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The ultimate investment
Hannah Jones, CEO of the The Earthshot Prize, tells Andrew Shirley why Prince William’s ambitious clarion call to the globe’s green innovators could help to save us all from environmental catastrophe
Solving environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related problems is nothing new for Hannah Jones. She spent more than 20 years working for Nike, including a stint as the leisurewear giant’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, before taking up her new role last year.
“Nike was one of the first companies to get into sustainability. As we went on the journey, one of the things that became very clear was that it wasn’t going to just be about trying to make the business less bad,” says Jones who, when we speak, is just back from both the inaugural Earthshot ceremony and the COP26 climate change talks in Glasgow.
“We were going to need new ways of thinking and new business models, as well as innovations across supply chains, processes and materials. Everything would need to be rethought in terms of sustainability. That’s when I fell passionately in love with the role of innovation as an agent of change,” she explains.
It seems obvious that innovation on a huge scale is key to tackling climate change and many of the other environmental issues affecting the world, but progress wasn’t being made quickly enough for the UK’s future monarch and ardent conservationist Prince William. The Earthshot Prize was his solution, and Jones’ experience made her the obvious choice to lead it.
“It was honestly a no brainer,” she says, when I ask why she decided to jump on board. “The first round of lockdowns gave me time to think about how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I felt very clear that I wanted to spend it working to help the world become more sustainable in whatever way I could.”
But how, I wonder, will Earthshot, which invites entrepreneurs, NGOs, companies, cities and even governments to submit ideas to solve five environmental issues (see panel), make a difference?
“We have less than a decade to make decisive changes to how we live our lives, run our economies and build communities and sustainable livelihoods. What we collectively
EARTHSHOT CATEGORIES
• Protect and restore nature
• Clean our air
• Revive our oceans
• Build a waste-free world
• Fix our climate
Selected finalist fact files
Enapter WINNER: Fix our climate
Born on a climate-change affected South Pacific island, Vaitea Cowan co-founded Enapter, which now has bases in Germany, Thailand and Italy, to turn back the tide. Just three years on, its green hydrogen technology could change the way we power our world. Enapter’s AEM Electrolyser technology turns renewable electricity into emission-free hydrogen gas. Developed quicker and cheaper than once thought possible, the technology is already fuelling cars and planes, powering industry and heating homes. Takachar WINNER: Clean our air
Globally, US$120 billion of agricultural waste is generated every year. What farmers cannot sell they often burn, with catastrophic consequences: in some areas, air pollution has cut life expectancy by a decade. Takachar, a social enterprise set up by New Delhi resident Vidyut Mohan, has developed a cheap, small-scale, portable technology that attaches to tractors in remote farms. The machine converts crop residues into sellable bio-products like fuel and fertiliser, reducing smoke emissions by up to 98%. WOTA BOX FINALIST: Build a waste-free world
Nearly 40% of the world’s population is on track to experience “water stress” by 2050. WOTA, a Japanese start-up, wants to improve water security by helping people reuse wastewater. Founded in 2014, the company’s first product, WOTA BOX, converts more than 98% of water waste into clean, fresh water. Fifty times more efficient than conventional water treatment plants and far smaller, it can be delivered at scale and requires no existing infrastructure.
have to do is understand how to support innovations that have real potential as solutions.”
Jones says almost 800 projects around the world were put forward for the 2021 prize, and while the prize money – £1 million per category – grabbed the headlines, the support that winners will receive from business experts and potential investors, such as Michael Bloomberg, is arguably the bigger win. “Often innovators face a lonely challenge to get their ideas off the ground. We are creating support networks for eco-innovators around the world.”
She also hopes the initiative will help investors and companies, who often complain it is hard to access genuinely green opportunities or supply chains. “We think that we can play a really pivotal role in connecting the dots and creating what is almost like a marketplace of potentially hundreds of eco-innovations, all of which will go through our vetting process.”
Key, of course, to Earthshot’s long-term success is the enthusiasm and unrivalled access of its Royal patron, but Jones’ skill at incubating, accelerating and scaling innovation will play a vital role in a decade that she says is crucial to the future of the Earth and everything that lives on it.
“Obviously policy matters, but taking those innovations to scale is going to tip whether or not we face waking up on 1st January 2030 facing disasters and crisis, or whether we are actually on a pathway to change.”
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