techUK at NYC Climate Week

Last week techUK was in the Big Apple to learn more about what policy makers, the business community and NGOs were up to on climate and to talk about how digital solutions can make a big difference across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It was incredibly hectic (and knackering), but really useful and worth it. A summary of our adventures in NYC are below and we'd be really keen to hear from others on their experience there.

The vast majority of the time was spent on climate but with the UNGA taking place there was a lot of stuff going on around the Sustainabile Development Goals and the big macro challenges. The week was (like the city) HUGE with 70,000 people and 900 events just for Climate Week and not far off that for UNGA where all the world leaders descended. It was obvious alot of the business community (incuding techUK) opted for this event over COP 29 in Baku, and it is probably a good thing that COP is looking to be more smaller and focused on the business of policy negotiations, though the consensus at NYC was that COP taking place in the spectre of the US General Election will harm the prospects of success.

Specifically on tech there was an amazing array of solutions, trade shows, roundtables and events, with some great demos and collaborations being announced. We attended events with Cisco, IBM, Google, Accenture, Siemens and heard from sector leaders on how they have been working with cities, NGOs and other sectors to drive down emissions and enable climate science. Because NY has such a strong finance sector the banking and consulting community did some great sessions too on scaling and growing climate tech, the need for targeted business support to make sure the highest potential solutions can get commercialised.

In terms of the big themes giving nature parity with decarbonisaiton kept coming up and reporting and regulations were a constant area of discussion. The big doom shadow that is CSRD was ever present and it was fascinating to see how even the world's biggest companies are still so in the dark about how to approach compliance. Financing the transition was another massive theme (as mentioned above), as was the latest science, and as one would expect AI deployment got a strong focus too (from both the perspectives of opportunties an energy consumption), though answers were few and far between due to the fact the tech is at an early stage and there are just too many variables to even quantify the risks. Nonetheless for the tech sector these questions are only going to come up more and more (and more!).

The UK government was heavily represented with ministers, the Energy Secretary and Prime Minister all in town, with some interesting looking UK events. The UK joining the C40 led Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (#catchy) was particularly exciting, and international delegates did comment that the UK seemed to be 'back in the room' on climate action.

Away from climate there was an incredible array of stuff happening with UNGA, with fascinating sessions on semi-conductor circularity, device supply chain diversifucation and the rise of populism impacting the ways people interact with the environment and misuse tech. The social impacts of digitalisation, particularly in the developing world was another theme as was as was how best to enable local communities in decisions about net zero transitions as climate is being dragged in to the ever-depressing culture wars. The presidential and ministerial motorcades were pretty awesome too.

Now for the negatives . . . It was way too busy, and events were frequently oversubscribed to the point you were turned away at the door (once you can understand, but five times is a bit too much) particularly as it means one cannot optimise their time. Organising it during UNGA contributes to this so there's a trade off between making this week super busy (and expensive) and engaging senior leaders in sustainability. There was also way too much on finance (understandable given the amount of cash there!) but not so much on the actual solutions the money will be spent on. Finally, and unsurprisingly, there was still a bit too much greenwash and 'being seen' from firms, making claims and boasts that don't really stand up to even the most basic back-of-a-fag-packet scrutiny.

Lastly there is a big job for the sector in educating the wider business community on digital solutions. Time and time again 'tech' to many senior policy makers meant wind turbines and CCUS, not AI, IoT and digital twins, which means there is a hell of a lot to do educating policy makers and other industries on DIGITAL solutions to the climate crisis.

To learn more about our work on climate get in touch with one of the team below.

Climate, Environment and Sustainability Programme activities

The techUK Climate Programme provides opportunities for members to present tech solutions that assist carbon emission reduction, circularity, and human rights goals. We also help our members with their own net zero transition, including measurement, implementation, compliance, and reporting. Visit the programme page here.