Talks with the founders of Singaporean-based advisory firms
High-level environmental expertise
Laura Ashton, Managing Director, Low Carbon Advisors (LCA)
Could you introduce LCA? Low Carbon Advisors is a global advisory firm providing Board-level advice on decarbonization and sustainability. Our goal is to enable boards, CEOs, portfolio owners and policy makers to hold deeper conversations about their energy transition strategies and to take the right steps, with confidence and a sense of urgency, toward net zero carbon. Mark Gainsborough, Shell’s former EVP of New Energies, and I incorporated LCA in Singapore and, with our panel of senior advisors, work with clients globally. Our clients confirm that accessing good talent and expertise in the energy transition space is extremely difficult; this is a hot market where demand is far exceeding supply. Sustainability consulting, with pyramids of juniors and massive slide decks, is growing very rapidly, but access to relevant, experienced, senior industry experience is difficult.
What makes LCA different? Our LCA advisors are former CEOs, global EVPs and leading academics with “lived” corporate and entrepreneurial leadership experience. They have driven energy transition across the entire leadership value chain and led some of the most significant Renewables M&A activity. Many serve on boards and as fund advisors, giving them access to some of the most advanced technologies, and enabling their forward-looking views. Most have experience of direct relevance to the Chemicals industry – CCUS, recycling and the circular economy, the role of hydrogen both as a potential zero carbon fuel and for ammonia and ethanol production, the end-to-end value chain and so on.
What is your message for the industry? Getting to net zero carbon is the biggest challenge that society faces over the next few decades. Long term ambitions to do something by 2050 no longer cut it; there needs to be fast and demonstrable progress by 2030. Business leaders must drive this sense of urgency to achieve net zero emission, with clear, KPI-linked short and medium-term goals linked to science-based targets, and ensure their culture is aligned to purpose. Low Carbon Advisors can help leaders see both the gaps and the opportunities, make network connections, and accelerate the energy transition based on real world experience.
Marc Allen, Co-Founder, Unravel Carbon
What is Unravel Carbon's methodology for carbon monitoring? Every dollar spent by a company has an emission intensity associated with it, so what we are doing is tracking the financial transaction data and converting it into emissions data. For instance, US$1,000 spent on diesel is converted into an emission equivalent using an emission factor (amount of GHG per amount of purchasable material). Of course, other emission sources, like electricity emissions, require different emission inputs, and we account for each of these in our database.
What are your industries of focus? We are currently building the product vertical by vertical, using as a reference the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)’s classification of 11 broad sectors and 77 sub-sectors. By approaching each sector individually, we make sure our database and solutions are well customized by both industry and location. In the few months since we started, we have developed the food and beverages sector, and we have huge scope for expansion. Our ambition is to grow beyond Singapore into neighboring jurisdictions in Southeast Asia and then into Australia and New Zealand. New policies represent a big driver for our future growth. From January 2022, Singapore made climate reporting compulsory for SGX-listed companies.
How has the conversation on climate change evolved in the past two years? When I started working in this field about 15 years ago, the conversation on climate change was mostly focused on energy efficiency first as a cost-saving exercise and second as an emissions initiative. One of the biggest triggers for change since the pandemic has been the attitude of the finance community. The Financial Stability Board created the TCFD in recognition that climate change poses a significant threat to the financial system. Before approving loans, banks today will ask to see decarbonization plans to prove a business’ resilience. As a result, many corporates get a foot ahead and set their net-zero goals preemptively. But beyond lots of talk around net-zero ambitions, the actual implementation is lagging. The next few years will be about operationalizing those net carbon targets.