The Private Sector Is Increasingly Leading The Global Climate Response

For much of the scientific and policy community, the global climate crisis is an 'existential threat' to human life.

These were, in fact, the exact words used by the British government in March, when Energy Secretary Ed Miliband travelled to China to discuss measures to 'keep our planet safe for our children and grandchildren'.

It's surprising, therefore, that climate action has somewhat slipped down the political agenda, as the news cycle focuses on the risks of a global trade war and international political instability.

Many countries have continued to advocate vocally for climate action. The British government, for example, has outlined plans to transform the UK into a 'clean energy superpower', while Finland has set an ambitious target of achieving net zero by 2035.

But after last year's Cop29 summit, which was criticised by members of the press as a failure to make significant progress in the fight to contain rising global temperatures, it would seem the global consensus on climate change has been weakened.

The summit concluded with the African Group of Negotiations criticising the $300 billion a year pledged by richer countries to poorer ones as 'too little too late'. It was, after all, much less than the more than $1 trillion per year developing countries had hoped for.

By contrast, the open letter penned by the chief executives and chairs of more than 100 companies prior to Cop29, calling on governments to scale up financing and remove obstacles to green investments, was a clear statement of the private sector's willingness to take proactive measures to power the global response to the climate emergency.

The opportunities for the private sector presented by this shift are clear. Well-versed in the importance of integrating technology into business operations to optimise efficiency, companies have proven adept at developing innovative solutions in climate technology to find cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

US-based oil and gas company Oxy, for example, has integrated SensorUp's Gas Emission Management Solutions to manage methane emissions in a historically high-polluting sector.

SensorUp's product, built on Amazon Web Services, aggregates and analyses methane emissions data across an oil and gas plant to streamline emissions management and optimise operational efficiency.

Mining is another industry notorious for its climate impact, with McKinsey estimating that the sector accounts for 2-3% of CO2 emissions alone. The Titan 3330 Real-Time Payload Management System, developed by CR Mining, an Australia-based provider of advanced ground engaging tools and related digital solutions, has been deployed in an iron ore mine in Western Australia to improve real-time payload management and thus reduce emissions.

Emissions management is, however, just one part of the climate puzzle, and companies from a wide range of sectors are developing further methods to support global climate action. Take Dahua Technology, for example, a developer of video-centric Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) solutions and services.

According to its 2024 Environmental, Social and Governance Report published this month, Dahua has developed over 1,000 species recognition algorithms to support biodiversity conservation, building on their expertise in smart video monitoring systems.

The company has deployed the technology to cover over 10,000 kilometres of waterways to protect fragile ecosystems, and has since held a strategic meeting with the World Wide Fund for Nature to explore more comprehensive collaborations to safeguard endangered species.

The confirmation from Europe's Copernicus climate service earlier this year that 2024 was the first calendar year on record to surpass the 1.5C of warming threshold is a clear sign of the urgency for concerted global action over climate change .

But while there have been difficulties in recent months securing political buy-in into collective climate action, the private sector is increasingly leading the global response by developing technological solutions to avert scientists' worst-case scenarios.