Interview with Emily Damon, Erika Schiller and Emma Cox, ClimeCo

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green, and today I have with me three incredible leaders from ClineCo, Emma Cox, who’s the EVP of Commercial, Emily Damon, Chief Growth Officer, and Erika Schiller, SVP of Project Development. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Erika: Thanks for having us.

Emma: Thanks for having us, Catherine.

Catherine: And I think that we have every location in AmErika covered. So, San Francisco, Chicago, Burlington, D.C., so we’re definitely covering our nation geographically-wise. So, could you all please introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your current roles, whoever would like to start? Emily?

Emily: Oh, sure. Yes, let’s see. Okay, Emily Damon, I’m the Chief Growth Officer for ClimeCo, my role is really focused on growth initiatives for the business. So, I work on things like some of our international expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and some of our Big Bet strategies, one of which is insetting, which we will talk about a little bit later.

Erika: And I’m Erika Schiller. Thanks, Emily. I lead our project development business at ClimeCo, so that means all the projects that we manage that generate environmental attributes like carbon credits from nature-based solutions to industrial decarbonization. We do this here at ClimeCo, and that’s in my organization. And in the 15 years that since we’ve been around, we’ve generated over 40 million tons of carbon credits.

Catherine: Oh, my goodness.

Emma: Great. I guess that leaves me. Emma Cox, EVP of the Commercial Team, which is a newly-formed group here at ClimeCo, essentially merging the marketing and business development teams. So, we are responsible for all the storytelling and brand strategy, as well as acquiring new business and expanding existing. So, thanks for having us again.

Catherine: Thank you. So, a lot of people these days are interested in pursuing a career in sustainability solutions, but maybe aren’t sure how to break into the field. Could each of you share a bit about your own journey and how you got into this line of work, and what led you to ClimeCo, specifically? If you want, we can just start in the same order with Emily.

Emily: Sure. Yeah. I guess the first things first, part of why we’re all here with you today, Catherine, of course, is that you helped us each find our home at ClimeCo, and for that, we’re so grateful for your work as a recruiter to bring us and connect us with ClimeCo, we’ve all been here now many years, and we’re really grateful.

Catherine: Thank you.

Emily: Yeah. That’s sort of the short term how we all landed here. A little more background on how I got into sustainability. I’ve been working in this field for over 15 years, and really spent a long time doing sustainability consulting and climate strategy work with companies. And why I found my way into consulting initially right out of college was it felt to me like a really nice blend of technical work, people, team work, and as well kind of influence and impact. It blended those things in a balance that I really enjoyed. So I’ve been in consulting for a long time now at a couple of large firms, couple of small firms, and through your help, Catherine, ClimeCo
got put on my radar. And I was really excited about what the company was doing to implement emission reduction projects with companies, and ClimeCo’s work with some of the heaviest emitting, hard to abate companies. So those two things really drew me to ClimeCo
after having spent a lot of time at traditional consulting firms.

Erika: Yeah, and I’ll echo Emily’s comment. You know, we found ClimeCo because of you, but I’d say that you and I actually talked about several different roles. And before I joined ClimeCo three years ago, I worked at Chevron for 10 years. And in that time, I was really continuously working on supporting the energy transition. I worked in renewable natural gas, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and carbon capture and storage. And I just felt that all my roles, though they were advancing the energy transition, were not the core business of my previous employer.
And so I was excited to go somewhere where the energy transition and decarbonization and sustainability was the core business. And that’s what I was excited about joining ClimeCo And since then, over the last three years it’s just been continuously learning and engaging with customers about how they can do more and how we can work together to create value from emissions reductions and advanced sustainability goals.
Catherine: Thank you.

Emma: Great. Well, I’ll tell my story in a little bit of a different way, which is I’ll start from childhood. I grew up in a very sort of progressive neighborhood in Boston called Jamaica Plain and was raised by two hippie parents. So I pretty much knew that I wanted to do something with the environment with sustainability since I was a child. And so fast forward, it was time to decide what coming out of undergraduate I wanted to focus my time on. Met with an advisor at the time, and she said what would drive you to wake up and get out of bed every day? And I said, I’m pretty sure I want to work in sustainability and corporate sustainability specifically. So I built my career with that sort of vision and value set. But choicefully made decisions throughout my career to sort of add perspective. So what I mean by that is out of college, I thought, well, nonprofit sounds like a good way to get started in this space. So I worked for the U.S. Green Building Council and used that experience to really just build a foundation and understand how to speak the language, network, build my network. And from there, really went into solutioning.
So worked in consultancy with a green tech startup. So how can we build solutions through technology to address current needs in the market? From there, went into corporate real estate large footprint there, lots of opportunity to make a difference. Worked for Cushman Weightfield, designing, solutioning with clients, and really got to know the corporate real estate space. And then I was really curious to where the end user had the buyer position. So worked for a small burger company. I like to joke about that. Where I got to drive some pretty large, meaningful, and impactful programs like their global renewable energy program. And it was there, Catherine, that I got connected with some great consultants that helped drive that strategy. Coho, now Coho Group, and got connected with you. So I believe that everything happens for a reason. I was very curious to sort of learn more about just how we can pull different levers with decarbonization. I skipped a step in there, which is that I did a brief jaunt in the PR space, drank from a fire hose, sort of pretending to be a PR professional there. But I learned so much. And how to connect the storytelling piece with the impact. I loved Emily, that you said, influence and impact. That was sort of our motto. And great to be able to pull from that experience and bring it into my role here at ClimeCo. I think storytelling has such an opportunity to drive more impact.
So back over to you.

Catherine: Yeah, I really love that influence and impact. So the next question I have is around a partnership that you all did with Hilton and Lenovo to enhance sustainability in their businesses and customer offerings. Can you all talk about these partnerships and why you think they’re significant?

Emma: Yeah, I’ll get it started and we’ll welcome input from Erika and Emily on this. But Hilton and Lenovo are some of our best clients because of their partnership and their sort of commitment to drive impact through the solutions that we’re partnering with them on. Also the opportunity to drive scale through their brands. I think really interestingly, they’ve latched on to what we believe is a key to driving more impact in the space, which is through a solution that we’ve designed called Digital Carbon Solutions, which is essentially a fancy word to apply technology to a carbon footprint. So you have a carbon footprint. Everybody has a carbon footprint individually as a company. Hilton has a different carbon footprint than Lenovo. When Hilton thinks about their carbon footprint, one of the pieces of that is through their events and their conferences that they host on site. And so they thought, well, how do we build a program that addresses that carbon footprint and we help them design it. So through their sustainable meeting program, we’re able to offset the emissions associated with all of their events around the and we do that through a digital solution that’s easy to say, that connects to their ESG platform that directly feeds into their event manager. So when their event managers are dealing with their clients and calculating the customer carbon footprint associated with that event, they immediately push a button that sends through a sort of equivalency to get us to sort of offset the equivalent associated with that event. So, very turnkey makes it easy for the on-site manager, makes it easy for the customer to address the carbon footprint associated with their event. And so that has been a very successful program that we’re very happy to partner with Hilton on. It has expanded quite a bit over the years that we’ve been in partnership with them.
Lenovo is another example, a very different application because you think about Lenovo’s brand and the types of products that they offer. You know, typical product, we could take an example, one of their laptops. So if you’re a person that is going on to the Lenovo website to buy a laptop, you’re buying a low-carbon laptop and that part of what makes that product low-carbon is the offset associated with it. So obviously Lenovo is doing quite a bit to reduce their own emissions in the production of that laptop, but this, the offset portion of that low-carbon product is the piece that ClimeCo is able to provide. So again, back to the example of the consumer buying the laptop, you click a button to purchase the laptop and you get an email saying thank you for supporting the environment. You’ve helped us sort of address the emissions through your purchase. And so that program has been, again, very successful in the way that it has empowered the consumer to make sustainable choices. And again, we want to make it easy and we believe this tech solution has done that. So many applications and we’re excited to see that grow in different areas.

Catherine: Great. Does anybody want to add anything else to that?

Erika: No, I guess I would just say I think those are great examples of how you lower the barriers to participate in sustainable activities. And a lot of the benefits that we see from carbon projects bring investment to different regions. And we both supply our own projects there that are supported by Lenovo and Hilton and other projects that aren’t ClimeCo’s own proprietary projects. So it’s a great mix that makes an impact in many different regions.

Catherine: Scope 3 emissions are often the largest portion of a company’s carbon footprint, yet they’re also the hardest to address due to their indirect nature. Can you explain what exactly Scope 3 emissions are and the key barriers to Scope 3 decarbonization and how these are being overcome?

Emily: Yes, I can. It’s a lot. So tell me when I’m going too deep, but let’s cover this stuff. And the timing is really great, actually. They’re one of the leading standards out there that guides a lot of companies and that pushes a lot of companies to think about Scope 3, the Science Based Targets Initiative. Just yesterday, they launched their version 2.0 of their corporate net zero standard. And it’s out now for public consultation. I think the survey that they have is open until June. They’re creating expert working groups that we’ve applied to be a part of. They’re really working hard to update that guidance. And again, that’s one of those big drivers that gets companies thinking about Scope 3. But starting at the beginning, first, just to define what is Scope 3. So when a company thinks about its greenhouse gas footprint, 99% of companies are using the greenhouse gas protocol as their guiding document for doing the greenhouse gas accounting. They’ll break their emissions into Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

• Scope 1 is basically greenhouse gas emissions from the stacks and tailpipes that you own. So if you own a facility and it’s burning fuel and that’s coming out the stack, that would be your Scope 1. If you own a vehicle, you’re burning some fuel to get that vehicle going. Again, the emissions out that tailpipe, those would be falling into a company’s Scope 1 footprint. This is a simplification, but we’ll go with it.
• Scope 2, purchased energy, primarily that’s electricity. So the electricity that you’re using, perhaps at that facility you own, the emissions are actually coming from whatever power plant is supplying the electricity to your facility. So they’re not directly from within your fence line. And so that’s why those emissions sit in Scope 2.
• And then lastly, Scope 3 is the value chain category, or the value chain scope, I should say. There are 15 categories of Scope 3 defined by the greenhouse gas protocol. Really, they try to target, for any given company, you need to look at your suppliers upstream. So who’s making the stuff that you buy? But then you also need to look downstream. What happens to your product at the end of its life? What happens when consumers use your product? How is it moving around either before you’ve bought it or once you’ve sold the product? So really, Scope 3 at its simplest level, value chain emissions.

So I think, Catherine, you asked as well, what are the barriers to addressing Scope 3? So there are a lot of companies who have set targets to reduce Scope 3 emissions. The Science Based Targets Initiative, who I mentioned earlier, are a big driver of that, but by no means the only driver. And so companies have made public commitments to reduce emissions in their value chain. And of course, that comes with a number of challenges, some of which I think are pretty quick to come to mind and others you start to see as you really dig into trying to meet one of these targets. But some of the obvious ones, you’re trying to reduce emissions at companies who you don’t own or control in any way. So there’s often a real grappling with how much can we just sort of throw our weight around and exert influence? Or is this something we need to pay our suppliers some value chain for? Do we need to pay for these emission reductions to hit our Scope 3 reduction goals? There’s some other ones too, suppliers, there’s often quite a lot of suppliers. So the list of where you need to gather the data, how you need to reduce emissions, the list gets pretty long pretty quickly. And of course, those lists are never static either. So it’s an ever changing source of those emissions that you’re trying to quantify and reduce.

Catherine: And I can imagine that you’re dealing with a lot of different stakeholders. So if you say to ABC company, this supplier is there’s some challenges here with their emissions, this one in particular, and then that company goes to that supplier and says we’d like you to clean up your act or something. I can imagine that would cause some conflict perhaps.

Emily: Indeed. Yes. Nail on the head. There’s a fine; these relationships between buyers and suppliers are so critical and they’re so important. And so to introduce anything to be compromising those or stressing those relationships is definitely something that companies have to be sensitive to. And I think that’s one of the things ClimeCo helps is how do you effectively engage with companies across your value chain to meet these emission reduction commitments. So maybe just one we promised to talk briefly about insetting. This is one of ClimeCo’s big bad strategies, something that Erika, Emma and I all spend a lot of time working on. So how are we addressing some of these barriers around scope three? And I would say insetting is a big one. Really, that is a way of having dollars flow to decarbonization projects within a value chain: insetting. And ClimeCo is enabling that. We’re helping set up these bilateral deals. We also help companies participate in multilateral deals. We help a company who’s looking to reduce emissions from let’s say the shipping associated with its products. Okay, we can connect you to the ships who are burning lower carbon fuels. Let’s put you two together.
Or maybe we’re working with a company, a chemicals manufacturer and they can reduce emissions, but their direct buyer maybe doesn’t care. But a few links down the chain, somebody’s making yoga pants out of that chemical that they’re producing. Can we connect those parties across the value chain? Can we leverage the way that greenhouse gas accounting rules are written to really help both parties meet their emission reduction commitments through insetting?

Catherine: Like a matchmaking kind of thing, like trying to find companies that share that same sort of ethos around splashing.

Emily: Exactly.

Emma: Yeah. Might I just add one thing, Catherine, I love that you use that word, a matchmaker, because I really do view ClimeCo having a differentiator in the space in the way of advisors, right? Because I often describe us as a matchmaker or a wayfinder, because this is a complicated space, right? And what Emily just described, there are so many barriers and challenges with untangling Scope 3. Oftentimes our clients just need support in wayfinding and finding opportunities, which we view ourselves as having visibility into those opportunities.
So I’m glad that you used that word because we often use that to describe what ClimeCo has to offer.

Catherine: Yeah. Because one of the ways I always differentiate you all as opposed to other consultancies is some of the frustration that people have when they work at a consultancy is they go in, they do review, they hand them the paper, and they walk away. And I think what’s interesting about ClimeCo is you do the whole piece. So you’re like, here’s our suggestions, and now we’re going to tell you how you can actually make this a reality. And that really seems like a differentiator to me.

Emily: Yeah, we love that. I think it’s satisfying personally to be able to see through some of the strategies and recommendations that you make, and also makes a bigger difference on the world, I believe.

Catherine: Yeah, totally. I’m very interested in this next question. I don’t know if I’m familiar with this term, green hushing. So I’m learning so much today. So what is green hushing and what specific advice do you provide to your clients so they’re not partaking in this?

Emma: Yeah, Catherine, this is an interesting question. I think especially now, given the current climate in the United States, I think, and when I say climate, I mean political climate. But this is a topic that I’m very familiar with because I’ve seen it evolve over the years. And green hushing, just to address your question of what is it, this is the opposite of green washing. This is when companies decide to stay quiet or step back from existing sustainability or climate commitments. And so green washing is when companies sort of overstate their progress on their goals. So they make false claims that can’t be substantiated around their sustainability progress. So what’s happening right now with green hushing, and we’ve seen green hushing come in waves, is that companies are influenced by whatever sort of governing body is sort of causing them to make decisions around their sustainability commitments. And in this case, right now, I’ll just use the example. The current U.S. administration, I think, has caused a lot of companies to sort of either stay quiet on their climate commitments, or you’ve seen some companies go as far as stepping back from their SBTI commitments or removing language from their websites that talks about those commitments or progress towards the commitments, or some companies even sort of stepping down, being less aggressive with their climate strategies. So it’s sort of giving companies permission to just be less aggressive or not talk about their commitments at all or step back. So it is a phenomenon that is happening.
But what’s interesting about it, and this is my personal perspective, is that when you assess what’s happening and what people are labeling as green hushing, this is really a communications phenomenon. This is something that we’re seeing happen in public statements on websites, but the action doesn’t align with the communication. And so a lot of companies are still doing all of the things that they had committed to, but are speaking a different language now, right? I think we’re seeing a shift in the narrative a bit around sustainability is good for business, and we believe that, and it needs to be good for business to take action. And I think it’s an interesting shift in the narrative. I don’t think, I’ll just say it’s interesting right now, but I will say that we’ve seen this ebb and flow. And so I’m sure in a couple of years we’ll have a different thing to say about green hushing.

Catherine: And you know what it reminds me of?

Emma: Tell me.

Catherine: DPI hushing.

Emma: The same thing that’s happening.

Catherine: Yeah. So I want to talk about some of the things that you all are most proud of. What is some of the work you’re most proud of having achieved throughout your career in sustainability? Erika?

Erika: Yeah, I’d say measuring the impact of what we do is so motivating, right? And at the beginning, I mentioned ClimeCo has created over 40 million tons of carbon credits. Those are on the major registries like American Carbon Registry, Climate Action Reserve, Vera, and Gold Standard. Just in the last three years, we’ve generated over 18 million tons, and we’re projecting this year to generate over 7 million tons of carbon, both avoidance and removal credits. And we have a long pipeline of projects that will generate credits avoiding emissions or removing emissions for the next 10 to 100 years, because some of these projects have very long lives, especially if you’re replanting a forest. So I think it’s just been so incredible to go out and engage with our clients, engage with the community members that are impacted by these projects, and that are excited to see the investments in natural restoration and cleaner air, cleaner water, all of that is just incredible. And also just to continue to grow the organization, to bring more people, give them opportunities to have careers that are so impactful in this space.

Catherine: Does anyone want to add to that?

Emily: I think it’s just one thing I’d add is we’ve been able to grow the business, ClimeCo’s business from about 20 people to 100 now, just in the last four years.

Catherine: You have 100 people at ClimeCo?!

Emily: We do.

Catherine: Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize you got that big. That’s amazing.

Emma: I love that we’re making it about ClimeCo because I am incredibly proud of the work and the scale of the impact that we’re driving here and could say the same thing about the work that I did at McDonald’s. Leading renewable energy was equivalent to planting. I think it was something like 55 million trees. So to drive impact behind the scale of a brand is really one of the most powerful things we can do, I think. But I would like to say, just on a bit of a poignant note, I think for me, one of the things that I’m most proud of is being able to tell my kids what I do. And I think we as moms can all relate to that statement. I had my nine-year-old daughter, the other day, ask me, well, why do you have to go on this trip? And I said, well, had to sit her down and explain, well, this is what we’re doing. This is the impact we’re making. I’m trying to make sure that you and your kids can live a thriving, beautiful life. And really, that’s what drives me every day. And I know I speak for all of us when I say it’s a big motivator.

Catherine: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I named the company after my son. I felt so strongly about that, finding things in a better place than where we found them, or making things better than how we found them. But what projects are you most excited about working on this year? Emily?

Emily: I can share a few. Erika, Emma, please chime in with others. But a few things that I’m excited about for this year. We talked about scope three. We talked about what a challenge it can be. And yet, it’s really a great thing for making climate impact span across the economy. You know, five, 10 years ago in my career, there was very little sustainability consulting. And the only companies who we were working with at the time were really big consumer facing brands who were under a lot of investor pressure and consumer pressure. So we had some pharma clients, some food and bev. And that was about it 10 years ago, five years ago, there was more work that they were doing. They were further down their journey. And they were starting to engage their supply chains because they had quantified scope three emissions and because they had set targets. And now so much of our work at ClimeCo is to do work with still a lot of those big consumer facing brands, but we also work all the way back in the value chain. And I think something I’m really excited for in this coming year is to really take advantage of the collaboration, or to really accelerate collaboration across the value chain to make decarbonization happen.

Catherine: Anyone else want to add anything?

Erika: I guess I would add we last year were joined by the White House, or invited by the White House to talk about super pollutants. And not super polluters, but pollutants. So methane being one of them N2O to being another one in terms of greenhouse gas warming potential, they have very high greenhouse gas warming potential compared to CO2. And so we’ve been working with plants, chemical plants that produce nitric acid and adipic acid. And one of their just waste gases is N2O. And we’ve been destroying N2O for 15 years. That’s where more than 35 million of the 40 million credits that we’ve generated has come from. And we’ve been expanding that business. Now we’re starting work in China. And we’re also talking with folks in India. So it’s really exciting both a global expansion and just the volume impact that we’re having on greenhouse gas warming agents.

Catherine: I’m really glad that you mentioned that because one of the things we haven’t covered is the international expansion that you all have been doing. So, that’s super exciting. I know I’ve talked to Bill about Turkey, for example, is another country that you all are looking at.

Erika: Yeah, Emily and I are both on the board of our joining venture ClimeCo Turkiye. And we’ll actually be out there in a couple of weeks for a board meeting. So it’s very interesting to see how the sustainability movements and business drivers are evolving in different regions.

Catherine: Yeah, its great. So my last question is always around advice. So what advice do you have for those who are looking to break into the sustainability space?

Erika: I’ll start but anyone else please jump in. I think that every business has opportunities to make them more sustainable, right? And in each role, folks can look for opportunities to ask what’s the different impact of these carbon choices? Or the impact on our water, air, anything like that. So I think that in your current role, you can start to get involved but also it’s really important to educate yourself on what are the barriers, what are the challenges? And that might be listening to podcasts, like this one, or ESG Decoded, where Emma and I are hosts. And read the news and ask the informed questions to help establish that this is interesting to me. And I can learn about this and make a difference in any role.

Emma: Yeah, I’ll add, because Catherine this is a very relevant question, I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine who her background is in positive psychology, she lives in Hawaii. She’s looking to get into the sustainability space. She’s really passionate about it but she has no experience, right? And so I said that doesn’t matter because this is a big enough problem where we need talented smart people lending their experiences to solve for this huge challenge. So we welcome transferable skills into the industry. We need all that we can get. The passion is really what drives the impact. So if you have the passion for it, we’ll find a way to get you involved, it’s going to take everything we’ve got. So that’s what I said to her. The other piece of advice I would say is that we have a tendency in the industry to over complicate sustainability. This is very top of mind because we just launched a series called insights for impact. Which sort of dejargonizes and simplifies decarbonization projects. So stay tuned for that, that’s my plug of the day. But it really simplifies it because it doesn’t need to be challenging. It doesn’t need to be complex. We need to simplify it and create meaningful and easy ways to engage. And that is what we’re trying to do.

Catherine: Well thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Emma: Thanks for having us.

Erika: Our pleasure. Thank you Catherine.

Emily: Thanks so much.