Calling ESG and Sustainability leaders in the innovation ecosystem - love your quick input

[dconkling]

Hi Pledge 1% Members, hope this note finds you well!

I’m reaching out with a request for your expertise and knowledge of the carbon emissions space. As I may have mentioned, we are currently working to better understand the current (or future) problems that our clients here at SVB are facing or will be facing in dealing with their carbon emissions. This is work we’re doing in parallel to the analysis of our own scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions as well as our portfolio companies’.

We have identified a couple of key areas of client pain and how to solve them. We are now looking to validate key assumptions before we come to any conclusions on how we can help our clients in this space.

Specifically, we’re looking for input on questions on the following topics:

<Start-up ESG or Sustainability leader or other start-up c-level with responsibility for emissions>

• Level of preparedness to provide emissions data when asked
• Willingness and interest to pay for emissions data collection
• Ability and/or knowledge to purchase carbon credits
• Willingness and interest to pay for future carbon credits

<VC>

• Impact of carbon pricing on portco’s
• Supply gap of high-quality carbon credits in carbon credit marketplaces
• Impact of high carbon credit costs on clients’ ability to meet emissions targets.

I’d greatly appreciate it if we could spend no more than 30 minutes in a short conversation next week (4/25 – 29) to discuss these topics and get your insights. We’re working with our partner High Alpha Innovation to host those conversations – so please let me know if have any availability for such conversation.

Thank you so much!

Danielle

[CTA Architects]

<Start-up ESG or Sustainability leader or other start-up c-level with responsibility for emissions>

• Level of preparedness to provide emissions data when asked
  • My role is relatively new at my firm, and thus this may take me a bit longer than others for their companies. Generally though, as a sustainability coordinator, I am not responsible for accounts payable or keeping track of our vehicles for instance. This means that I need to go and ask for information from multiple departments when I am looking to fill in emissions data calculations. This can be a time-intensive process if people are on vacation or it is a busy season. 
• Willingness and interest to pay for emissions data collection
  • Our company has been assessed for this emissions data collection, and has also looked into using free or basically free online calculator platforms. The consulting and advisory teams I met with at two different companies made proposals, and there was a $45,000 difference in these proposals. This made me less willing to pay, as I am unsure what a typical and normal price for a service like this would be. Now we are using a free (at the moment- we are going to expand to the full platform eventually) beta platform of an emissions calculator. 
• Ability and/or knowledge to purchase carbon credits
  • I have the knowledge, but the market of carbon credits is very wonky. For example, theres a whole "avoided" carbon emissions and then another type that is additional to the avoided of say, keeping a tree planted for x more years. The back and forth with forest managers speaking out about on change of business practices on the same land that carbon credits are being issued on is confusing. Thus, it makes the knowledge aspect of this less straight forward, and for those who need to pitch this to someone else to make a decision, it makes it very hard to create a compelling argument. Even the verified carbon credits seem like the emissions may have already been avoided. 
• Willingness and interest to pay for future carbon credits
  • Likely high to offset emissions