Innovation for sustainability (for UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources Masters‪)‬ David Bent

Dr Anna Birney is CEO (Chief Executive / Enabling / Evolving Officer) of The School of System Change, which enables personal and collective agency to cultivate change in the world with a multi-method approach to systems change learning - with networks, organisations and individuals (Anna's LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter).

This episode is a little unusual. We dive into the Multi-Level Perspective ('MLP'), one of the leading theories of system transition which we teach in the module (here for the Wikipedia explanation). MLP has been used in academic research for the last decade or so. However, there are not a lot of good case studies of using MLP for change.

The #OneLess project, run by Anna when she was at Forum for the Future, is a rare example.

Anna uses slides to explain the story. You can watch the presentation on YouTube here and download the slides here.

Through the course of the interview, we cover (amongst other things):
-Sustainability as "finding the collective of capability to address a complex world and a changing world".
-All models are wrong, just some are more useful than others.
-How the OneLess project came out of the Marine CoLABoration, funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
-The standard 'story' of change in MLP: the macro level ('Landscape')  trends put pressure on the mainstream ('Regime'), which has been dynamically stable but now is struggling, making space for mature new innovations to come in from the bottom level ('Niche').
-Part of the practice of systemic change is paying attention the the boundaries you are choosing, because there is a dance between the boundaries people believe form the system and what interventions can act with that system.
-Four different uses of MLP in the proejct:
  1. As a frame of research questions to understand the challenge.
  2., As a diagnostic analysis of the dynamics.
  3. Create a strategy for systemic impact.
  4. To keep on testing assumptions against experiences.
-Relating the project to the Taxonomy of Innovation used in the Module.
-The importance of keeping an experimental mindset, and to be actively learning-by-testing.
-Also, the importance of having a portfolio of interventions of different types, each justified by the underpinning rationale provided by MLP; not just relying on technological silver bullets.





This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Molly Webb is Founder of Energy Unlocked, an energy market accelerator focused on new market entrants achieving a low cost, renewable, resilient energy system, and Co-Founder of  PeerCo, a platform which boosts carbon impact for businesses through digital Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (Molly on LinkedIn).

We cover (amongst many things!):
-How the Energy Unlocked cam out of Molly's work at the Climate Group, and her diagnosis of the challenges for innovating in energy.
-How Energy Unlocked is a market accelerator, not a business accelerator. Molly is focussing on the conditions that would make it possible for multiple start-ups to succeed.
-One of the methods Energy Unlimited uses is Open Innovation.
-Molly also uses a strategy approach called 'Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation' (PDIA).
-Relate the Energy Unlimited approach to the module's innovation typology.
-If the incentives in the energy market were there, then we'd be fast on our way to a sustainable future already.
-There has been a shift to government-led industrial strategy.
-The Carbon Flex project, which asked asked the question 'Are we investing in the right things at local level to decarbonise the grid faster?'.
-Part of accelerating a market is breaking new ground which is too risky for funding which wants a secure and certain return. Which makes it difficult!
-How understandings of the way energy markets work are very entrenched by how they happen to work now, rather than how they might work if you change the incentives.
-Addressing that inertia and entrenched situation requires exploring. Hence the need for Energy Unlocked.
-The importance of making sure the problem definition is not constrained by the understanding of what is currently possible.
-How important he demand side of the energy markets are, and how this is under-explored in policy, philanthropic funding and investment.



This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Sarah Goodenough is Head of Policy at Climate Policy Radar (CPR), a "startup using data science and AI to build tools that unlock global climate law and policy data. Open data, open source, not-for-profit."

CPR are right at the cutting edge of the application of AI to climate law and policy.

We cover:
-How CPR grew out of the Grantham Research institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, building out from a project on the Climate Change Laws of the World.
-The approach of CPR to build tools that open up the messy black box of climate laws, policies and case law globally, helping decision-makers design more effective climate change strategies.
-How they are using AI tools carefully, so you can understand how the answer was arrived at (not a black box, like ChatGPT) and to avoid 'hallucinations' (where AIs make stuff up).
-CPR has created AI tools which do various things: extract text from documents; translate into English; train models carefully on this high quality input; and, perform semantic search, making it easy for people to find what they are looking for.
-How and why they work quickly with the data scientists, so the policy knowledge informs the AI development, and the AI capacity informs the requests on policy analysis.
-In the terms of the innovation taxonomy we use in the Masters' module, CPR is has several types:
(a) process innovation: the AI tools changing how someone can do research.
(b) organisational innovation: the way the data and policy teams work together, and having a mission and staff benefits, are organising CPR differently from other AI-led entities, in order to attract the motivated talent they would not otherwise be able to afford.
(c) political economy innovation: supporting others to lobby for climate policies which shift how the economy functions.
-The specific support CPR provided in last year's UN Climate Change Global Stocktake, which is designed to assess the global response to the climate crisis every five years. They launched Global Stocktake Explorer, a search engine designed to enable users to quickly and easily understand and navigate all inputs (over 1,600 dcuments) to the first Global Stocktake. (More here.)
-CPR is an antidote to Cory Doctorow here: “We're nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we're well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job”

Great to find a positive use of
This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Paul Miller (LinkedIn, personal website)  is Managing Partner and CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures, which is "Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC".

Note that at about 33 minutes there are some pauses because our internet connection went down.

Our conversation covers how to run a 'Tech for Good' VC, including having a selection process that works, and investing in ambitious, leading-edge companies.

Some specifics:
-Some of the Venture Capital (VC) jargon, like: 'early stage', 'managing partner', 'general partner', and 'limited partner'.
-The structure of funds in a VC firm.
-BGV's role in the start of Fairphone, an Amsterdam-based electronics company which is 'changing how our devices are built and produced'.
-BGV's role in the start of Aparito, accelerating healthcare by digitising clinic trials.
-How valuable campaigning skills are to a start-up CEO, as there is need to keep on storying telling your route to success.
-The value in having a 'pointy' experience of the problem they are trying to address. Not a generic appreciation, but a deeper explanation which gets into the detail of what it is like for those facing the problem.
-BGV's own process innovation of how it invites and selects the organisation it backs: an open call, followed by structured evaluation by a diverse spread of experts (which helps avoid the trap of solving problems for white dudes who all went to Ivy League universities).
-The biggest challenge for a small VC firm is to raise the capital, mirroring the experience of the start-up founders. There are some improvements, such as the British Business Bank, and Big Society Capital.
-Paul believes that the government needs to put some actual force behind institutional investors to invest in innovations, so that the pension funds are not just reaping the rewards of past innovation, but also investing in the innovations which will pay the pensions of the future.



This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

David Hunter is Senior Counsel at Bates Wells, a purpose-driven law firm (David's corporate page and LinkedIn). David has a specialism in purpose-led organisations, including on fiduciary duty, social impact bonds and governance. Bates Wells itself was the first UK law firm to become a B-Corp, the certification scheme on for-benefit organisations, and has long been an advocate for purpose-led organisations.

Our conversation covers a lot of what Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs calls the 'boring revolution' -- the vital work of getting legal and governance regulations and practice to align with generating a sustainable world. 

Some of the specifics:
-The Bates Wells Sustainability and Responsibility Pledge.
-How much large businesses in particular rely on in-house counsel or external law firms to make sure they can say they are on the right side of the law. A company, or an individual, can be at legal jeopardy and/ro no longer be covered by insurance if they can be shown to be negligent (rather than unlucky or being a bit rubbish but in good faith).
-The thorny issue of providing professional services to existing companies who are not aligned with the Paris Agreement or the SDGs.
-The emerging area of 'Advised Emissions', where a professional service firm understands, and can be accountable for, the climate impact of its advice through its clients.
-Using the idea of Advised Emissions to shape more and more of how the profession engages with that question, so a company can't just ignore your concerns and move on to the next lawyer. Leading to the formation of the UN High-level Climate Champions' Race to Zero  Working Group on Net Zero for Professional Service Providers here.
-The reluctance to pursue much-needed sectoral collaborations because of fears about uses of anti-competitive laws (in the US known as anti-trust laws).
-The myth that fiduciary duty (the duty that the management of a company have to the owners) means always having to maximise profits, rather than satisfying shareholders on returns. This expands the options companies have for their business strategies, commercial tactics, employment practices, supply chain conditions and more. 
-Gettng a court ruling saying that charities can focus their investments on sustainability outcomes. 
-The importance of contracts as the necessary 'plumbing' of business interactions, and so how important the terms within contracts are in giving businesses choices in behaviour.
-All this legal innovation is necessary for the all other innovation for sustainability.





This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Steve Waygood is Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Aviva Investors (Steve's corporate page and LinkedIn). He has been a crucial player in the rise of sustainable finance in the UK over the last 20 years.

Our conversation covers:
-The role of insurance companies in finance, and their particular interest and leverage on sustainability.
-No one anywhere in the world understands the whole of finance.
-Many ESG funds are trying to beat the market ('maximise alpha'), on the assumption that an ESG perspective gives you superior information or insight. (The alternative is to change the market, so that we are all heading in a sustainable direction.)
-It is possible for a market to be efficient (the assets prices reflect the information) and have market failure (there are important negative impacts which are not included in the prices). For Steve, climate change is a market failure; chasing alpha alone will not deliver a sustainable world.
-A potted history of 'ESG' innovations in Aviva (as a proxy for how this has played out across the industry), including:
  >Process innovation: the role of engagement (meeting directors of companies to push them on issues) and voting in formal governance (the Annual General Meeting, or AGM).
  >Organisational innovation: from having specialist analysts in one dedicated team, to now having people with ESG skills embedded in each of the analytical teams.
  >Political economy innovation:  having collaborations like the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) and also using multilateral spaces, like the climate COP, for wider change.
-His current focus on 'macro-stewardship': "taking a more holistic view of our stewardship responsibilities and actively engaging with policymakers, industry bodies and peers, regulators, standard setters and other influential parties to advocate and push for changes that will help create a more sustainable economic system."
-His main challenge: the 'tragedy of the horizon', meaning that by the time you reach the horizon, and experience the risks for real, it is too late to do anything about them.
-Priority: drive innovation through the whole asset management and asset owning institutions, so that they all recognise that without steward  that is systemic then all our business models will be deeply harmed by climate change. Therefore it is in their interests to rise up and challenge those governments that we lend money to, to deliver what they said they were when they signed the Paris Agreement.
This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.