materials chemistry and electrochemistry, with a particular emphasis on energy storage. Recent efforts have focused on the synthesis and understanding of new cathode materials for lithium and sodium ion batteries, understanding processes in all solid-state batteries and the challenges of the lithium-air battery. His pioneering work has provided many advances.

    Peter has received numerous awards, including the Tilden Prize of the RSC, the Carl Wagner Award of the ECS, the Liversidge Award of the RSC and the Hughes Medal of the RS. He has also been recognised as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics each year since 2015.

    Peter is a founder and Chief Scientist of the Faraday Institution, the UK centre for research on electrochemical energy storage. Peter took up the position of Physical Secretary and Vice President of the Royal Society in 2018.

  • Sir Roger Gifford, Chair of the Green Finance Institute and Senior Banker, SEB

    Sir Roger Gifford is chair of the Green Finance Institute and a senior banker at SEB in London. He was Lord Mayor of London in 2013.

    Roger is vice chair and a past chair of the Association of Foreign Banks in London and chair of the advisory board of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange. As a leading figure in green finance, Roger was recently on the advisory panel for the Dasgupta Review, the independent, global review commissioned by HM Treasury on the Economics of Biodiversity. He was also chair of the Green Finance Initiative, launched in London in 2016 to focus on growing the contribution of the financial sector to the G20 climate agenda, and chaired the UK Government’s Green Finance Taskforce in 2018. One of the key recommendations of the Taskforce was the formation of the Green Finance Institute.

    Roger read Chemistry at Oxford and began his career in the financial sector at S.G. Warburg & Co, before joining SEB in 1982. Prior to his appointment as UK country head in 2000, he led the bank's operations in Japan for six years. He has worked in and around the primary debt and equity capital markets most of his career. He is an elected member of the City of London Corporation as alderman for the ward of Cordwainer.

Schedule

Welcome remarks

Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS

Chair

Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS

12:05 - 12:25 Science and the City: climate, capital and collaboration

Green finance, often described as the application of climate and environmental science to financial decision making, is one of the most exciting and fast-growing areas within financial services.

The proliferation of Net Zero aligned commitments from both public and private financial institutions attests to the growing acceptance that climate risk poses financial risk and the need to reallocate capital towards the zero carbon solutions over the coming decade.

Our Net Zero emissions future is dependent on investing trillions not only to scale existing zero carbon solutions but also to finance emerging technologies and transform our existing carbon intensive industries.

Our challenge is to ensure the real economy transformation required is based on rigorous scientific guidance and that capital flows are aligned with these sectoral transition pathways. No single type of financial institution, be that public or private, can meet that challenge, which points to an unprecedented era of collaboration between science, industry, policy and finance.

Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, Chief Executive, The Green Finance Institute

12:25 - 12:45 A CERN for climate change

The science of climate change is not done and dusted. On the global scale we do not understand well how clouds will respond to increasing CO2 concentrations - and yet this will determine how much the planet will warm. On more regional scales we have a poor understanding of the changing nature of extreme events, or of the possibility of passing irreversible "tipping points". I argue that to address these issues, and their impacts, we should be investing in an international institute for climate prediction - a sort of "CERN for climate change". At its heart would be exascale computing infrastructure, completely dedicated to climate-change research.

Professor Tim Palmer CBE FRS, University of Oxford, UK

Chair

Ingrid Holmes, Executive Director, The Green Finance Institute

13:00 - 13:20 The role of hydrogen and its derivates in the achievement of the climate targets

Professor Christopher Hebling, Director, Energy Technologies and Systems; Director, Hydrogen Technologies of Fraunhofer ISE

13:20 - 13:40 Balancing risk and reward in the Faraday Institution’s energy-storage research portfolio

The Faraday Institution represents a bold approach toward application-inspired energy storage research and early-stage commercialisation. The combined efforts of its 450-strong research community are directed toward technical targets set by industry in areas that show promise in providing tangible benefits to the UK battery and transport sectors. Research breakthroughs, however, are challenging to anticipate, the timescales involved between lab-based breakthrough and deployment in a commercial product are often long, and development cycles rarely track product roadmaps. Professor Pam Thomas will discuss the Faraday Institution’s approach to a balanced research portfolio and the FI’s analytical methodology – unique among research organisations – used to assess early-stage commercialisation potential for each of its 10 major battery research projects. This assessment facilitates the development of a bespoke approach to commercialisation tailored to each project, which enables the organisation to prioritise research and commercialisation resources, back likely "winners" and convene consortia that are investment ready.

Professor Pam Thomas, CEO, Faraday Institution

13:40 - 14:00 Heating and cooling

Domestic and commercial heating gives rise to about 20% of the UK's emissions. However, there is a lot of debate, and hype, on what the right zero carbon heating technology should be. Rather than picking winners and losers, this talk will consider the problem from the perspective of three guiding principles. These three principles act as a litmus test to evaluate in what contexts different solutions could be successful, and hence guide the understanding of the potential market size. The talk shows exemplars of how each principle can be applied to a diverse set of technology solutions.

Professor Malcolm McCulloch, Associate Professor and Group Leader, University of Oxford

14:00 - 14:20 Nuclear energy = low carbon energy. Why aren’t we seeing more of it? Lost opportunity or new dawn?

As we strive for the very challenging target of net zero by 2050 why is it that nuclear energy which is sustainable, green, low carbon and has saved more emissions than any other source is not being progressed more vigorously? Nuclear has the lowest lifecycle carbon alongside wind. Solar is four times higher, gas is 40 times higher. However, nuclear energy's progress is negatively impacted by historic high costs and reactor systems designed decades ago and the fact it is not normally viewed with the same positivity as renewable energy sources. The talk will discuss these issues and show how science and engineering has led to major progress on all fronts in recent times. It will focus particularly on two UK systems, one based on the traditional water cooled technology familiar globally, the other on high temperature gas cooled technology which has so much potential for the dual mission of both electricity and heat production and its potential role in the production of green hydrogen.

Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS

14:20 - 14:40 The digital energy system of the future

Society is becoming increasingly dependent on 'digital', leading to implications for many facets of our day to day living. The digital sector continues to experience a long period of continuous change and many innovations have enabled and supported complete transformations of the infrastructure, operations, and use of digital systems.

Alongside this, the energy sector is entering a period of profound change being driven by several factors, including the absolute need to decarbonise, the ageing state of networks and increase in demand. Digitalisation is seen as an essential enabler of this energy transformation, with its application being considered key in a broad spectrum of situations from production to distribution and consumption.

In this session, Nick will explore what the future energy system could look like, why digitalisation is important and what it will enable.

Nick Winser CBE FREng, Chair, Energy Systems Catapult

Chair

Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, Chief Executive, The Green Finance Institute

Huw van Steenis, Senior Advisor to the CEO, UBS

Caroline Haas, Head of Sustainable Finance, NatWest

Sam Gyimah, Non-Executive Director, Goldman Sachs and former Science and Innovation Minister

15:45 - 15:50 Closing remarks

Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS