Author: Juan Pablo Quintero

First off, I’d like to start by thanking our practicum professor Jackson Ewing as well as our fearless TAs, Ina and Gabriela for this invaluable learning opportunity. This COP was an all-you-can-eat firehose buffet of learning and I am sure I absorbed so much more knowledge through osmosis than I realize. I know that this will be a foundational and enduring part of my climate education at Duke.

In my seven days at COP, I learned about climate finance, decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries, green transportation, carbon sequestration, agriculture, biofuels, Islamic finance, private-public sector collaboration, and international policy negotiations. This is truly one of the greatest single concentrations of talent, activism, and advocacy in the world. Although the final text of the COP agreement is not nearly as strict on fossil fuels as the climate community had hoped, and next year’s conference is being held in another petro-state, I am encouraged to see so many countries and companies ready to press ahead on climate priorities with or without the rest of the world.  Young people also turned out to COP; when the youth activists I saw protesting eventually become the decision-makers in their organizations, the climate movement will make strides. The momentum is in the right direction.

To close off my blog series, I want to share some areas that I am optimistic about, and some areas I am concerned about after my week in Dubai.

Areas of Optimism:

• Ambition: The ambition of public and private sectors was in full display at COP28. I was personally shocked when the President of my home country of Colombia pledge to cease new oil and gas exploration, given the sector is one of our main exports. Many of the companies that spoke at the McKinsey booth also surprised me. Companies are taking climate change seriously and embedding ESG concerns into their core strategy. From a carbon removal startup looking to grow 100x in 18 months to a mega-consumer-goods companies looking to implement restorative agricultural practices across the 7 million acres of farmland that feeds into their supply chain, the private sector is moving.
• Focus: Activists and representatives in the public and private sector came to COP prepared with a clearly defined agenda. The cynical side of me distrusts lofty corporate Net Zero pledges, but seeing and speaking with the business leaders who are operationalizing their companies’ commitments showed me that the leaders in the space have a realistic grasp on what actions are possible, what will need collaboration, and what will need innovation.
• Collaboration: Companies are unifying around common interests and coming together with their competitors to define industry-wide ways of working. There are cross-sector ventures splitting off from their parent companies to identify how shared knowledge and expertise can come together to innovate new value chains. NGOs are involved in new projects to ensure high environmental standards and to build confidence for consumers and investors.

Areas of Concern:

• Energy Production: Many of the conference’s hot topics, including green hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage and biofuel production are incredibly energy-intensive. Even with all global attention on the issue, these technologies are fundamentally inefficient (e.g., high energy inputs for lower energy outputs), and will require enormous amounts of new energy to power. Even with the COP28 pledge to triple renewables by 2030, it seems to me that the rapidly-growing energy demand of these green technologies is the elephant in the room that people are not talking about.
• Bureaucracy: Even though leaders at the COP communicate urgency, bureaucratic bottlenecks are preventing implementation of the energy transition. Whether it is under-resourced governments, archaic rules, or poorly-defined relationships between local, regional, and national governments, in many areas it is difficult to build new projects. In Canada, new renewables projects face the same permitting process as new Oil & Gas exploration. In the US, a transmission line for a wind farm in Wyoming finally got government go-ahead after an 18-year long permitting process. Permit reform may not be why we get into the climate space, but without it, our efforts are severely hampered.
• A Fair and Equitable Transition: As with any macro trend, there will be winners and losers in the energy transition. I am still not convinced we have a realistic solution for the localized social impacts of what we are proposing.While I was visiting Oman after COP, some locals were telling me their concerns about an energy transition. The country’s prosperity and modernization was largely built on oil revenues, which their former leader Sultan Qaboos used to build advanced infrastructure and education for its people. While the country has favorable conditions to build renewables into their energy mix (lots of sun in Oman), 80% of their economy relies on petroleum exports. With a hypothetical phase-out of fossil fuels, the country would have to find new economic sectors to replace the revenues, or make do with significantly lower resources. Simply put, it is difficult to replace 80% of your country’s economy. While we understand there is a global imperative to eliminate fossil fuel production and consumption, the regional disparities produced by transitioning to a new economy will continue to put sand in the gears of climate diplomacy if they are not addressed.

  In additional to regional disparities, I worry that the private sector will capture a disproportionate share of the value created by the green transition. Corporations are well-positioned to take large investments, innovate new technologies, and scale them worldwide. They are not designed to distribute wealth equitably or architect truly inclusive systems. While they may be an effective engine to implement the COP commitments, we need to remember that the green transition must benefit everyone – especially those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change – not just shareholders.

COP is exhausting. I have been amazed to see the quality of events and overwhelmed by deciding between which to attend. Do I sit in on a discussion on hard-to-abate sectors with a CEO of a cement company, or a small-group discussion on Arctic policy with Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska? The cultural diversity is striking; at lunch, I found myself waiting in line at the shawarma stand between a Saudi dressed in a traditional thobe and a Sami reindeer herder from Norway.

With each passing day, my wardrobe drops another level of formality. The first day I was fully buttoned up, as one should be for the United Nations. The second day I swapped my very uncomfortable dress shoes for sneakers to cover more ground without getting more blisters. The third day, I stopped wearing a necktie, and on the fourth day I was wearing khakis and a short-sleeve linen shirt under my blazer. Dubai is hot, and on my longest day I covered nine miles on foot. We are dressing for performance, not style.

With my shiny new Blue Zone badge, I have expanded my horizons beyond McKinsey as I explore the pavilions for each country. Each pavilion has differing levels of production value, and some offer snacks and freebies (shoutout Indonesia). The Colombia pavilion brews me a pot of Juan Valdez, which keeps me going.

My team for “Corporate Sustainability and Governance” class in Durham is writing a case study on shipping decarbonization for Maersk. Since I have skipped all our team meetings to attend COP, I attended as many shipping-related events as I can on Oceans Day to do some primary research.

In the Japan pavilion, MOL showcased their Wind-Assisted Propulsion (WAP) technology which uses sails to steer ships and reduce fuel consumption by 5-10%. In the US pavilion, Associate Director of Ocean and Climate for the Aspen Institute (and Duke NSOE alum) Ingrid Irigoyen moderated a panel about how the public and private sectors are collaborating on technology and policy innovations to develop a market for green fuels and invest in green infrastructure. Finally, I hit a jackpot when I run into Maersk’s Director of ESG in the Denmark pavilion. After the panel ends, I corner her and start peppering her hyper-specific questions quoting facts and figures from their latest sustainability report, which I had stayed up late reading the night before.

Notably, the panels had representation from governments, companies, indigenous groups, and non-profits, and each featured speakers from different regions. Over the three events I attended, panelists participated from Chile, China, Denmark, Germany, Greenland/Inuit, Korea, Singapore, and the US.

My key takeaways:

• I am encouraged by the private sector’s attitude towards climate. Companies showed up in earnest and participated in dialogues across regions and interest groups. Discussions were not about whether to act – the private sector is already acting on climate and is looking at government to remove roadblocks so they can move faster including setting cross-industry standards, facilitating investment to scale green technologies, and building critical infrastructure.

• Effective private-public engagement can happen at national and multinational levels but increasingly needs to happen globally. Many companies operating across geographies are having difficulties adjusting to the different reporting standards and ever-evolving environmental regulations. If governments can reduce uncertainty and issue clear rules for the road, companies can spend less time on compliance and more time on implementation. 
• Whether or not talk translates into action, I was impressed with the quality of talk in the private sector. After two and a half years of studying business and sustainability at Duke, I’d like to think I have developed a fine greenwashing-radar. So far, I am seeing some governments be much worse offenders than companies in that department.

I also managed to attend a panel with the Premiers of the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, my home province of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Québec about Canada’s role in the energy transition. Although I was not able to meet my representative, I did get to meet an Alaskan senator which is close enough.

I started the week at COP28 by following my esteemed colleague onto a train headed in the opposite direction from the conference and going the wrong way for twenty-five minutes before noticing our mistake.

Although my pass for the Blue Zone (the area where the country pavilions and UNFCCC negotiations are held) wouldn’t be active until December 8, I decided to fly in early and explore the Green Zone, which is open to the public. As the designated private-sector member of the Duke delegation, I would be primarily following McKinsey & Co.’s presence at the COP.

The Presidency writes: “At COP28, the Green Zone will welcome the private sector for the first time, and give the world’s most innovative businesses the opportunity to contribute to the climate action conversation alongside nations, international and non-governmental organizations, as well as showcasing their solutions to the global climate challenge.”

I quickly nestled myself in the Knowledge Hub where the major management consulting firms and inexplicably, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, housed their booths. McKinsey was hosting three or four events daily which consisted of keynote speakers, and panels featuring business and NGO leaders. Each day at the COP had different themes (e.g., Energy and Industry, Urbanization and Built Environment), and McKinsey’s events largely followed the themed days. For Energy and Industry day, the lineup included discussions on the role of investors a founding partner of TPG Capital (an asset management firm with over $212 billion under management), the role of energy companies in industrial decarbonization with the former CEO of Shell, and the role of the grid in decarbonization with a board member of E.ON (a large multinational electrical utility based out of Germany).

Some key takeaways from the day’s talks:

• It is difficult to judge impact at a point in time as “complex problems don’t move in a straight line”. An anecdote that stuck with me was the creation of the smartphone – the cellphone was stuck making incremental improvements until a confluence of technologies allowed us to make a leap to a product that was previously unthinkable. The hope is that as we keep innovating in policy, business models, and technology, we will find a “smartphone moment” in climate technology that dramatically accelerates progress.
• Investing in climate technologies will scale early-stage solutions into the mainstream as they reach economies of scale and move down the experience curve. Following the cellphone example – the first cellphone was bulky and expensive, and now billions of people have access to cheap cellphones with functionality that could not have been foreseen at the time. Forecasting from today may not account for the acceleration of change.
• There needs to be more engagement with hard-to-abate sectors. While transportation is responsible for 40% of emissions, they get a much higher percentage of investment and discussion as it is seen as a more tangible problem to many. We must engage with high-emitting sectors – that is where the carbon is.
• COP calls out the problem, governments set the rules, and the private sector gets the work started.

I also managed to sit in on a panel about nuclear fusion with John Kerry and meet the CEO of NextEra Energy Partners and Duke alum Rebecca Kujawa. All in all, not bad for a first day.