New Schools, New Standards, New World

From time to time, there are cultural moments when you realize a certain, previously ‘niche’ thing is going mainstream right before your eyes.

Think social media, smartphones, podcasts, or even cryptocurrency.

Earth Day aside, the last few weeks and months have been a groundswell of new, big sustainability and climate announcements. And, far more importantly, actions.

Truly, within sustainability, it feels like we’re starting to transition from “early adopters” to “early majority,” and that’s an exciting, welcome development.

It also feels more and more like we’re really starting to build the cultural infrastructure for sustainability to thrive among future generations and institutions.

Stanford’s New Climate School

This week, Stanford announced the university’s first new school in 70 years: the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability (SDSS).

SDSS will include “academic departments that advance subject understanding, interdisciplinary institutes that innovate across fields, and an accelerator focused on developing near-term policy and technology solutions.”

Why is this so meaningful?

First, for one of the most innovative universities in the world to create an entirely new school — the first since essentially World War II — is a signal in and of itself. The fact that it will be focused on climate research, education, and innovation is music to our ears: we need to educate the next generation of sustainability practitioners and climate problem-solvers.

For those unfamiliar, the name ‘Doerr’ on the school comes from John and Ann Doerr, who gifted $1.1 billion to fund the school, the largest gift in Stanford history.

While we have mixed feelings about billionaire philanthropy in general, compared to setting up a multi-disciplinary climate school at an elite university capable of producting sustainabilty research, scientists, doers, job-seekers, and startups, there are far worse ways to spend your money toward climate solutions.

Moreoever, the fact that Doerr — an Intel pioneer and one of the top venture capital investors in the world (Doerr was an early investor in companies like Amazon, Google, Intuit, and Twitter) — is putting so much of his personal capital toward sustainability education is telling.

In fact, when asked about his thinking behind the donation, Doerr himself said:

“Climate and sustainability is going to be the next computer science”

That’s a promising vision for our collective future, not to mention employment prospects.

The IFRS Steps in on Sustainability Disclosure Standards

For those who are less familiar with traditional finance and accounting, the IFRS? Foundation is a global non-profit responsible for standardizing financial reporting requirements for companies. IFRS standards are used by CFOs and finance teams in over 160 countries and jurisdictions around the world, from the United States to Uzbekistan, and pretty much everywhere in between.

When a publicly-traded company issues its investor reporting, that company is using IFRS requirements.

Recently, IFRS set up the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), a new entity aimed with standardizing and aligning corporate sustainability reporting with financial reporting practices. The ISSB has now issued its first guidance on how companies should disclose and report on general material sustainability topics, as well as climate-specific risks and opportunities.

Just like Stanford’s new sustainability school, this is a big deal.

Here’s why:

Despite some progress in recent years, one of the biggest, latent issues in corporate sustainability reporting remains vague, inconsistent standards and requirements. A lot of sustainability KPIs are optional or voluntary, every company presents its ESG or sustainability report in a different way, and its difficult to compare one company to another (even in the same industry). In some cases, it also leaves the door open to greenwashing .

The IFRS/ISSB aim to change all that, introducing what could be the “one sustainability reporting standard to rule them all,” along with direct regulatory requirements like upcoming European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in the EU.

Luckily, at a time when many of us in the industry are already flooded with sustainability and ESG standards, ISSB doesn’t completely reinvent the wheel.

For those familiar with TCFD (Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures), IFRS sustainability disclosure requirements have a lot of structural similarities, but also expand on TCFD, while synthesizing carbon accounting guidance from Greenhouse Gas Protocol and sector-specific sustainability KPIs from SASB.

It’s a really thorough framework, and a very positive development for corporate sustainability accountability and disclosure. You’re welcome to read our more in-depth IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Requirements overview here.

A Better World is Possible - And California’s Showing Us the Way

On the last day of April 2022, California?achieved another milestone: for a brief period?during a sunny Saturday afternoon a little before 3pm, renewable energy supplied 99.9% of the state grid’s entire electricity demand*.

Led by utility-scale solar energy, California, the world’s fifth largest global economic region, operated — for a brief time — on zero carbon power.

If that isn’t a sign a better world is possible, we’re not sure what is.

Yes, we need more, better, cheaper batteries . Yes, there’s plenty of grid modernization still to do. But those are now becoming implementation details and questions of capital allocation.

At the same time as Europe rapidly bails on socially and environmentally toxic fossil fuels, California continues to showcase the better path forward.

Effective, society-wide zero carbon power isn’t just possible, it’s almost here.

What a week in sustainability.

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*We do also have to caveat that California’s main grid — overseen by Cal-ISO (California Independent System Operator) — serves ~80% of the state. So renewable energy didn’t cover California’s entire state power usage, it covered 99.9% of grid power usage. Doesn’t really change the facts, or our point.