Nili Gilbert, Vice Chairwoman of Carbon Direct Inc. and Carbon Direct Capital., has been recognized on the prestigious TIME100 Climate list for her innovative leadership in driving business climate action. A thought leader in sustainable finance, Nili has spent nearly 20 years shaping the industry, earning numerous accolades along the way, including recognition on Barrons’ 100 Most Influential Women in Finance earlier this year. In this exclusive Q&A, we sat down with Nili to talk about her career path as a trailblazer in sustainability, the current political landscape’s impact on climate action, and her vision for the future of decarbonization.
Q&A with Vice Chairwoman Nili Gilbert
Congratulations on making it to the TIME100 Climate list. You’re the Vice Chairwoman of Carbon Direct, and you also carry this out by leading across a range of other initiatives. What perspectives on leadership have inspired you to organize your career in this way?
People say that it seems like I do a lot of things, but I actually see it as all just one big undertaking! At Carbon Direct, we’re working every day to empower global institutions in finance, business, government and civil society to find the opportunity in solving the climate challenge.
I believe there is an important place in many industries, and especially those focused on climate, for leaders and institutions who can see, communicate, and advance important activities that are emanating from multiple corners at the same time. Information efficiencies, with one hand talking to another, encourage the ecosystem in the right direction. This is particularly important in high growth industries, where practices are rapidly evolving on a constant basis, and in systemically important industries which, by definition, rely on and affect multiple parts of the economy and society at once. Climate action bears both of these features—high growth and systemically critical—which is why I organize my efforts to support “bridging.”
Carbon Direct’s founding vision was based on the importance of interdisciplinary efforts for unlocking high-value opportunities in the climate space, which is one reason why I feel so at home on this team and driving this mission.
You’ve been focused on the sustainability journey for two decades. How do you think about the path of progress in general, and specifically at this moment?
I have been working for about 20 years on sustainable investing. And in 2019, I became fascinated with the massive scale of change necessary to limit global warming, realizing that the path ahead of us requires reimagining the global economy. This led me to dedicate my career focus exclusively to climate and net zero.
When I first came into the field, the idea of sustainable finance was so new that in 2003, I actually had to design an independent study at Columbia Business School to be able to focus on it. By contrast, today, the school has a whole program on this and a standard course in its curriculum that looks a lot like what I developed on an independent basis back then. Companies’ advancement of environmental and social benefits is seen today as a standard part of business models and has become table stakes across every industry, in every region in the world. And those who are best at this are finding greater support in the financial markets, in competing for human capital, and in attracting new customers. Done right, this is simply good business.
This year, the zeitgeist has become more focused on shorter-term challenges. Politics have been fraught in this historic year of elections. The macroeconomic environment of higher interest rates and inflation has suppressed activity, and leaders are starting to appreciate that we’ll need multilateral engagement to achieve our goals.
At the same time, when I look back on the past 20 years, I see a long arc of meaningful progress nuanced by cycles of changing trends and sentiments. As we continue to progress, we will need to repeatedly meet and rise to new challenges. Solving the climate challenge in a way that also responds to longstanding social goals is the hardest problem humanity has ever seen. So every day, we wake up, explore the challenges, and get to work on solving them.
Between now and 2050, when the world is tasked with reaching net zero, we will see many different market environments and political regimes come and go all over the world. For net zero to come to life, institutions will need to develop strategies that can evolve throughout. We will likely see that there are opportunities to push different topics in different places at different times across a global mosaic. We will need to lean into opportunities where they present themselves and encourage overall momentum and avoidance of fragmentation in a holistic race to the top, all while remaining both ambitious and pragmatic, and always solutions oriented. Always fighting to drive progress.
How do you see the future of global decarbonization efforts?
Vision for the future is something that is very close to my heart and always on my mind.
First of all, it’s important to acknowledge the great scale of the immediate challenge in front of us. We are frighteningly far off track from achieving our long-term goals. Some only think about net zero alignment in terms of 2050. However, science tells us that to stave off the worst effects of climate change, global emissions need to decrease by around 7% annually from now until 2030—whereas they are still rising by 1.5% annually today. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can deliver the enormous progress needed to achieve these hurdles in the next 6 years. To get to net zero by 2050, our longer-term vision for the future needs to drive immediate near-term action.
At the same time, as I have come to understand net-zero planning frameworks more deeply, a burning question always nags at me. A lot of time and energy goes into managing the old economy out of its current state—and yes, and that is very important—but it’s also important that we focus our attention on the bright long-term future of the new economy that’s going to replace it, a future in which everyone understands how they benefit. What we are transitioning towards, and how will we build it?
When I imagine the global economy in 2050, I see a future fueled by cost competitive clean energy at scale—this also means clean air, better health, and greater energy abundance and security. I also see that the efforts required to achieve this must drive collaboration across countries, sectors, and communities. Climate solutions that directly contribute to the elimination, removal or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions offer huge opportunities. For example, we will need to remove about two times the amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 as the physical volume of fossil fuels that we are moving around the world each year today. In business, we will see new innovations across every sector. And none of this can be done without real citizen engagement and buy-in—in fact, there can be no transition at all, if it is not a just transition.
I see the opportunity for a transformation greater in scale than the Industrial Revolution—which is estimated to have lasted about eighty years—now to be completed in less than thirty. So yes, move on from some things in the climate transition, but there is also a great deal that we will gain.
Do you see any underappreciated factors that we’ll need to prioritize as we look to effectively capture the opportunity in the future we are creating?
We spend a lot of time talking about the technical aspects of the climate transition, and often overlook qualitative needs such as drive, incentives, fears and biases. Going forward I think we need to place much more emphasis on the social architecture of our efforts.
Corporations, private finance, governments, philanthropies, scientists, and grassroots communities will all need to work together to achieve our goals, but persistent breakdowns arising from misalignments of priorities among these groups often get in our way. Developing a more integrated understanding of diverse motivations will enable more effective collaboration and action at the scale that is required.
At Carbon Direct, we focus on multidisciplinary teams and efforts in our work. At Carbon Direct Inc, we have a world-leading Science Team, and at Carbon Direct Capital we have an amazing Investment Team. It’s incredibly important to us that these leaders collaborate, and also partner with our experts in policy, technology, engineering, and environmental justice to bring a wide range of perspectives into how we unlock the solutions ahead.
Conclusion
As a leader in sustainable finance and decarbonization, Nili continues to drive meaningful change in the climate space. Her recognition on the TIME100 Climate list highlights her multi-faceted accomplishments and vision for a transformative future.
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