Five Years In, How Has The Bezos Earth Fund Used Its Billions? Ep192: Dr. Andrew Steer

Bryony Worthington  

How are you going to be feeling in 2030 when this ten billion has been dispersed? 

Andrew Steer  

I'm hoping that by 2030 we will not be needing to talk so much about earmarked resources for climate change. It will become a natural way of doing. When we invest in infrastructure, it will be low carbon. When we invest in agriculture, it will be sensitive to the need to protect much of the earth, for its nature, for its beauty, and for all the ecological functions it preserves for us.

BW  

Hello, I'm Bryony Worthington, and this is Cleaning Up. My guest this week is Dr Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund. In 2020, Jeff Bezos made a $10 billion commitment to address nature and climate change that has to be spent by 2030, in what they refer to as the decisive decade. Andrew is responsible for building and leading the Earth Fund team, and joined the Bezos Earth Fund from the World Resources Institute, where he served as president and CEO for eight years. Previously, he served as the World Bank's Special Envoy for Climate Change, and as Director General at the UK Department of International Development. This followed 10 years in East Asia, where he was head of the World Bank in Vietnam and Indonesia. As we start 2025, I was eager to speak with Andrew Steer about how things are going as we approach the decade's halfway point. Please join me in welcoming Andrew to Cleaning Up. 

BW  

Well, Happy New Year, Andrew, it's lovely to see you. How are you doing? 

AS  

Doing great. Happy New Year to you too, Bryony. And what a joy to join this important podcast. I love this series.

BW  

Thank you. Well, listen. I wanted to start, as we always do, by offering the opportunity for you to introduce yourself using your own words.

AS  

Well, I'm Andrew Steer. I have the privilege of being the president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, which is a philanthropy started by Jeff Bezos, who put generously $10 billion on the table. And he said, let's spend this in terms of grants, this decisive decade, for advancing nature and climate change action. Pretty cool, hey?

BW  

Yeah, pretty cool. I mean, $10 billion is a sizable sum of money. And the idea is to spend it down in a decade. So it was set up in 2020, and how's it going? Here we are in 2025.

AS  

Well, the idea is in an almost venture-capital approach. You start smaller, and you try things out, and then where it really works you then scale it up. So as of today, we're approaching the halfway mark, which will be a year from today. And so we've dispersed about $2.5 billion. We've made bigger commitments, but in terms of disbursement, that's what we've done. And we will... We are just where we want to be right now. We'll be scaling up in the next two or three or four years, and it's pretty exciting, and we aim both for nature and for climate action. 

BW  

And Andrew, tell us a little bit more about your background, because you've got a very interesting background to philanthropy. And most recently, you were on the other side of the fence, right? You were a fundraiser for WRI, as the head of WRI. Expand a bit about what got you to this position.

AS  

Well, I started life. Well, I didn't start life... When I finished my PhD. I was a macroeconomist working on international finance and trade, and I taught at university, I joined the World Bank. I was living in Indonesia, actually doing all kinds of work with the Indonesian government on economic growth. And it didn't take long to figure out that actually a lot of the growth, which was spectacular, reducing poverty, increasing growth, one of the fastest growing countries in the world... almost half of that was due to the fact that we're depleting their natural resources. And that sort of hit me as a real shock, and, in a way, got me onto a different track. And like you, you started in one field, and I think that's often better. And then you have that kind of 'aha' moment, and you realize actually the way we do economics isn't right at the moment. It's okay, but it could be much better. Instead of just thinking about capital that human beings make, factories, roads and bridges and power plants. Think about capital in terms of humans. Think about capital in terms of nature. And then think about capital in terms of society. If you think about that, you have a much richer way of thinking about development. And so that led to a whole series of different different elements.  I worked for the World Bank, worked for the British government, for DFID as their director general, and then became CEO of the World Resource Institute, which is a wonderful environmental NGO. And you're right, in those days, obviously my job was to lead that institution, but I had to raise a lot of money. Now it's the other way around, and both sides are very exciting.

BW  

And thinking about that transition, which is one that I did temporarily as well, from a kind of fundraiser to running a fund. Were there some principles, or some rules of thumb you brought with you?

AS  

I think one of the things you carry over is not to fall into the trap that some philanthropists have. Because they have money, they think they're the boss, they think they're all wise. And actually it's really important, as someone charged with stewarding a philanthropy, to recognize that those you provide funds to are actually highly technically qualified in their field, more technically qualified than the philanthropy. So I think it's really important to have that balance of mutual respect. And I think that's probably easier if you've seen the other side as well. If you've actually seen the challenge of running a major NGO, it helps you have the right instincts when you hear proposals, and in particular, it makes you sensitive to those who are flying their own flags, as opposed to those who are actually waking up on a Monday morning in order to solve the problem.Very, very few of the problems we're trying to solve can be solved by one institution. We need humble, accountable, professional, dedicated coalitions that will actually move things forward.

BW  

Yeah, that resonates. And essentially, talent spotting is actually quite a big part of the job, isn't it? Because I suspect you'll find, as we found, that finding absorption capacity for this level of money is a non-trivial issue, right? Especially if it's on a spend down, because you're looking for things that can be completed and not create dependencies.

AS  

That's very perceptive. I think that we have to be really clear that we are not in the business of creating dependence, and any financing we do has to have some strategy for what happens after the financing ends. The best programs will be those that become sustainable. Now it turns out, as you know, obviously, because you've been a leader in this space, Bryony yourself, that there are some NGOs that are really large and very, very effective, that are running budgets of $200-400 million a year. Those organizations are often extremely well run. They deliver very well. They can absorb funds, and we can have totally grown up relationships with them, and we can co-brand, and we can really move things along quite fast. But those aren't just the ones we want to finance. We actually want to finance the new, innovative ones on the front line, and often those also that are run by those that haven't had the privilege of receiving resources. So for example, here in the United States, we've made $300 million available to environmental justice groups. These are groups often in center cities, or rural areas, in somewhat disadvantaged areas. We need to help them on their own growth strategies and one of the reasons we've been keen to support them is because here in the United States, federal money doesn't naturally flow to where the federal government wants it to flow. If you want federal money, you have to apply for it. And of course, those that are good at applying, those that have the right lawyers, that know how to fill in the right forms, get most of the money. And so one of the ways that we try to leverage our own funds is to strengthen the capacity of those smaller groups that are pulling in money to those who really need it. But we must always be open to new and fresh ideas. The worst thing is for philanthropists to think that they know it all, and we don't, even though we are pretty good. 

BW  

Yes, I'm glad you came back to that, because I've actually coined a phrase 'philanthrosplaining,' which is when you're not the subject expert, and you sit in a meeting with a funder, and they tell you how the world is, the world that you know because you've been working on the field in that topic, and they'll be telling you how the world runs from from the position of not really having to engage in the minutiae, or the day to day cut and thrust of the argument. That's not to be negative, it's just to explain the power dynamic, right? The power dynamic is skewed, because if you're managing a large amount of money, you have a lot of leverage, and so nobody really speaks truth to philanthropy, and everyone sits quietly and takes what they're told to do. But I'm not sure how healthy that can be at times.

AS  

Yeah, and there's a skill on both sides here. One of the things that we notice, I'm sure you did, too, is that most NGOs will come and ask for a meeting, and then they will talk for the first 80 minutes, showing you all kinds of slide decks, how wonderful they are. And we're doing this and this and this and this, and that's very interesting. But actually they should also recognize that actually the philanthropists have staff and experts that are also pretty good, and we may have some ideas as well. And the right kind of conversation is a conversation which is, you try and see things through the eyes of the other. That is much more likely to lead to success. And it's sort of, if you like, joint design. And you know, one of the points we make is that we are not one of those philanthropies that want you to fill in many tables of objectives and send us, twice a year, big annual reports or anything. We don't want that. So done right, both sides are adding value to each other. 

BW  

Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's sometimes a tension between the way a foundation is run, and often that can be very hands off, but also it can often have quite a lot of donor preference applied to it. And the types of people who make a lot of money have a certain world view, right? So you've got to balance managing the people who've got the money, you've got to manage grantees and what they need — how to keep them healthy, and how to keep the field healthy. And then you've got to manage impact, we're actually ultimately trying to make sure we've got as much impact as possible. And there's a philanthropy trilemma, if you like, of keeping in the middle of that sweet spot, as you say. It being a partnership between the donor and the recipient, but also always keeping your eyes on the prize of this has really got to be skewed towards maximum impact, really, and that sometimes requires quite fast moving, catching opportunities as they arise. So there's lots of tensions on this task. 

AS  

That's how I perceived it. Yes, I think that's exactly right. And of course, it's not just NGOs, it's governments, often, and even corporates. But following up on what you just said, Bryony, sometimes what will happen is you'll have a great initiative, such as the JET-Ps, the Just Energy Transition Partnerships in South Africa and Indonesia and Vietnam, and so on. And they'll be government led, which is very good. They won't have a whole lot of technical engagement, but then they'll work on it for a year or so, and then they'll come and say, 'Oh, we actually don't have quite as much money as we hoped. I wonder whether philanthropy would come in and provide x?' And what we have to say is 'we might' but it would be a mistake to assume that our pencils are less sharp than those of Goldman Sachs, obviously they're trying to get private sector money in. So if there's not quite enough private sector money, they need some de-risking, they say, would you come in and help de-risk? We would say yes, but only if the books are totally open to us, and if we also have access to the same data. Especially if you're working for a living donor, the reason that these people are so wealthy is because they are incredibly numerate. They are incredibly smart, deeply analytical. And so don't assume that philanthropists are the kind of rich old uncles that you just need to be polite to them? Actually, no, they want to also be part of that calculation. And if we're going to be de-risking private investment at the request of a government, we need to know what we're actually getting for that.

BW  

I think that's the point I was making, really, it's that a certain class of people will emerge who've got this capability to donate $10 billion. And that's an n-of-one character and therefore, they're going to have quite strong personalities, and they're going to have views, but they haven't ever run an NGO of 20 people trying to change the laws of the country. And so I think you nailed it when you said it's got to be listening on both sides, really, and approaching it like that. So Andrew, one of the most iconic, or perhaps memorable projects that I can recall the fund funding is the electrification of American school buses. And I just thought that was so clever, because clearly it's about climate, but it's also about human health and children's lungs, and I wondered how that's going?

AS  

Well, it is a very exciting idea. You know, there are 480,000 school buses in the United States, and because education is run at a county level, there are 16,000 school districts making decisions in this country. And poor counties generally have old buses, they're all diesel, they're not well maintained. And so of the 20 million children every year in America who go to school on a bus, on average, the air is 10 times more polluted than outside. As a result, there's lots of evidence of learning disabilities, of health problems that are terrible. And so electrifying school buses is a great example of: if you simply want to know, how much does it cost for each ton of carbon not emitted, it probably wouldn't be top of the list. But if you think about the dynamics of it, you think about these school children becoming healthier, learning better, talking to their parents, designing curriculum associated with those school buses arriving so they understand the green economy. On top of that, think about the fact that 97% of electric school buses, until last year, were built in China, in the entire world. None in America. Wouldn't it be cool to have a little competition and create so far, 15,000 jobs in the last three years have been announced in this area. So far, of those 480,000, 12,000 school buses are now running electrically. There were zero six years ago. The other issue is: why would you want to leave these school buses around the entire summer where it's very hot and they're not being used because they're school buses. Each one of those 480,000 is a battery and can plug into the grid and as a result of that, you will need to build a lot less power plants. And so you get this sort of dynamic, which is quite amazing. Now, obviously, our project, our program, which is about $50 million, isn't going to buy all those school busses. But what we did was we helped draft legislation, we influenced politicians. And so now there's $9 billion as part of the IRA, as part of the Infrastructure Act. There are 15 states we've been working with that now have mandates requiring their schools to move and so on. So you get this sort of dynamic, if you like, a whole range of different issues that can really affect the future in a very, in a very beautiful way.

BW  

Yeah, and it's something that can cut through. You know, as you say, in pure, tons of CO2, it's not the biggest source, but this ripple effect and this changing of perception and hearts and minds that comes from that needs to be put on the balance sheet, right. But can I ask: obviously we're about to see another Trump administration, and at the federal level, perhaps it will be harder to see these sorts of programs moving forward and some maybe reversed. But at a state level, you mentioned 15 states. Is this one of those areas where you could see, irrespective of the color of the state, red or blue, this is something that can move forward?

AS  

Well, I think the answer is yes. I mean, the constitution of the United States does give states a lot of power, including running electricity services, for example. And certainly, education is very decentralized. But the wonderful thing is that once parents see the benefits, once manufacturers see the benefits, once school teachers see the benefits, you then start changing the dynamic with whatever the political complexion. So we don't know. Obviously, we're in a fascinating, exciting time, and we're going to try to be as helpful as we can in keeping momentum going. 

BW  

And as you say, the sheer capital cost of the bus alone isn't the right price comparator, because essentially you're investing in an energy services facility as well. The buses are not used all the day nor all the seasons, so you're putting battery capacity into the grid. So the value of that, I'm sure, will also make the economics... as you said earlier, just a sharp assessment of how the value of all of this across the board makes it a no brainer. 

AS  

Yeah, the economics is really interesting. A regular diesel bus costs $100,000, an electric bus today costs about $300,000. If you take the lifetime maintenance and fuel, you save another $100,000. That takes you down to $200,000. It's still twice as much. But then when you take the value of the batteries and so on, then when you take the health care cost, you're then getting very close to parity. But of course, the whole point is, the reason they cost $300,000 is that none of them are made. So as you scale up, all of the projections show that within the next 5-10 years, the cost will have reached parity. Change can be really exponential. I mean, if you think in 2015 you could not buy an electric school bus in this country. By 2040 you won't be able to buy a diesel school bus in this country. Change can happen very quickly.

BW  

Absolutely. Well, we've naturally had a conversation there about energy, because that's the largest part of what this podcast focuses on. But your fund actually covers, as you said at the start, nature and climate. And I wondered if we could just change topics and think about— I'd love to hear your thoughts on how, well, obviously, there are some synergies there, where solving one thing helps the other, but there are also some conflicts, right? And I'd love to hear how you're approaching this dual role of nature and climate. 

AS  

Well, I think the complementarities are much greater than the conflict and we engage in nature, partly because it will help solve the problem of climate change. But that's not the only reason we engage in nature, because nature is beautiful. Nature enriches humans and has a value in and of itself. Nature is responsible, land use change, forests, food and agriculture, responsible for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions, and could potentially solve more than a third, because it has the capacity either to emit greenhouse gasses or to suck down greenhouse gasses. So it's incredibly important, and that's why we came up with this. At COP26 we announced $3 billion for nature, $1 billion to protect what we still have, $1 billion to restore what we've lost, and $1 billion to transform food and agriculture, without which you won't be able to restore or conserve. And so we're sort of well on the way to implementing that. And obviously there are wonderful synergies. There aren't many win-win situations around. But take landscape restoration in Africa. We're committed to the African Union's commitment to 100 million hectares to be restored by 2030. Take molecules of carbon dioxide that are killing people sitting in the upper atmosphere, and causing hunger and disruption and lower incomes, bring them down to earth through the magic of photosynthesis, and you bring life and vitality, you bring better yields, you bring better water management and so on. So trees and bushes and crops and soils can't exist without carbon. And so we're seeing amazing progress there. And you see that there are a few conflicts, but generally complementarity exists. Now there are some potential trade offs. The Nature Conservancy, for example, is making the point recently that if you look at — I'm currently in Virginia, the state of Virginia —one of the major reasons why there's any forest loss in Virginia is in order to enable renewable energy. So that's a trade off. My guess is that's relatively small. There's obviously a lot of other work on windmills and birds and unsightliness and sound and so on. But we're certainly majoring on the complementarity. 

BW  

My perception of this was somewhat colored by— the environmental movement was born out of a concern about nature and landscapes, largely. That was its origin story, and then it discovered climate change. And it was definitely brilliant at sounding the alarm and getting attention, but as a group of custodians, their first priority is to preserve biodiversity in nature. And often we'd find that conceptually, when it came to actual projects, those same groups who were saying climate change is an absolute priority would then object to clean energy projects on the grounds of local impacts. And they'll do the same if the agricultural frontier is pushing out. But at the same time, you've got a group of people saying the solutions to climate change are more extensive, less productive agriculture and more extensive, greater-land-area-taking renewables. It all comes down to the carrying capacity of land, right? And what do you do with your land? Do you give it over to nature, and therefore to feed everyone and give clean energy to everyone and affordable energy to everyone, we might have to use much more intensive systems. It's a balance, right? 

AS  

Yes, it absolutely is. And bio energy is a very good example of that. If one wants to take millions of hectares of extra land in order to grow crops which will generate clean electricity, what's one doing to nature? So, yes the good news is there are techniques that are available to analyze these things. But I think you're making a really interesting point, Bryony about do we need a new way of thinking? Some of us are — I don't mean you or me, of course — but some of us are rather locked in to ideas that we built up historically. And the environmental NGO movement, which I love and I'm part of, I think, as you know, have done a wonderful job. But It's not as flexible, it doesn't change as fast as, for example, the private sector. We don't have NGOs that are merging and purging the way you would in the private sector. So the way the private sector operates is probably very different 20 years ago from what it is today. And it may well be that we in the environmental movement need an equal refreshing, so to speak. I mean there's still a pretty strong legacy in some mainstream environmental organizations against capitalism. Quite frankly, you know, there's a suspicion against the market. They'll say, 'we do believe that the market can play a certain role,' but when it comes to specific choices, 'no, we don't support carbon markets,' for example. And the question is, why? In that particular case, I think it's because there is a focus exclusively on the risk of leakage and green washing, and no focus on what do you actually do with the carbon market money, which would enable coal plants in Indonesia to be closed down? We don't look at that side of the agenda. So I think to support what you're saying, we maybe need some sort of fresh thinking and some fresh ideas. That's not to criticize the leadership of NGOs, which is very good, I believe. 

BW  

I hear you, and we'll get onto carbon markets, because that's something that we've both looked at, and I know that the funders looked at. But just returning to this, just briefly— for me, it comes up when you see conversations about, say, for example, GMOs. Or a pet subject of mine — if we're serious about climate change, then nuclear power has already contributed and is likely to contribute in the future to enabling us to meet those conflicts of space for nature but humanity thriving. And I think there are some a priori groups who would just not even consider it, and I think that the unfortunate thing is, as you say, slightly rigid thinking that could be characterized as from a different era, or not fully embracing all of science, what science offers, and being able to move with the times. And so that's what I perceive to be one of the issues. And it will drive politics into more extreme positions if the NGOs are taking extreme positions, because it's polarizing for a lot of people who are in the middle to be told, 'yes, we think climate change is really important, but no, we'll never accept nuclear.' And I'm hoping there are fewer and fewer people who take that line. 

AS  

It's an interesting point, because at one level, I agree with what you just said. And at one level, NGOs have changed a lot in terms of embracing corporates. I mean, there was a time 30 years ago when CEOs of corporations would not have been on the boards of major NGOs. Now they are, and play a very, very important role. Getting the balance between the insider play and the outsider play is difficult when you have a sympathetic government, as we do with the Biden administration here, and certainly with the current Labour government in the United Kingdom. There's a tendency for NGOs, very much to play the insider role, and there's been a tendency, certainly over here, to avoid active criticism of the government. That may be a mistake. So whilst on the one hand, we want — as you were saying, and I was saying — we want fresh thinking, more market based thinking, more understanding of the complexities of politics and everything like that. At the same time, we don't want to lose the sharp edge of protest, if you like. And I was surprised over the last year to talk to government leaders in places like Brazil and a couple of European countries that said, 'we're not being held accountable enough by NGOs.' And what's true for governments is probably also true for corporations.

BW  

There's a double edged sword there, isn't there. Because, yes, having civil society movements is what helps shift the political window. But if those movements take on— or you have to be really careful in the asks of those movements. So I think back to the Extinction Rebellion (XR) era. It definitely had an effect on the politics, that kind of upwelling of fear and anger about the fact that we weren't making more progress. But then when it came to actually engaging on the inside track and asking for sensible things that they just weren't seasoned in. They got the list wrong, and it was too easy for the government to say yes, or too difficult. It's a sweet spot. And I think when you get the maximum impact is when you've got that quadrant of, basically you need outside track campaigns that are highlighting the negatives and also promoting solutions, because there are very few outside track movements who get the solutions right. And then you need the inside track of people actually taking that political will into a decision that can then move billions of dollars in one direction or another, either stopping the dirty stuff or promoting the clean. And getting the quadrants right, getting it all balanced. And then certain topics are more developed than others. I think the energy quadrant is probably well populated. But agriculture, just to come back to that, you know, here's a tricky one. And I know this is definitely an example of something that has as much effect on nature as it does on climate. But it's a bit behind the curve, really, isn't it? In terms of the number of people really working on it? That quadrant feels a bit sparse.

AS  

Yes, although it is very encouraging how, whilst as recently as six or seven years ago, the UNFCCC annual COPs would consider food as a very delicate issue, because the argument was that food security is the most important thing for developing countries. I mean, it's quite impressive now how active that space is. I agree, we're still at very early stages, and by no means is there agreement on everything. But last year at COP28 there was, of course, the first ever statement on food and climate, which was general, we would have liked to have been crisper and stronger, but it was still big progress. And as part of our support for food, we're focusing on three issues, really. One is methane from cattle, or, as we say in England, methane. And there we have good progress. We're investing in vaccines, we're investing in different food stuffs, we're investing in forage management and so on. We're also investing in a very big way in alternative proteins. We've just put $100 million this year into three laboratories, one in the United States, one in Imperial College London, and one in Singapore, that will try to drive down the cost and use AI and modern techniques to sort through the 200 million proteins that exist and identify the right combinations, using the right kind of technology to get the right taste, the right price point, the right nutrition and so on, for alternative proteins. When it comes to alternative proteins, I sometimes say we're like when Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979 and since then, the price has fallen by 99.6%.We're a very early stage in eating differently, and the plain fact the matter is, if we don't eat differently, we're going to lose the battle on nature and climate.

BW  

It's fascinating, right? Because the fight against the fossil industry to get clean energy into the system has been pretty major, but I feel like that's just a warm up compared to changing the agricultural industry. I mean, if you look at how concentrated the power is in that sector, it's like taking on the oil and gas industry and the farming lobby, probably also the food manufacturing and retail industry. That's a big, big undertaking. I was delighted when I read about the initiative of the alternative proteins, I think it's great. But that's an example where, if you don't take care of the hearts and minds, and you don't invest in the public awareness or all the clever communication strategies, no end of protein analysis is gonna win, right? Getting the cost down, absolutely I can see. But even then, even when things are cheaper, if there's a really, really fierce lobby, they can slow things to a snail's pace, or even get us into reverse.

AS  

Absolutely. Yes, I think the meat lobby is already being very clever. What they're doing is they're saying, 'you see these fake meats,' and then they have the long chemical name, and they say, this is in it. And then they have another long chemical name. Do you want to eat this stuff? Well, if you took a carrot and you looked at what's in that, you'd come out with an equally long name.That's just the way the world is. We've named certain enzymes and proteins and certain compounds in a certain way. The point that we would make is we're not trying to turn everybody into vegetarians. We're just trying to say that as of today, you know, 80% of agricultural land is livestock and agriculture accounts for half of all the usable land on the planet as of today. Protein from meat consumption is on a line to grow by 60% by 2050. If that happens, under current trends, say goodbye to the Amazon rain forest, because that's where soy comes from and so on. So we're not saying you've got to lower meat consumption, although I think it'd be a good idea, we simply don't want it to keep rising. And many countries in the world with higher incomes, higher populations, legitimately, they're eating a lot more meat. We don't want to stop them eating more meat, but we do want the aggregate amount to be kept within bounds. So in the United States, under the Biden administration, this is a kind of all of the above policy. So they're very supportive of sustainable proteins. And remember,  there are three kinds of — if you like — sustainable proteins. One is plant based, one is fermented, and the third is sort of lab produced, where you take DNA from an animal and you scale it up, so to speak. The first two of those will need a lot more plant based, and will need a lot more farmers to provide that. So it's really important, this is not an anti agricultural play, and it's not even an anti livestock play. It is a balanced play, it is giving consumers and nations a choice. 

BW  

Yeah, and one story I liked was when we interviewed the head of the Good Food Institute. And in having that conversation, we realized that the knock on effect of these popular alternative proteins and trying to get the meat patty exactly the same as a conventional meat patty but using plant proteins, is that upstream farmers are now receiving more money for pea proteins because there's a new market. And farmers are realizing that pea proteins, and the farming of pea proteins has lots of benefits, because it's nitrogen fixing, and you need less inputs. And so there are some win-wins, where the types of crops that we've chosen to focus on, you know... the Green Revolution of decades ago, when we chose wheat and rice and the staples. Had we chosen lentils and peas and maybe some cassava, it would... our agriculture, our food processing has become quite narrow, very commercialized and very concentrated. And if we can just bring back some variety and look for the win-win-wins, that seems quite an exciting route through without forcing everyone to be vegan, but at least bringing, as you said, more diversity into the retail environment. 

AS  

Yes, I agree.

BW  

Okay, good.

Michael Liebreich  

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BW  

We touched earlier on carbon markets, and I did want to come back to that, because that is something that I think that there's been a little bit of controversy about, I don't know if it's real controversy, but around the subject of carbon markets. And there have been some who've said, 'Well, there's the Bezos Earth Fund, and it was slightly conflicted in this, because it would be helpful perhaps for Amazon, Jeff Bezos' source of wealth, to be able to have these cheap offsets. And here's an organization also funding work in this space.' So how are you handling this little delicate area of controversy because it seems perennially there, right? It always seems controversial. 

AS  

Number one, I mean, we have total and utter separation between Amazon and ourselves and other of Jeff's projects: Blue Origin or Washington Post. I've never, never had a conversation with Amazon about what they're looking for on this. What we are doing is not lowering standards, if anything, we're increasing standards, but we're trying to professionalize standards. I was quite heavily involved in the early days of setting up the Science Based Target Initiative in 2014. When we launched it, we were hoping maybe we could get 100 companies. Well, they now have over 7,000 companies. It's been amazingly successful at attracting companies. So what we did, together with the IKEA Foundation, they were running on like, $1 million a year. I mean, there were these 7000 companies saying, 'Can you help us? Can you help us?' 'No, we can't, we can't even answer your telephone.' And so we said,  'I tell you what. We'll finance you. We're not on the board. We're not your advisors. We do nothing. But we do think that you ought to professionalize yourself.' And they agree. They'd already had a consultant report from BCG that advised what they should do. We supported that. A new board where they brought in the private sector and scientists and so on. So, all good. Now, then the board decided, I believe rightly, but I have no vote, that they were taking somewhat of a doctrinaire view towards any form of carbon trading and basically said, 'You've got to have a target, but we will not give you credit for anything you trade.' And as a result, a number of companies were saying: Well, the whole thing is, it's net-zero. There's got to be a journey to net-zero. And so can we be more reasonable? And the board said: 'yes, we can.' And that led to some of the staff felt that my goodness me, we are advocates, we're not going to take this. And so for some unknown reason, they said, 'Who can we blame?' Maybe we don't blame our bosses because we work for them. Blame some distant financier, which is us. So, all good, all good. Not a problem for us, but it's a journey. Today, SBTi is announcing their new CEO, I believe, and that will launch a new process. But here's the point, more substantively, and I realize, Bryony, you've been a champion of this. You set up an entire organization to help educate people on carbon markets. So the commitments that companies have made to Scope 1 and 2 are, amongst the leading companies, very impressive. They need to be accountable for that. The commitments that some of them made to Scope 3 are impressive and quite often unrealistic. If you are a major company, and you've got 5,000 suppliers, what scope three says is, you call every one of them up and you say: if you want to be a supplier to us, you need a path to lower your emissions. And that's a great idea, and a number of companies are doing fantastic work on this. But actually, it's very, very difficult to make this work to the 100% that is required, or even to the 50%. Last year, my daughter was an intern, she's an environmental student, she worked for a major company, and her job was to work on scope three. Her job was to run a major database of 2,000 companies — they know what the electricity supply of all 2,000 companies that supply them is — and they say to each of those companies, we need you to move towards renewable energy. And some of those companies said we'd love to, but we don't have a lot of land. We can't put our own, we can't find green electrons. We're working in Vietnam or wherever, Columbia or somewhere, and you tell us where we get green electrons. Now what we believe is that those companies then could say — actually, the large companies, the international ones — could say, I can help you do that. I could help you by actually engaging with the Energy Transition Accelerator, which is an initiative that basically says, let's use carbon markets to close down coal plants and invest in new ones. We actually think that would be a good idea. And our view is that those who are opposed to carbon markets, who are universally good people, smart people, it would be great if they looked at the use. Now, it's dead easy to find lots of abuses, and those need to be stopped. Our own view, and I'd be interested in yours, Bryony too, is that there are now a couple of institutions that are really doing good work. There's something called ICVCM, the Integrity Council of Voluntary Carbon Markets, which looks at the supply side. There's VCMI, that's the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative, that looks at the demand side. They've got highly professional people, and what they've said is, 'We think that half of Scope 3 emissions should be honorably offset.' They've said, 'Okay, let's say 25% to start with, we think they are credible.' And so we just think there's probably a role to professionalize things. And now with technology, we support technologies that can see virtually every tree falling, so it's now possible to know whether or not carbon markets that are supporting avoided emissions actually are working or not.

BW  

Yeah, I definitely think that the monitoring and then verification is improving, and that that naturally should improve confidence, but it's still expensive to do it well, right? And I think the tension comes when people assume from a corporate perspective, it's going to be cheaper for me to offset because the market's providing me with very low credits. But in the long run, the price does often reflect quality, right? So if you're buying cheap, it's potentially because it's not being done very well, or because there's some fraudulent aspect to it, there have been examples. And I think it then becomes, if you were to offset really properly, with proper monitoring, really good integrity, it would actually then be cheaper over the long-run to make an investment in an infrastructure change now, and not have to keep buying your offsets. Because you've got to make that purchase every year. So if you continue emitting, or you've still got this liability of an emission over time, the offsetting will become more expensive. Devil's in the detail, isn't it? And what you're saying, I suppose, is that there are more and more organizations trying to professionalize this industry to get the details right.

AS  

Exactly. Yeah. So let's be clear, this is still difficult stuff, and that's why the so-called jurisdictional approach, we don't just go project to project, and individual projects can have leakage with other projects. You close a coal plant here and you build another one here. But a jurisdictional approach is saying we do a deal with you over the nation or the region, and that's what the Energy Transition Accelerator is doing. It's worth reflecting on how markets develop in general. I mean markets for any product, often created by the private sector, are usually massively leaking. There are huge asymmetries in information. They are very inefficient. And then over time, they become professionalized, and ideally, then there is an appropriate regulatory environment. The important thing is, because you have a certain amount of leakage, you've got to address that. You've got to be very aggressive in addressing that. Call it out wherever it happens, but don't give up the entire market. My wife comes from Belgium, and her home is Bruges. If you go to Bruges, you will see the first stock market in the world, 13th century. And you go in there, we're the first stock market in the world. It took 600 years at least before stock markets started to take off.

BW  

I hear you, I hear you, but we don't have 600 years. I suspect my slight worry is that there's too much emphasis placed on the voluntary carbon market. I hear you about these accelerated transition mechanisms, but in reality, if you're a coal asset owner today, there's a brilliant example in Texas who basically, they've realized that if they turn their coal fired power station into a geothermal storage unit, a synchronized condenser for grid stability, and a solar park, they're going to have a much better future and that the runway will be longer. It's an investment that they can raise finance to do because it's commercial, and that they're moving ahead. And so in a way, I feel like the voluntary carbon market, whilst it's interesting, is slightly behind the curve in terms of what the real market is doing, which is understanding that whoever's in the White House, whatever the politics, there's going to be a push towards a cleaner, more sustainable form of energy, and that will ultimately be cheaper, because the fossil version is very wasteful and expensive in terms of social impact.

AS  

 So just to be clear, though, that coal plant in Texas wouldn't be eligible for anything we would recommend. The only people that would be eligible are those that are on track for Science Based Targets in Scope 1 and 2 and doing their very best on Scope 3. So it's a very limited group, but actually there are billions of dollars there that could go to help close coal plants in countries that really need to do it. And at the moment there simply is not enough grant and grant-look-alike money that can help do this. 

BW  

Just to push on that a bit further though, Andrew, the coal plant can't shut if you still need the power, and so it really only works if there isn't a correlating investment in clean right? So I've seen some deals being talked about where we're asking a coal plant to close early. So it's still going to run for 20 years, and we're going to credit the last 10 years in which we don't use it, but that's kind of borrowing from the future. And strictly speaking, you shouldn't be able to use those credits until that decade arrives. So it feels like a kind of partial solution, but really, what you want is a real assessment of what could be replacing these plants, either onsite where it is possible to take the coal boilers out and put other things in. Advanced geothermal, I think it's going to change the game for quite a lot of these sites. I would personally say you could use it for a nuclear site, if the conditions are right. Those projects are going to take time to work through. But that's different from saying, 'just close a bit early.'

AS  

No one's suggesting that. I mean, that would be ridiculous, maybe there's some stupidity out there, but obviously, the whole point of the jurisdictional approach is you have enough electricity to fuel the kind of future that the country needs. And so when I said it's closing coal plants, it enables coal plants to be closed, but it might be through financing the design of offshore wind, it might be financing geothermal, it might be financing a whole range of issues. But obviously you need a comprehensive approach. It's deeply impressive, I was in South Africa a couple of months ago, and when you talk there to the Climate Change Commission and even Eskom, these guys are real professionals. They have plans, but they need some help in financing them.

BW  

I think the key word here is jurisdictional. And by that, what you're saying is it's not project by project. This is looking at an entire region. It could be a state, it could be a country, and making sure that it adds up to be a net gain, right? And then there isn't this risk of focusing too much on a specific site where something else could be going on untoward in other parts of the country or state. 

AS  

Yes. 

BW  

Yep, good. Well, I'm reassured, Andrew, that that's in hand.

AS  

It's not in hand. It is difficult stuff. 

BW  

It is difficult. Well, look, you're working on it and that's reassuring. I wanted to move on quickly because I know we're running out of time slightly. You made a very interesting announcement recently about a fund dedicated to looking at climate and AI, and this is something that I've been very interested in myself. And so give us a little bit of a spiel on that fund and how you're approaching this really interesting intersection.

AS  

So the idea is that out there, there are wonderful solution seekers in nature and climate. They may or may not know who's who in the AI space, but they've got some ideas. They're smart people. They've read what AI can do more generally. And so it may well be that there are certain applications. So what we said for this first round was: let's think of three themes. One was alternative proteins. One was measuring and monitoring nature. And the third was managing electrical grids, especially in developing countries. And so then we said: if anyone has a wild card, a really spectacular one, you can also apply for anything. And we were quite specific about what kind of expertise we needed, and so on. It's really exciting, so on nature, for example, there are many really interesting proposals on measuring nature. AI can now do recognition using sight and sound and DNA in a flash of the eye in a way that it would take forever to do so, even on something sort of very basic, like how many species are there and what have we identified? We know there are at least 9 million species in the world. We've only actually described 1.8 million of them. AI can help us much, much more quickly, by analyzing DNA quickly, sight and sound quickly. They not only count species, they can identify new ones. They can identify where there's a problem. They can help on invasive species. For example, in Florida,  the Burmese Python was introduced by mistake a couple of decades ago. There are now thousands of them. They're wreaking havoc everywhere. The problem is, you set up traps, and the traps capture all the other animals. AI can actually recognize, even in the middle of the night, a Burmese Python. It can trap just that, but won't trap other ones. These are, you might say, silly examples, but actually they're pretty exciting, and so too on recognition of changing an environment. So for example, not only each tree that falls, but how much carbon is embedded in that tree. There's a wonderful example, a real life example, where as part of autonomous driving, a piece of AI software was developed to identify tiny, tiny changes in the road. Well, then it turned out that brain oncologists, who are really trying to look for tiny, tiny cells, they use that same thing to help them identify cells of cancer. And then the World Resource Institute, which is doing work on trees in Africa, realized you can now see trees that are growing, but individual trees in open landscapes are very hard to see. They use that same software, and it was a breakthrough. So little serendipitous moments like that. And we're just trying to get away a little bit from the serendipity to actually say, is there an approach that could be a little more disciplined? So that's what we're doing. And so we’re just about to announce the first set of awards. 

BW  

I look forward to that announcement. Thank you for talking us through that. My observation perhaps back is, I think this is all very exciting. And I think there is this need to kind of connect the two worlds together, but the area where, when I look at this, that really appeared to me to be perhaps under-resourced, was in that political realm of communications and hearts and minds. Arguably, the large language models and the algorithms and the AI that we have today, where they've had their biggest impact is on the media we consume, the information that we see, the way that we're learning about the world. Because that's all algorithmically derived now, andthere are some misaligned incentives, right? To make money, to get our advertising dollars, you want maximum engagement, and to do that, you want to tap into the old lizard brain and make everything much more polarizing. We seem to be losing the middle ground into the extremes. And I wondered if that was something you'd thought about in terms of adding that as a new dimension, because that's what's working, that's what's happening today, that's affecting the politics, which then affects so many other things we care about.

AS  

Well, it's a fascinating issue. We're not actively working on that, but it's incredibly important, and is part of a general truth, which is, we in the environmental movement have not done as good a job using sophisticated, modern approaches. We don't want fake news. We want true news. We want it to be available to all. We are sort of spending some time thinking about who are the influencers, for example, in health, the Association of Pediatricians are very, very good on the issue of climate change. But, yeah, it's a very interesting point you raise. And you know, if you look back to what you did, Bryony, you wrote the first climate change bill in the world in 2008. And you and the government then and civil society and the scientific community created a deeper politicized environment for climate change. We ought to be asking ourselves, 'How does that happen? Could it happen again?' And could it ever happen in a country like the United States. Now, in many of the countries we work in, it's a pretty broad coalition, and so it is still possible, but we need to be much, much more aware of the sophisticated way in which human beings form judgments.

BW  

I think that's completely right. And I think what seems to have happened in the last decade and a half since that time, which I look back on very fondly, where we had cross-party support for a piece of pretty comprehensive legislation, is that the middle ground of essentially trust and faith in experts or expertise has really been eroded. And it is a fascinating question to think through, what would bring it back? And it might be that this is something that parents start to really drive. I mean, you're starting to see this kind of backlash against smartphones, and the effect of that on teenage health. It's not just the teenage health that's at risk, you know, planetary health as well. And so I'm wondering where it will come from. But anyway, it's a fascinating topic, and one that perhaps we could return to in person. I'd love to come out and see you in Washington and have that conversation. We're reaching the end, Andrew, but I wanted to do a little bit of an experiment with you, because it's 2025, you're almost halfway through. How are you going to be feeling in 2030 when this ten billion has been dispersed? What do you want to be looking back on and what happens then? I like a spend down philosophy, because it's urgent, we need to get the money out the door. But there is this question of: the world doesn't end in 2030. So talk to me about this next five years and beyond. 

AS  

Well, you're quite right. Whilst this is the decisive decade, the next decade is also decisive and maybe more difficult. Who knows? I'm hoping that by 2030 we will not be needing to talk so much about earmarked resources for climate change. It will become a natural way of doing. When we invest in infrastructure, it will be low carbon. When we invest in agriculture, it will be sensitive to the need for carbon dioxide molecules coming down to earth. For example, it will be sensitive to the need to protect much of the earth for nature, for its beauty, and for all the ecological functions it preserves for us. So to some extent, the great success would be not to have solved the problem, but onto a kind of okay, so now it's normal. We still need to keep our eye on it. We still need to monitor more carefully than ever. We still, as humans, are going to have to make decisions, which may be difficult, but it will become more of a norm. I hope they look at the Bezos Earth Fund as helpful, albeit one of several obviously useful philanthropies that have been brave, that have made every dollar count. $10 billion sounds like a lot, but it's a small amount compared to the need for climate change mitigation. Climate philanthropy today is probably approaching $10billion a year total. That's sort of 1% of what we need, to get the kind of change that would be really well impactful. With 1% is that a lot or a little? It could be a smallish tail wagging a bigger dog if we use that money to leverage, if we use that money to multiply. Too much philanthropy has been a dollar in and a good dollar of output out. You build a school or you build a hospital — good. We can't afford just to have good projects. We have to be changing systems. And there's lots of ways you can get leverage. You can get it through policy change. You can get it through monitoring and changing views. You can get it through research, driving down costs. So that's what we do. We run something together, with WRI, called the System Change Lab. It monitors the 50 transitions that are going to have to take place this decade and next, and it asks the question, how many of them are close to that tipping point beyond which change becomes irresistible and unstoppable. And if they're not closed, or they are closed, what are the barriers? And how can we help remove those barriers? But the idea would be that by 2030, we would have crossed a significant number of those tipping points. 

BW  

Well, let's hope we get there. I mean, not to end on a downer. My fear is we've been at this for what is it, 20, 30, 40, years seriously? We've known about climate change for longer, but perhaps the movement started in the late 90s. And we've still not bent that greenhouse gas curve. If anything, you know, we're just teetering on, potentially, hopefully, reaching a plateau. But you and I know there's those steep reduction curves that are necessary, even once we've reached the peak, and we've not reached the peak yet. So there's a lot of work to do, isn't there? I'm delighted that you're doing this. Do you think there's an option for this level of investment to continue beyond 2030? Has that conversation been had?

AS  

Well, what is wonderful is how very, very wealthy people are putting real money on the table for this. And I mean, what Jeff's done is incredible, and others are doing the same, maybe not at their scale, but it is really wonderful. So no, we are not discussing the next decade. This decade's hard enough.

BW  

Fair enough. Well, listen, I'm going to let you get back to that day job of distributing this money, so that makes the maximum leverage. Thank you, Andrew, I very much enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to crossing paths again in the future. 

AS  

Thank you so much. It's a real joy to be with you.

BW  

So that was Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth fund. As usual, we'll provide any links to episodes mentioned in the show notes, including the episode with Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of the Good Food Institute. My thanks to our producer, Oscar Boyd, the rest of the Cleaning Up team and the leadership circle who make these episodes possible. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. Please join us this time next week for another episode of Cleaning Up.

ML  

Cleaning Up is brought to you by members of our new Leadership Circle: Actis, Alcazar Energy, EcoPragma Capital, EDP of Portugal, Eurelectric, Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle and to find out how to become a member, please visit cleaningup.live, that’s cleaningup.live If you’re enjoying Cleaning Up, please make sure you subscribe on Youtube or your favourite podcast platform, and leave us a review, that really helps other people to find us. Please recommend Cleaning Up to your friends and colleagues and sign up for our free newsletter at cleaninguppod.substack.com. That’s cleaninguppod.substack.com.