Today, a group of eight large companies and tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Unilever, Disney, and Netflix, are joining with environmental groups (EDF and WWF) and the U.N. to devise ways to scale funding for climate solutions. Accordingly, the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions (BASCS) collective will serve as a knowledge-sharing network that can accelerate companies’ emissions reduction efforts.
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Indeed, all the businesses involved have already made ambitious climate commitments. Therefore, they’re now seeking to tap their expertise into collective knowledge to help others achieve their targets.
About the BASCS Initiative
Worth noting, the BASCS initiative’s unveiling comes as energy watchdogs warn that spending on clean energy remains well shy of what’s needed. Particularly if the aim is to get the world on a net-zero pathway, reports WRALTechWire.
Thus, climate experts warn that to transition away from fossil fuels; the planet will require up to $3.8 trillion annually through 2050.
In this sense, Patrick Flynn, head of sustainability at Salesforce, said in a statement that “the time for climate action is now.” From now, “every business, government and individual must step up to the urgent challenge of climate change and create an inclusive and sustainable future for all.”
Therefore, the BASCS group will comprise a “virtual table around which companies will gather to scale and accelerate climate funding solutions,” says Elizabeth Sturcken, Environmental Defense Fund’s net-zero program Lead.
Moreover, “companies realize that there is no way any one of them, even the most ambitious, or rich company can solve this problem alone. Indeed, it’s the same issue with any government,” Sturcken told Axios, who first reported the initiative.
Similarly, she noted that the new alliance allows firms to work jointly since they otherwise compete to launch clean energy projects separately.
Key Differentiators
Indeed, the alliance is similar in concept to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. This initiative currently helps large-scale clean energy buyers find suitable investments.
However, BASCS’s alliance is explicit since it prevents companies from simply trying to offset their emissions. Moreover, the firms that join will need to agree to core principles that emphasize absolute emissions cuts.
Accordingly, UNEP’s Gabriel Labbate, the team leader of an international forest conservation effort known as REDD+; commented that the new alliance could lend itself to nature-based solutions such as protecting carbon-absorbing forests.
In fact, “this must be the decade of action,” said Labbate. Therefore, “we need to achieve large-scale emissions reductions, and there is no time to lose.”
Moreover, “BASCS will play a leading role, not only in halting forest loss; but also in demonstrating how nature-based solutions. Particularly, through emission reductions of the highest quality, can best complement, and not substitute, strong decarbonization efforts,” he concluded.
Similarly, Max Scher, Clean energy Leader at Salesforce, told Axios that the alliance is unique. Particularly in that, it is built by businesses for businesses. Besides, the initiative aims to break down silos in which many other collaborations currently operate.
