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Dawn Lippert: Community investment is the missing piece of climate action | TED Countdown - YouTube
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Thirteen years ago, I was living
in Washington, DC.
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I was working
with the Department of Energy
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to identify breakthrough technologies
to help solve climate change.
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And I remember one particular day,
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sitting in a windowless room,
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in massive concrete buildings,
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and talking with colleagues
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about how this particular wind technology,
or solar, or battery technology
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could solve climate,
if only we had enough resources.
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And then, I met my mentor, Maurice Kaya.
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And he had a very different perspective.
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He lived 5,000 miles away, in Hawaii,
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and he'd been working on the ground,
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implementing clean energy technology
with communities.
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He'd been doing it for more than 30 years.
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And he asked me,
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"What if we brought this decision-making
on breakthrough technologies
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closer to the ground,
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closer to people who are actually
being affected by new technologies.
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What would that unlock?
What would that look like?"
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And he invited me to move to Hawaii
to figure out just that.
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And so I did, I moved to Hawaii.
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And all of a sudden,
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it wasn't just my job to identify
interesting new technologies from DC,
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but to actually wrestle
with some of the challenges on the ground.
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I was right in the thick of it.
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This was 2009.
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Electricity prices in Hawaii
were three times those in other states,
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and people couldn't afford
to pay their bills.
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At the same time, solar energy,
electric vehicles,
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were just starting to come into their own,
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and it was actually cheaper
to use these than burn oil.
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So Hawaii presented
this perfect opportunity
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to demonstrate how to transition
an entire economy
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off of fossil fuels.
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It was all getting real.
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The battery that we鈥檇 written
a check for, in DC,
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was now on a ship on its way to Hawaii,
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ready to be installed
just a few miles from my home.
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And so Maurice and I,
seeing this transition was happening,
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and the fact that we needed
many new technologies
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in order to make it work,
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started a nonprofit called Elemental,
an investment platform.
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We've now invested in over 100 start-ups,
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and we've funded more than 70 projects
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that are first-of-their-kind
technology projects
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to actually implement these technologies
on the ground, in communities.
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And we鈥檙e testing this thesis:
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Can we actually make
better investment decisions
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if we're closer to communities
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and the places where we're
implementing these new ideas?
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And what we've learned
in the last dozen years
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is that, yes, while technology
brings half the solution,
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the community brings the other half.
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But there is a huge gap in the amount
we're investing in the technology
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to reach this transition
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and the amount we're investing
in the communities
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and the community capacity
and infrastructure
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to actually deploy
these technologies at scale.
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Last year, globally,
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about 500 billion dollars was invested
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in the technology side
of the decarbonization equation.
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And while this is really
necessary and needed --
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and in fact, it needs to increase
four to 10 times
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in order to get where we need
to go in emissions --
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we're not keeping up
on the community side,
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and the gap is only growing.
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Last year, nonprofits working
on community-based climate solutions
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received less than
nine billion dollars in funding.
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This gap is widening quickly,
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and it's putting our ability to deploy
new climate solutions at risk.
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So let me be more specific.
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Over the last dozen years,
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we've tested and experimented
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with many, many ways to actually try
to rebalance this equation,
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to bring community investment
more in line with technology investment.
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You're probably wondering what we actually
mean by community investment.
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Obviously, [it] looks really different
from investing in a start-up.
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What I mean is investing time,
political capital and resources
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in government,
particularly local government,
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and the ability to permit,
plan for, integrate,
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work with new climate technology
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that's coming to all these
local jurisdictions.
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And on the community side,
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what I mean is investing in nonprofits,
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in education,
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and in hiring locally
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so that we actually have
the capacity in local places
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to implement these technologies,
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and then investing in the bridging
between these different sectors.
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What we found is that investing
in this more holistic way,
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on government, communities and technology,
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not only increases our impact
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but also leads to better
financial outcomes.
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The companies that we've worked
with in our portfolio
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have now raised over five billion dollars
in follow-on funding,
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and they're operating
in more than 60 countries globally.
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I'll give you two examples
from the portfolio,
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one in concrete and one in water.
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These happen to be the two
most abundantly consumed materials
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on the entire planet.
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So first, concrete.
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In 2018, we invested in a start-up
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that introduces captured
carbon dioxide into concrete.
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And the CO2 is then mineralized
in the concrete
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and stored forever
in our bridges and buildings.
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But inventing this very cool
new technology alone
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wouldn't do that much
to solve the climate crisis.
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Real people have to use it.
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So in addition to implementing it
with architects and concrete operators
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in Hawaii, on the ground,
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and the Department of Transportation,
in a real highway,
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we brought in local government,
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to create demand for this new concrete.
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So with the start-up and our mayor
and our city council,
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we passed a resolution to prefer
low-carbon concrete in all new projects.
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Now you may ask,
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"Well, what does this one specific policy
in this specific place
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have to do with really solving
global climate challenges?"
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Well, a few months
after we passed that resolution,
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our mayor brought this to 200 mayors,
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who passed the same policy
for cities all over the country.
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So now --
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(Applause)
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So now, this one project,
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that stores about 700 tonnes
of carbon dioxide in Hawaii,
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which is about the equivalent of taking
150 cars off the road per year,
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is scaling to cities around the country,
and also around the world.
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But this isn't just about investing
in the local government capacity
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that can meet technology
and help scale it.
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It's also about investing in communities.
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So I'll give you an example from water.
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Last year, there was a community leader
who started a nonprofit
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to specifically address water pollution
and pollution on reefs, beaches
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and Hawaiian fish ponds,
like the one in this picture.
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They didn't have the technology
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to figure out how to deal
with the polluted water
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that was coming off
all of these different buildings.
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So we scoured the globe
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and found a start-up that turns
polluted water into clean water
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and clean electricity,
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by using methane from the process
and reinjecting the facility.
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See, like in so many cases,
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the nonprofit and the start-up
actually have similar goals.
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The nonprofit, though,
can't really reach its goal
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of addressing water pollution
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without technology
to address at the source.
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And the start-up would have
a much harder time
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implementing its technology locally
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without the local relationships
and trust and know-how
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that the nonprofit brings.
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Now I won't pretend
that bridging these two is easy,
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or that working together is easy.
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Start-ups and grassroots organizations,
community organizations,
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they speak very different languages,
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and a lot of bridging
is required between them.
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But this is the kind of work
we need to do,
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if we're going to start
rebalancing the equation
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between technology investment
and community investment.
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We, as the investor,
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often actually pay the nonprofit
to do this kind of work.
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We think this is a key part
of the equation:
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paying the nonprofit for their expertise,
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just as you would pay
an electrical contractor,
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a general contractor on a project,
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for their value.
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(Applause)
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And really importantly, then,
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building this kind of financial mechanism
into every single project
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so that, as we鈥檙e scaling climate projects
that are working,
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we're also scaling investment
in the communities at the same time.
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In our experience,
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it's been particularly important
in honoring Indigenous communities,
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bringing them into
the cocreation process early,
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rather than asking for free advice.
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Now we, as investors, often pay
the nonprofit partners and ourselves,
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and we also train start-ups to do this
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so that, as they become big companies,
as they scale globally,
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they're doing this
around the world as well.
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And this isn't happening nearly enough,
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but it's one tool we can use
to start rebalancing the equation
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between community
and technology investment.
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So these cannot be one-off examples,
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if we are to meet the challenge
of climate change.
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Globally, we will need
700,000 electric busses,
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25 million solar panels,
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400 million vehicle chargers,
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to meet this challenge.
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Just imagine all of the decisions
that need to be made,
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all the physical things that need to be
installed in real places.
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Global climate progress
relies on local action.
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And this truly is
where it gets really hard.
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It's actually relatively easy to invest
from a windowless room
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and not really think
about all the consequences
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of implementation on the ground,
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as I did when living in DC.
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It's much harder for us and me
to walk into an unfamiliar situation
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and acknowledge that we really
don't have all the answers.
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I remember early in this work,
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bringing a new
transportation app to parents
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who'd said that transportation access
was one of their key challenges.
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We were in this beautiful space,
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open-air -- didn't even need
to open the windows, all fresh air.
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I was demonstrating this new app to them,
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and saying, "Do you think
this would help you?
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What's your feedback?
Do you think you would use this?"
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And they looked at me
kind of perplexed, and said,
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鈥淲ell, this is a sort of
an interesting, fancy new app,
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but we wouldn't use this.
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What we really want
is our after-school shuttle back,
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that was cut from the city
budget last year."
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And I was turning red,
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and I could feel the heat
rising in my face.
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I mean, talk about uncomfortable.
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But it's conversations like these
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that have changed completely
the way that we invest in start-ups.
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Yes, we do technical due diligence
and financial due diligence.
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But can we be better investors
by actually asking the communities,
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which we ask every time now,
before making an investment decision,
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"Would you use this?
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Is this something that you actually want?"
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It's what Maurice taught me, early on.
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You need to get out of the office,
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get on the ground
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and listen to what people really need.
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Technology can only bring
half the solution.
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The community brings the other half.
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And we have to fix this imbalance now
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if we want to fix climate change,
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and we do.
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For any of these new solutions
to work for climate,
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they have to have
at least these two ingredients:
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the technology that scales
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and the relationships
and empathy that we share.
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This is what we'll need to create
a future where our children can thrive.
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And I have a particularly large
stake in that.
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(Laughter)
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Thank you.
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(Cheers and applause)
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