Show me the money - the dance between growth, development, and destruction!

Not too long back I was invited to a consultation workshop by a very large & global multilateral development bank around the Scaling aspects of Climate Finance for the Energy and Industry Sector. Most of the discussion was about finding the key bottlenecks in the climate finance space through a multi-functional stakeholder engagement across finance-seekers (start-ups, SMEs), finance-enablers (NBFCs, VCs, banks), consultants, and very few wealth-owners.

Since then, the election fervor started to pick up pace in India, and one of the main points of the manifestos of one of the major parties centers around Viksit Bharat (Developed India) by 2047 - driven by high sustained growth rates. The plan centers around rapid urbanization and moving more and more people from the villages, tier 3-4 cities to the illusion of a "good life" and "developed cities.

As I write this article, coincidentally on Earth Day 2024, I reflect upon the status quo around the plague of "show me the money" and the mirage of so-called growth and development - driven by an artificially constructed socio-economic-political system which is built and controlled by a very few set of individuals.

Show me the money

At the above workshop I was talking about, the stage was honed by highly placed officials in this large bank who had come over from Washington DC, where the bank is headquartered. These set of people are responsible for disbursement of a fairly large sum of climate finance especially to the countries in the Global South. The sentiment was very clear, and included statements such as,

• Decarbonization is a long play - we have time till 2050/2070
• Everything should make a business case - we cannot roll out projects without making money
• The focus should be on technologies that are already developed and mature, we as banks cannot underwrite early-stage technology risks
• There is no such thing as concessional finance - we (along with other NBFCs) also borrow money from our parents where we don't get any "green" discounts

My first reaction to most of these was of utter shock, it almost felt like I am living on a different planet altogether where climate change is just another agenda like housing or education requiring constant nudging and support rather than emergency action. Upon some reflection, I realized that I was just being naive - I was talking to banks after all. Banks are one of the major cogs in the dirty wheel of capitalism, and they must push the agenda of "show me the money".

Nevertheless, despite the realization, I was left with further disdain and hopelessness considering that such things were being declared in a workshop focused on climate change and industrial decarbonization. The entire system is stacked up so much against the climate movement, that it makes it close to impossible to believe that any of this will work and yield any tangible results.

I also experienced something on similar lines on the ground while implementing one of the projects in the hydrogen space. For one of these projects, we approached some financial institutions (including banks) for financing against a solid Letter of Credit (LC) issued by a listed company. We were summarily dismissed considering we were a less than 2-year old start-up with not much history to show for. I was further stupid enough to engage in the discussion with them that this is a new sector (hydrogen), and most companies are less than 2- year-old in this sector. As expected, this fell again on deaf ears, and the appeal around sustainability and climate change sounded more of Mandarin or Spanish to these bank officials.

In a nutshell, the bottom line is that financing both at a very large scale or at a micro-scale can only happen if a. there is a business case, b. there is a strong existing credential. Further insight from this is that no new technology which is early stage and absolutely necessary in the climate change equation, and no new company that builds these technologies can actually survive in this ecosystem.

But, the bigger question is where does the ball actually lie?

Money See Money Do

Let it be the above banks or the Big Oil companies - it all comes down to the real shareholders, all those who actually own the majority of these assets and eventually dictate where the money goes. Especially with the major shareholders of Big Oil, there has been a lot of news, with some of the following statements,

• CEO of an American major says that consumers are not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, and they are the ones who are actually generating these emissions, and it shouldn't be the onus of the company
• A British oil major back-tracked on its own climate targets for 2030, along with issuing statements on the lines of "profitable decarbonization", and massive job cuts across the clean energy vertical
• Head of the largest Middle East major saying that "fantasy of phasing out oil and gas should be abandoned"
• Push-back from these majors against minority shareholder group pushing for stronger climate targets and even taking them to court to avoid resolutions on these
• Ever so massive profits (double digit B$s), dividends, and re-investing majority in fossil assets

The above is just a very small snapshot of the ground reality that beckons - simply put: fossil revenues --> money --> more fossil --> more money. The intricate web of the fossil industry spewing deathly carbon at a record pace, in combination with the tightly-knit co-existence with the political-capital-industry, there is no end in sight to untangle this.

Profitable decarbonization as highlighted above basically means that zero-carbon technologies should yield higher returns to existing fossil business. This in spite of the fact that the zero-carbon tech is relatively new, and has primarily the objective of undoing fossil destruction; and is competing against a 150-year-old fossil industry that has been (and continues to be) heavily subsidized across the value chain. This is simply not going to happen! The inevitability of mass-scale destruction due to climate change and maintaining highly profitable fossil fuel business continues to thrive..

Illusion of development

All the above is supported by the political class for two reasons,

• they make money from it - either legally or illegally - depending on which country we are talking about
• they are able to sell this to the mass voters on the pretext of development & growth

The so-called development has no meaning if it is going to just last a couple of more generations. The narcissistic homo-sapiens continues to "grow" at the cost of everything else around it - ecology, biodiversity, climate, water. To be specific, it is the top 0.1% or 1% who end up amassing so much to feed their narcissistic egos with complete disregard forthe remaining 99% whom they end up manipulating and selling as the utopia.

There is no such thing as inclusive growth or green growth or inclusive transition - these are just new forms of business models to keep the guinea pig (read 99% homo sapiens) running around in the hamster wheel called capitalism. If you are an active member of this society, it is close to impossible for you to break-free of this, and explore an alternative form of existence where empathy could trump narcissism.

Just imagine a country of the size of India with its 1.4 billion population - all of them eager to "grow" - but for what? For whom? Or is it just to prove that we are "developed"? Isn't this very development that happened over the past 50-100 years the very cause of where we are? Do we really want to go down the same path and double down on the destruction? And eventually for whom - just of the elitists who could buy more private jets and luxury yachts and islands? Isn't there a better way to do all this?

Earth (Dooms) Day

A planet that is full of possibilities doesn't deserve a species like that of us. Those who get so easily manipulated by a very small subset of elitists. Those who are consciously destroying everything around us with no regard for even our future generations. Those who are fooled by the illusions which get played on us, or continue to follow the path towards "profitable annihilation". No clue what money is going to do on a dead planet!

The examples are right in front of us - temperature records being broken every week, floods in deserts, severe pace of melting of the arctic ice, mass extinction of species, micro-plastics plague, water shortage, and the list goes on. There is no positivity, there is no hope - it is all one big disaster in the making - in fact we are all architects of that.

As part of the wider renewable energy community, I keep attending conferences and following news articles. There is so much of chest-thumping in the industry with all kinds of announcements of what we have achieved and how. I don't seem to understand how one could be happy when at both a micro- and macro-level very little impact is being seen. Thermal plants continue to be built, the EV industry continues to struggle, and grid transmission lines continue to get longer - and at the very ground level - only a very few people really care.

Light at the end of the tunnel: is there really one?

In the course of this article, I went from issues at a very micro-level and moved on to macro and societal subjects. Despite being in the renewable industry, my confidence in the belief that innovative technology can solve all this has almost completely faded. With multiple wars and the threat of more, polarizing elections globally, the false promises of development and green growth, and destruction at the ground level - we have to think of something radically different.

• What would that look like?
• Can we respect our planet?
• Can we be humbled and treat everyone around us - humans and non-humans with equal regard?
• Can we jump off the hamster wheel of capitalism?
• Can't we find a way out of this business-case thinking and realign to what is right for the planet and humanity thinking?
• Can just stop the mythical pursuit of growth which we have been manipulated to accept as the base-case?
• Can we restore the harmony that our forefathers had established with nature, just a few generations back?

I don't have all the answers - but definitely in pursuit of some! Status quo or even incremental changes to the status quo is not going to help.

If we want to protect Mother Earth, we have to start treating her like a mother!