More than a hundred CEOs and senior executives from the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, including Vincent Clerc, chief executive officer, A.P. Moller-Maersk, have shared an open letter to world leaders ahead of COP28.
The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders represents $4 trillion in revenues and 12 million employees.
The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a CEO-led community committed to net-zero, has signed an open letter calling on leaders from the private and public sectors to accelerate net-zero actions ‘for the benefit of society, public health, and the global economy.’
Alliance members pledge to have individual emission reduction targets amounting to an estimated 1.0 Gt CO2e by 2030.
However, government support is vital, as complex and lengthy regulatory and administrative processes, lack of suitable grid infrastructure, and technological constraints pose formidable challenges.
The letter urged for a massive scale-up of investment in renewable energy and power networks and streamlined permitting and regulatory processes.
“While global investment in renewable energy reached a record $0.5 trillion in 2022, this is still less than a third of the annual investment needed towards 2030. Governments should therefore rapidly scale up renewable energy and invest in the required grid infrastructure including energy storage and supporting supply chains, also to increase private sector capital,” the leaders said.
The leaders call on governments to complement this with stronger investments, policies and targets that enable the private sector to improve its energy efficiency.
The International Energy Agency reports that global fossil fuel subsidies for consumption increased to an all-time high of $1 trillion in 2022.
The letter also calls for business leaders to raise their ambition on climate action by setting science-based targets and increasing the transparency of their emissions by publicly disclosing emissions data.
“The private sector needs to continuously increase its investments in energy efficiency, carbon reduction and technology- and nature-based removals. This collective action will not only amount to a meaningful contribution to global climate goals but will also drive sustainable value – the energy transition alone is expected to create an additional 51 million jobs by 2030,” said the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders in an open letter to world leaders.
