It’s been a privilege to announce the launch of Elimini at New York Climate Week in the city I call home.
The effects of climate change are being felt more acutely today than they ever have been before. This summer, an estimated 350 New Yorkers died prematurely of heat exposure. Most were low-income members of our community who simply couldn’t afford to keep cool.
I believe that we must protect our common future, and that it’s time for breakthrough innovation and transformative solutions to the climate crisis.
Climate change isn’t just a challenge of technology or investment. For me, having worked in energy for over 30 years, I know it’s really about people.
It’s about the woman I met in a small town in Patagonia in 1994, who wanted to know when the light would come so she could buy a refrigerator and sell empanadas and soft drinks to passing motorists (we were installing a wind / fossil hybrid system in her community).
It’s about the communities in northern Mexico, near a solar project I worked on in 2019. It's about landowners in California who have received wind project lease payments since the 1980s. It’s about heat in winter, A/C in summer, and 24/7 renewable power that will enable businesses large and small to thrive while ensuring that we provide a fair sharing of benefits, in our responses to the climate crisis.
All of this requires discipline and focus.
When people work together, we can achieve extraordinary things
My 30 years of working on energy infrastructure development in the U.S. and Latin America have proven to me that when people across different disciplines work together, we can achieve extraordinary things.
And so, with Elimini, we’re creating a different kind of carbon removals company. One that exists to tackle several fundamental challenges on the route to delivering net zero.
Firstly, we need to acknowledge that the demand for clean electricity will continue to grow exponentially as societies develop and new technologies change the way we live and work.
And secondly, that we cannot afford to continue growing our economies at the expense of the one planet we all share. We need to operate within the boundaries set by nature, to protect the ecosystems on which all life depends.
At Elimini, we believe that no challenge is insurmountable. And so, we’re convening a coalition of researchers, engineers, environmentalists, investors, communities, activists and innovators - united on a mission to transform economies from carbon emitters to carbon removers.
Our ambition is to become a world-leading carbon removals company. And that begins with the deployment of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, or BECCS, at scale. BECCS is also the perfect complement to the industries of the future – our 24/7 clean electricity and carbon removals can meet the significant energy demand and abate the emissions associated with scaling AI.
You can read more about how BECCS works here.
Removing carbon for good
Removing carbon for good also means deploying BECCS responsibly, and asking ourselves how we can deliver for people, the planet and nature as we do so.
This is why I began my New York Climate Week by convening some of the world’s leading environmental NGOs to start a conversation about how Elimini can deliver our carbon removal projects in an equitable and sustainable way. As we work in partnership with environmental organizations to design and implement our sustainability approach, I want to touch on a few core principles that will guide us:
We believe in partnering with communities to ensure they have a say in the decisions that impact them. And so, in every potential location Elimini explores we will take a holistic approach to project development.
We will establish spaces for communities where we operate to engage with us, to promote equity through community-driven decision-making, bringing community needs and concerns into the heart of our decision-making processes.
We believe in offering skills and development opportunities to the local workforce, and prioritizing creating relationships with minority, non-corporate and family-owned companies in the wider supply chain.
As part of our commitment to communities, I’ve announced a new Group-wide multi-year commitment to invest 1% of pre-tax profits per annum in community investment, primarily through the Group’s Foundation and Community Fund.
We also believe in independent data to quantify our carbon impact. That is why we’re partnering with leading national labs to develop a lifecycle assessment of our BECCS projects.
We believe in integrity and standards, which is why we’ve developed a comprehensive and independently assessed methodology for quantifying the carbon we remove from the atmosphere.
We’re here to not only to establish a floor for BECCS done well, but also to raise the ceiling and set the standard, for others to follow.
Today marks the beginning of Elimini’s journey.
But we can’t do this alone. Because to transform carbon removals into a world changing reality, to reach the scale we must reach to deliver an equitable pathway to net zero, we need everyone – NGOs, governments, think tanks, corporates, communities to play their part.
So, I invite everyone to join me and the rest of our coalition on a mission. Together, we can set out to remove carbon for good.
Follow me on LinkedIn to see what comes next for us at Elimini.