Workday Chief Sustainability Officer Erik Hansen shares takeaways from Climate Week NYC with insights from Workday Chief Philanthropy Officer Carrie Varoquiers and other leaders who are making an impact on the climate crisis.
In this article, we discuss:
Last month I had the opportunity to attend Climate Week NYC, the largest climate-focused gathering of its kind that draws leaders from across sectors, including business, tech, politics, academia, and more.
This year’s theme was “It’s Time.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s time for us to collectively move toward a more sustainable world by accelerating scalable innovation.
Toward that goal, both myself and my Workday colleague Carrie Varoquiers, chief philanthropy officer, participated in a number of events during the week. Below are some highlights of our experience.
At the Nest Climate Campus, I had the chance to sit down with Project Drawdown’s Executive Director John Foley and Tradewater’s Chief Marketing Officer Kirsten Love—both leading organizations focused on advancing progress toward a more sustainable world.
We’ve shared previously about our partnership with Tradewater, an organization tackling the challenges of plugging orphaned oil and gas wells that are leaking methane and other toxins into the air and groundwater.
Project Drawdown’s Foley highlighted the important work Tradewater is doing of addressing methane emissions and their impact as an “emergency brake” solution. He explained that methane is a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Tackling the issue of stopping the source of methane emissions, such as these orphaned wells, can make a significant climate impact.
Tradewater’s Love dove deeper into the origin of orphaned oil and gas wells and their role in climate change. Since these wells do not have a solvent owner, no party can be held responsible for managing their emissions. And while wells are abandoned, the damage they cause continues. For example, an unplugged well emits thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gasses per year with the potential to emit substantial pollution over time.
Our partnership with Tradewater is part of a multiyear offtake agreement through Patch. For organizations like Workday that want to make a true and lasting impact, we shared how multiyear offtake agreements can be an impactful solution to scale promising projects.
One business and one organization alone can’t solve climate change. There’s tremendous value in having a network of partnerships across the private and public sectors to help create lasting change. And, because Workday is a global company, we have the capital to fund projects that are making a real impact.
There’s tremendous value in having a network of partnerships across the private and public sectors to create lasting change.
I was also fortunate to lead a roundtable discussion with Patch, an innovator in the climate space that provides companies, including Workday, with access to a variety of high-quality and high-integrity projects that scale climate solutions.
Earlier this year, Bee Hui Yeh, who leads climate strategy and solutions at Patch, and I worked together with our teams to create a playbook for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs). We were pleased to share some insights from the guide with Climate Week attendees.
Our conversation focused on helping other CSOs define and execute on their carbon credit strategy. CSOs often look to carbon markets to complement their decarbonization work. But without clear goals, carbon credit purchases can end up as a box-checking exercise.
Engaging and maximizing impact in carbon markets can also be a challenge while navigating evolving climate policy. Governments and the private sector agree that it’s imperative to create ways for companies to engage with carbon credits and accelerate global climate action. But how companies participate in the carbon market is not one size fits all. We dug deeply into how companies can maximize their sustainability budgets and leverage financing to create value.
It’s time for us to collectively move toward a more sustainable world by accelerating scalable innovation.
Workday hosted Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) Europe for a discussion with cross-sector executives focused on industrial decarbonization. CLG Europe drives climate action by forming business and government networks and optimizing collective action to quickly scale and reduce carbon emissions. The conversation focused on fostering collaboration, identifying challenges among industries, promoting investments, and sharing best practices.
Reducing industrial emissions, which account for around 25% of global emissions, will require increasing efficiency across sectors. A key area of decarbonization that needs to be addressed at a broad scale is electricity use. For example, in 2022, electricity represented 23% of the total energy consumption across global industrial activities. But systemic challenges remain in achieving electrification: greater collaboration between industry leaders and customers is needed.
For the financing, there’s capital available and ready investors. But demand signals and planning are required from governments to enable businesses to act. Success will require collaboration across the value chain and among the public, private, and financial sectors.
Climate Week takes place during a confluence of social and environmental impact gatherings, including the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia Conference, and others. During the week, Workday’s Carrie Varoquiers attended multiple events focused on the human implications of the climate crisis.
“Being here in NYC during major events focused on social and environmental impact makes me so grateful for the ecosystem of partners that help us all connect, research, learn, strategize, and come together in collective action.”
Carrie Varoquiers
Chief Philanthropy Officer
Workday
Varoquiers leads our Workday Foundation, which impacts communities by investing in charitable organizations that create meaningful employment, help break the cycle of poverty, and work to transform lives. Her work focuses on addressing root causes of global challenges, including disaster prevention and response, health emergencies, building inclusive communities, and investing in workforce development, including training people for the green jobs of the future.
“Being here in NYC during major events focused on social and environmental impact makes me so grateful for the ecosystem of partners that help us all connect, research, learn, strategize, and come together in collective action,” Varoquiers told attendees.
During the week, she represented Workday at events focused on the youth mental health crisis, gender equity in AI leadership, clean energy jobs, and more. She participated in discussions about the Cadence Fem.AI alliance, which Workday is now a founding member of, that aims to get more women into AI careers; led a session focused on upskilling for clean energy jobs in India alongside the Growald Climate Fund; and moderated a panel at the Salesforce Climate + AI Summit focused on the AI skills needed for the climate jobs of today and tomorrow.
While hosting a dinner for our Workday Foundation grantees in town that week, she addressed the Workday Foundation partners, and said, “Your work is what makes me feel so excited and energized every day. The life-changing impact I get to witness as a result of the deeply important work you and your teams are doing every day is the biggest gift.”
After a dinner with peer executives who also attended the week’s gatherings, she shared, “We talked about how far these for-good change movements have progressed over the decades we have been in the field, how much more we still have to do, and how AI is going to factor into all of it.”
At Workday, we’ll continue to advance climate policies in collaboration with businesses, NGOs, and policymakers to increase access to renewable energy, fund innovation to deliver technologies, build the workforce needed for a clean energy transition, prepare communities to be resilient in the face of increasing weather disasters, and improve supply chain transparency for better emissions and climate data. Working with others to create an equitable path forward to net zero will remain essential.
To learn more, I’ll be speaking at the VERGE 24 conference happening October 29–31, 2024. Sign up to join.
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