H. Tom Raftery Interview

VeChain Foundation Climate Research - Justin Goldston & Tom Raftrey - Tech Evangelist & Influencer
Video Link - https://youtu.be/T69qu5vOgCI

Sure, happy to Thanks, Justin. So this is a space I've been in actively for 15 years at least maybe a little more. I got into a profession it was it was always an area of interest because I'm a biologist by training. Even though I work in the technology space, now, I went I did biology in university went on. While studying for a PhD in biology, I was doing a PhD on biological control. I never quite finished it because I got distracted by technology. And there was a whole lot more money to be made on the technology field than there was in biology, but it's always there in my heart. You know, I'm a biologist and a technologist and my two passions. So I got into the kind of energy and sustainability space in around 2006. Professionally when I got to design and build out a data center in Cork in Ireland, where I lived at the time, and we completely optimized the data center for energy efficiency, we made it a hybrid energy efficient data center, because we wanted to be as low carbon as possible. And I started giving a lot of talks about that at the time, and got a name for myself in the green energy space. And then after that, I was taken on by an industry analyst firm to head up their arm, which dealt with energy and sustainability. So I led research in that and we turned that organization green monk and I led that for seven years. And then I was recruited into SAP in 2016 as an IoT evangelist, but I had a heavy kind of side of sustainability in that as well. So I've been working really at the kind of the intersection of technology and sustainability for Well, since 2016. However many years that is, I'm terrible at maths. Sorry, sorry. 2006. So that's what that's 17 years. 17 years. Yeah,

02:17
that's, that's that's a while. So a whole lot her a lot earlier than then there were a lot of people were talking about in terms of sustainability whenever they want to happen, the sustainability bandwagon, you know, right before COVID.

02:29
It coincides with the Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie that came out around that time as well, which did raise an awareness of the issue back around the 2006 timeframe. But then with the economic crash in 2008, it all went away again, and it only started to bubble back up again after Paris in 2015, I think.

02:51
Okay, excellent. So, so I know before, thank you for that. I know, before, you know, our discussion, you know, we I asked a question about, you know, what, what work you've done in terms of carbon emissions and carbon credits and carbon offsets, and you said that you, you interviewed a couple of interesting people on your podcast. Can you expand on that a little bit? Sure. Yeah.

03:13
So I have two podcasts, I have one called the digital supply chain podcast. And I like to have a bit of a focus on sustainability in that. And I've, in that I've talked to several blockchain companies, in fact, who are in the space of, you know, visibility for things, be it agriculture and visibility of food, those kinds of things. And then I have a second podcast, which is the climate confident podcast. And in that I've done a lot around, well, the whole aim, or the mission statement, which is very lofty term, I guess, of the climate confident podcast is to highlight successful emissions reduction stories and strategies to kind of excite people and inspire them to take action as well. So in that space, I have talked to people who are in the, the offset space definitely and obviously the emission space.

04:16
Interesting, interesting. So so based on his discussion

04:20
of last year, audio just when I'm not hearing you, do you hear me hear me now? I'm gonna try something here. Yeah.

04:33
What about what about now?

04:35
Yep. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me the whole time? Yeah, I

04:39
hear your hotel. Okay, good. Okay.

04:42
I can hear you again. It was I think a loose cable on my on the side of my machine there.

04:46
Okay. So based on based on those interviews based on your experiences, what would be what would be some of the challenges, what will be some of the challenges also what will be some of the benefits to tracking carbon emissions carbon credits or carbon offsets on the blockchain, in your opinion.

05:08
Yeah, so they're very different. So tracking carbon emissions is something that every organization is going to have to do. It's it's going to be regulated. The SEC came out with proposals last year that all publicly traded companies would have to start reporting their emissions from 2024, depending on the size, large ones first, and then smaller ones after that, but in by 2025, all publicly traded companies will have to report their emissions. Now, these were proposals that the SEC, but they haven't come into force yet. They were put out for discussion. But it was it talks to a direction of travel because you have similar regulations bubbling up in Europe as well. And at all, as we get closer to 2030. And we're not getting our emissions reductions targets by 2030, that's going to start to become more and more of an issue. And we will soon start to see every region start to require companies to report their emissions. And of course, to report your emissions, you need to be tracking them. So this is going to be a big thing. Absolutely. tracking and reporting mission is going to be huge. In fact, the SEC in their proposals last year said that the the reporting would have to be out to scope three, and they would have to be audited. So, you know, all the big accounting firms are rubbing their hands with Lee, and everyone is kind of scratching their heads because no one knows yet how to report out to scope three, those standards haven't been in place. So there's a lot of people talking about that and trying to come up with standards for that reporting. The offsets piece is different, and it's more challenging. If reporting of the scope three wasn't challenging enough, the offsets one is even more challenging, because it's hard to track. But also there's a huge amount of greenwashing going on in that space. And that's going to be one of the hardest ones. And it's not just the greenwashing it's also the quality of the offsets. I mean, if I invest in offsets, in a forest in the Amazon, and there's a wildfire, and it burns down, you know, what happens to my offsets are, you know, a forest in California doesn't have to be the Amazon or Southeast Asia, you know, and it gets logged illegally, you know, that, you know, there you go the offsets up in smoke as it were. So these kinds of things mean that a lot of the offsets are of questionable quality, I guess, or could potentially be. And so the verification and tracking of those is going to be really, really, really important. And the forestry ones are some of the most dubious, I would say there are others, though enhanced weathering, for example, is one and some of the nature based solutions that that you know, are around investing in biodiversity, for example, they're an interesting as well, they're a lot harder to measure. But they are ones that have a greater potential outcome. Now, as I say, the measurement of that is very challenging. There. I don't think there's any agreed standard around measuring biodiversity, for example. So that's going to be a hard one to track. There's been some great stuff coming out of the IMF and Rob Shami, who's an assistant director of the IMF, in particular, on the on putting a monetary value on the carbon sequestration services that are performed by the likes of whales and elephants, forest elephants. And that's an interesting one. He's working with an organization called rebalance Earth to try and do that on a blockchain. They're working with the Gabon, the country, Gabon. They're working with the government there, too. Put a financial value on the carbon sequestration services performed by elephants, forest elephants in the Gabon, and then allow companies to invest in those track it on a blockchain and make sure that the money goes to projects in the area to help local communities as opposed to going into the pockets of politicians.

09:41
Yeah, so I just I just received, I just received a thank you for that. I just received a text through LinkedIn and what am I? What am I what am I researching piers David Daniel, Daniel critica. From from coin coin Bureau you're watching shout out But he sent me a message yesterday, more than 90% of rain forest carbon offsets by biggest certifier Vera are worthless.

10:10
That's right. Yeah, I saw that that report came out last week or the week before. And that's that talks about I'm talking about, a lot of times, if you're investing in forest offsets, it could be for the forest that was never going to be cut down. Anyway, that was there was an existing one. You know, and there's a lot of dubious claims made about the the forestry ones. So you, I mean, the the the organization, there was supposed to be a, an organization that verified and had a good name. And suddenly, it turns out 90% of their offsets are worthless is probably a strong term, but of dubious quality. Certainly.

10:50
Yeah, yep. So yeah, and that's one thing we're trying to, we're trying to do our best in this in this area, but you're always gonna be, in my opinion, fighting the uphill battle, because, you know, there's there's financial, there's monetary gain, you know, in this area. So whenever you might, you might you made a point, you know, at the introduction, where, you know, there was more money to be made in the tech field, which is absolutely accurate. So, that leads me into another question of, given that because I can blockchain we have d phi, everybody goes over to d phi, because that's where all of my that's a financial incentive within within the blockchain space, right. There's a lot of money to be made in default. Right. So So there's also there's also a refi space that kind of looks in looks at that climate finance aspect to make a positive difference, right. So given that, you know, going back what you said, there's more money to be made in the tech space, there's more money to be made in defi. How could we convince people to move over to the refi area? Because there's more sustainable benefit? We can go deep all day long, but the world might not be here in 20 years, right? We need to go to the refi space, so we can have a world we live in. I mean, that's just my that's my that's my views. I mean, what's your thoughts on that?

12:12
Yeah, no, it's a good point. I think the global decarbonisation project that we're going to have to go through is the largest project humanity will ever, ever undertake, which means there's going to be truckloads of money, the likes of which we've never seen before go into it. So there's massive opportunity here for everyone. The important thing is to make sure that the money goes to the right types of projects. The first thing is, we need to decarbonize everything as much as possible. There are some industries where that's easier than others, the software industry is very simple to decarbonize, the glass, steel, aluminium, chemicals, industries, aviation industries, they're extremely difficult to decarbonize, and so far them, where they can't decarbonize, they will need to purchase offsets. But they'd have to get so the idea is to get as much carbon out of the system as possible, and for the remainder, use offsets and the offsets should be a place of last resort. And then those offsets need to be verifiable, they need to be able to show that they're not greenwash, they need to be able to show that they are actually beneficial. And with this is going to be for anyone that can do that. verifiably. Then I see there's a big market and that should be somewhere where the refi folks can say, look, we've got this space. It's a it's an enormous market, because even if I said it should be the place of last resort, the offsets, it's still a massive last resort. You know, it'll be the biggest financial undertaking the planet has ever seen or humanity has ever undertaken.

14:18
Yeah. And so, that was excellent answer, by the way. So, so, I spoke with I spoke with two people in this space. So I spoke with I spoke with Drew from spoke with Drew from, from clay, McDowell. And then I spoke with another individual, but one other individual from 2k and protocol. And they were saying that in terms of moving an entire industry, our entire space, from the web to world to the web three world. This climate finance is probably one of the only ones where you can move the entire because it's a three bit it's a two or $3 billion industry something like that, right? So you could actually move that whole entire, that whole entire carbon credit space on the blockchain, you can move on chain, right? Because there's just a small number of people that are controlling these things. And then you can work with those people because they actually do work with those people, and they can move the whole entire space on chain right now with, uh, with the real estate industry, global real estate industry, that will be impossible, right? But people are trying to do it. And then further, and also, it's gonna take a long, long time to actually do that, right. So if you're if we're able to move, you know, let's just say, you know, the carbon credit or the carbon credit tracking, if we're able to move that whole entire space on chain, do you think that we're going to minimize this whole greenwashing space? We're going to provide more value within this space? And if it's if it's if it's transparent, if it's transparent, do you think more money will pour in because now, everybody can see everything on chain?

16:03
That's the hope, isn't it? I mean, it is. Yeah, I mean, really, one thing to be aware of, though, Justin is yeah, it's it is only a, I think you said two or $3 billion industry today. Yeah. But it's at like miniscule numbers compared to where it needs to be. So the amount of I don't, I don't know the exact numbers, okay, but the amount of carbon that we're going to have to offset will be in the 10s of billions of tons per year. And we're doing maybe 10s of 1000s. Today, maybe maybe a million. So we have got to get from the maybe 1 million, maybe 2 million tonnes that we're doing today, up to literally 10s of billions of tonnes per year, we're going to make a significant impact. So this is a space that's going to grow enormously. And because it has a reputation for being mixed up with greenwashing. Absolutely, it needs to be it needs, it needs some mechanism, whether it's blockchain or something else, it needs some mechanism to show look, hey, we're 100% transparent, you can check every single aspect of this, you know, from start to finish. And if it if you can show that, then it starts to then its reputation starts to be repaired, and people are less dubious about stepping into the space.

17:44
So that's, that's a good, that's a good segue into into the last question, which I hope is last question. So given that, given that organizations primarily within the supply chain space, because that's that's the space that I play in, you know, given that they're going to be required to to publish, you know, their, their tracking in greenhouse gases and things like that. What do you think is going to be the digital transformation strategy, or the implementation path for large organizations as well as small and medium organizations?

18:24
It's good question. And it'll vary with different organizations and different industries. I did a an interview recently in my climate confident podcast with a guy called Luis Amaral. And Luis is the CEO of an organization called the science based targets initiative. And what they do is they're their nonprofit, they work with companies to say, you know, and any company can say, Ah, we're going to be net zero by 2050, or 2040, or whatever it is. And you know, you put that on your CSR report, and you put that on your annual report and everyone claps and then nothing happens. What the science based target initiative does is it works with companies to say, okay, baseline, this is where you are today in terms of emissions. Here's where you need to get to to be net zero, using science based principles. And they have different templates for different industries. And you work with them to roll to publicize the steps you're going to take to go from where you are today to being net zero by whatever date you set. Generally, it's around 2030. And you do verification steps for that pathway as well. And so it's things like this. It's setting science based targets. measuring and reporting against them is the most important thing organizations we We'll need to do and I'd be surprised if in the next few years, they're not mandated to do,

20:06
huh? Yeah, I can't know that. I know that we, we just updated. We just updated a Class A CSR class at Georgetown. So I'm actually an advisory board at Georgetown. And we were updating the CSR class and the director brought in brought in this whole aspect of science based targets where a lot of people with the cause like Georgetown, the government, governments, but it speaks with Georgetown a lot in terms of the research that's going on. And then the government actually brought in the idea of, you know, what you're doing in terms of science based target research? So that's one question that that that the that the government is bringing in, so you might have a good point where it may be required, you know, so

20:46
I think it will, I think, in some in some regions, certainly, I would be surprised if Europe doesn't bring in that legislation in the next two, three years. And depending, I guess, on the outcome of the next election in the US, it might happen there too.

21:01
Yeah. So so yeah. So that's pretty much all the questions that I had. This was very, very beneficial. So can you let everyone know where they can where they can find you?

21:13
Absolutely. So as you said at the start, my name is Tom Raftery. I have a website. Tom raftery.com. I have a Twitter account at Tom Raftery, easy to find on LinkedIn as well. There's not a lot of time. Raftery is on LinkedIn. I have my climate confident podcast and my digital supply chain podcast, both of which are available on any podcast app that you go to just look for digital supply chain podcast or climate confident podcasts and they'll come straight up.

21:41
And I would I would suggest that everyone log in or subscribe to those podcasts because they're absolutely amazing if you're in a sustainability or climate action space. All right. Thank you so

21:51
much. And Justin, you're an alumnus, Justin of the digital supply chain podcast. I had you on the podcast there a year or more back at this point, I think.

21:59
Yep. Yep. Yep. And that was that was that was one of the that was one of the great one of the best podcasts one of the best podcast may not be may not be the top viewed but you know what? You want to say it's number one, number one in our hearts. So thanks for your time.

22:17
Thank you so much. Awesome. Alright. See you everyone.