92 Women Climate Leaders | Green Hydrogen Costs | Investing in Underrepresented Founders
Plus, an employee guide for climate action, living to be 122 years old, a blind man kayaked the Grand Canyon, and making decisions like Warren Buffet.
Happy New Year, folks.
I hope the holidays gave you some much-needed rest, reflection, and recharge — the new 3 R’s.*
For me, the slow days involved swimming with the kiddos in (sometimes) warm pools of Florida, a two-day “date” with my wife, watching Premier League soccer highlights and basketball with the teenage boys, reading a few books, and gorging on oodles of podcasts.
I am pumped to get back to work! Hope you are, too.
Cheers,
Chris
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* The “oldie but goodie” 3 Rs are reduce, reuse, and recycle.
We’re changing our name: Goodbye, ZERO.
About 18 months ago, I thought I was pretty clever in naming this newsletter ZERO. As if I were entering the realm of one-word names like Prince or Beyoncé.
Admittedly, I lack their flair, among other skills.
So, what’s the new name?
Entrepreneurs for Impact
That’s right. Super original.
This weekly newsletter will soon just use the same name as the Climate Mastermind peer group programs we run for CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change via — you guessed it — Entrepreneurs for Impact.
As a smarter person once told me:
A brand diluted is a brand diluted.
The same is true for a mission and a message.
3 reports dripping in juicy data — the costs of renewables, storage, hydrogen
How’s that for a headline linking to analysis from a bank with roots in the 1840’s?
But seriously, these annual reports from Lazard are my favorite October finds.
Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) (version 15)
Levelized Cost of Storage (LCOS) (version 7)
Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) (version 2)
In gruesome detail, they compare the costs of these energy solutions with business as usual, along with sensitivity analysis, too.
Now I’m just waiting for them to start a 4th series on carbon capture.
Employee guide to climate action — Project Drawdown
We are our team.
As such, let’s empower each other to teach how to raise the bar on climate action.
New ideas can’t just come from the CEO or Chief Sustainability Officer.
Project Drawdown has published this employee-focused guide — Climate Solutions at Work — with two main objectives:
Democratize climate action so that all employees can contribute. You don’t need to have “sustainability” or “climate” in your job title to take powerful climate action. Every job can be a climate job. This guide helps all employees across all sectors find their inroad.
Elevate business climate leadership by looking beyond “net zero.” A new drawdown-aligned business framework can help companies leverage their social, political, financial, and employee power in pursuit of a stable climate and just future for all.
How to Invest in Underrepresented Founders
Shout out to Hannah Davis for this call to action!
In her MCJ article, she poses a few guiding questions…
Understand your why
See your own biases and the power you hold
Make it a priority
Diversify your team
Measure and publish your data
…and she sets the record straight with some sad stats.
Only 11% of venture capitalists are white women, 2% are Black men, 1% are Black women, 1% are Latinx men, and nearly 0% are Latinx women.
In 2019, 2.8% of venture funding went to women-led startups; in 2020, that fell to 2.3%.
A CEO is more likely to be named John or David than be a female CEO.
If you’re inspired — duh — then check out these two resources:
ClimateRaise, a platform she cofounded for highlighting women-led ventures in climate tech
HolonIQ’s list of 92 women CEOs and cofounders in climate tech (snapshot below)
A blind man kayaks the Grand Canyon.
And that’s not all.
Erik Weihenmayer, who went blind at age 13, should make us all rethink what adversity means. And what it doesn’t.
Oh, and he also climbed Mt. Everest. In his words…
After I had safely come down from the summit of Mt. Everest in 2001, becoming the first blind person to reach the highest peak in the world, my team leader told me something that would change the course of my life: “Don’t make Everest the greatest thing you ever do.”
So, what did he do next?
He climbed the tallest mountain peak on each continent; wrote three books; starting a nonprofit movement, No Barriers; and kayaked the entire 277-miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
Want some more inspiration?
Check him and his programs out here.
Want to live to be 122 years old?
Harvard University professor and author David Sinclair is one of the world’s most respected authorities on living longer, healthier lives.
Here are some of his thoughts on longevity that I’m thinking about.
I believe that aging is a disease. I believe it is treatable. I believe we can treat it within our lifetimes. And in doing so, I believe, everything we know about human health will be fundamentally changed.
Only 20% of our longevity is genetically determined. The rest is what we do, how we live our lives, and increasingly the molecules that we take. It's not the loss of our DNA that causes aging, it's the problems in reading the information, the epigenetic noise.
“By the turn of the next century, a person who is 122 on the day of his or her death may be said to have lived a full, though not particularly long, life.
To learn more, check out this summary (via Hustle Escape) of his book — Lifespan: Why We Age, and Why We Don't Have To.
That’s all, folks.
Make it a great week, because it’s usually a choice.
— Chris
P.S. How do you make big decisions?
“We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.”
- Naval Ravikant, founder of Angellist and investor-turned-philosopher
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Dr. Chris Wedding
Founder and Chief Catalyst, Entrepreneurs for Impact
The Only Private Executive Mastermind Community for CEOs, Founders, and Investors Fighting Climate Change
NYE photo credit: Unsplash / Kelly Sikkema