NY Climate Week 2024: A Buzz of Optimism

A whirlwind of progress and opportunity

When I decided that climate would become the #1 focus of my professional time about five years ago, I was not exactly early to the conversation.? Still, despite the prevalence of research reporting the urgency of the climate crisis, I felt that the issue was not top of mind among many institutional investors, even those with a bent toward sustainability and impact.? NY Climate Week , which humbly started back in 2009 as a small meeting of interested parties in the lead-up to the UN Conference of Parties (COP), has in the last several years transformed into a universal conclave that cuts across industry, function, and seniority.?

After noticing the energy coming out of NY Climate Week for the past couple of years, I decided it was high time to check it out for myself, representing Odyssey Energy Solutions .? The highlight for me was attending the Climate Capital Summit , a one-day juggernaut investment and policy-focused conference co-hosted by Equal Ventures , one of Odyssey’s lead investors. A keynote investor/entrepreneur hit home with a central message: "The only way to achieve impact is at scale."

At Odyssey , that message is core to our mission. We are laser-focused on scaling up one of the most grassroots solutions for reducing GHG emissions - small-scale solar deployment. Representing a fast-moving organization like Odyssey at NY Climate Week felt empowering especially alongside other problem-solving innovators who took time out of their schedules to connect, collaborate, and share insights.

Here are some of my key takeaways from NY Climate Week and how they apply to our work at Odyssey:

1. Scale = Impact

100-year achievements in 30 years: Global climate and renewable energy targets are ambitious, pushing us to achieve in 30 years what would normally take a century. We can’t afford to think small: our response needs to match the existential challenge we face.

Deploy existing technology now: While existing technology won’t solve everything, deploying it at scale buys us additional time to innovate further. This was a central theme in one of the panels at the Climate Capital Summit. There is both room to grow in the “classic” renewable technologies in developed markets and take lessons learned and investment patterns from those markets into more nascent, developing economies, as our CEO, Emily McAteer , emphasized in a panel on the End (?) of Energy Abundance.

Net zero is not the end game: Hitting net zero is only the beginning. Companies, municipalities, and states need to get to “net negative”!? We are in the early innings of investment needs and opportunities, having barely scratched the surface of investment in newer technologies like hydrogen and long-duration storage.

Stacking capital for maximum impact: Leveraging capital from multiple sources frees each party to invest in more projects. In the U.S., the $27 billion infusion from the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is creating a fresh wave of opportunities to stack capital and stimulate new financial institutions. The more capital we pool, the more projects we can bring to life.

2. Opportunities ripe for market intervention

DG's moment in the sun: Declining equipment costs coupled with rising retail energy rates makes distributed generation (think: solar + storage) more viable than ever. Tax incentives for solar and storage capex and net metering (ability to sell excess power back to the grid) are incentive features for DG investment not just in the U.S. but in top LatAm markets, Brazil and Mexico.? Odyssey’s DNA is in supporting small-scale project developers in design, financing, and implementation of distributed solar. This is our moment - rather, the customer's moment (see Section 3 below) - to shine.?

Financing the gap between 1 and 5: There is VC available for innovative ideas (i.e. getting to 1), and there is institutional capital available for commercially and technologically proven concepts (i.e. getting to hundreds).? But what about the companies stuck in between - those with a few pilots but not yet commercialized at scale?? At Odyssey, we’re helping fill that gap by providing supply chain services and credit that allow small installers to free up their resources and grow into long-term asset owners.

Tracking and compliance efficiency to deploy and report: In our discussions with various green banks and other financial institutions in the US that are due to receive allocations under one of the various GGRF programs, a common theme emerged: the need for streamlined compliance with federal regulations, such as the Buy America Build America Act (BABA ), which stipulates domestic content requirements.? Still, state by state policy is not uniform, making it challenging for operators and financiers engaging in different jurisdictions. Ultimately, federal stakeholders will require speedy deployment and customized compliance, which is where tech-enabled solutions like Odyssey’s platform can play a supportive role, especially in consideration of a large quantum of smaller, distributed assets.?

3. Long-term mission

Customer-driven demand: Key market segments are being driven by customer demand for products; not by banks, not by developers, not by utilities. This message resonated across multiple capital allocators who spoke at events. End-users speak with their wallets in demanding cleaner and cheaper energy solutions for their homes and businesses.

Missionaries over mercenaries: Teams that succeed in this space are built by missionaries, not mercenaries. Mercenaries extract value and then move on, but missionaries stay the course. It is no surprise then, that in a salon of climate-dedicated portfolio companies of MCJ , one of Odyssey's investors, a number one area of focus for business leaders is finding the right, mission-driven hire for critical positions in their companies' growth. At Odyssey, we have been staying the course since our founding in 2017, and our commitment has never wavered.

Cooperation, not competition: Across various events and smaller group settings, the vibe was less of a cutthroat, catch-as-catch-can vibe, even amid the panels with the most formally dressed institutional investors.? Rather, there was a shared energy of cooperation toward a singular goal of smartly deploying more capital toward decarbonization.??

4. A note on the events themselves

The logistics challenge: Not to be yet another grievance airer on this topic, but the timing of the event is such that it filters out any non-New Yorker unwilling to spend $400+ per night on a hotel.? I get the idea of combining with the UN General Assembly, but in practice it just creates a burden for travelers and New Yorkers alike.?

Coordination of events by topic: It almost seems like a virtual convocation, reflecting on the fact that I never saw a large share (most, if I’m being honest) of the people in my LinkedIn feed who posted photos attending NYCW!? CTVC, for its part, did a good job of crowdsourcing a simple chronological table of events that were planned, but that can only do so much when there are 5-6 events happening simultaneously on tangentially similar topics.

Small gatherings, big impact: That said, the smaller gatherings were the real gems. So, even if I missed connecting with folks in my network, I was able to forge meaningful connections with new faces that found themselves at the same events as me, and that most certainly is a positive.??

In conclusion: invigorated and hopeful

NY Climate Week 2024 left me feeling invigorated and hopeful.? A growing community of innovators can achieve the scale necessary to address the challenge, which is both mission-critical and business-smart. We’ll be back next year.