Why subscribe?

We’re trying to be full-time translators between finance people, climate people, energy people, and activism people.

Our work is animated by a few hunches:

There isn’t one dominant approach to planning for the “energy transition” or “decarbonization,” but rather, multiple competing approaches. There is also (unfortunately) no guarantee that we get to net zero, and definitely no guarantee that we get there without incurring trade-offs along the way.

Countries, companies, and social formations see the rise of new industries, (potential) decline of others, and reshaping of global commodity flows as a mixed bag of threats and opportunities for their material interests.

An overarching theme is that there is no substitute for scaling alternatives to existing, carbon-intensive industries and value chains. That means getting shovels into the ground, and relatedly, figuring out how to fund it.

This is an environment that actually offers a lot of opportunities for public companies at the intersection of (i) creating value (as in, the net present value of future cash flows) and (ii) making a positive impact. But it is a very different environment from the one that ESG, and related discourses and practices, grew up in.

This blog is a home for our team’s musings on all of the above, and we hope, an opening for discussion and debate.

You can read more about our work at activestewardship.org