SEPTEMBER 24TH 2024

  • new york city, USA
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The New Chapter of Climate Action

Converging influential global stakeholders around actionable climate opportunities

The Climate Leaders’ Assembly is organised for the second year in a row, after being a successful prelude to COP28, organised on its very first day as an invite-only gathering.

As the global community intensifies its climate ambitions, 2024 marks a pivotal moment for actionable progress, particularly in Asia. The Assembly is set to bring innovative projects and regional insights to New York, facilitating impactful discussions between international stakeholders and accelerating cross-border execution.

Our non-transferrable invitations are exclusively sent to some of the world’s most relevant and influential CEOs and C-suite leaders aligned with the event’s goals and themes, curated to maximise dialogues and impact and promotion of synergistic connections by participants.

RSVP

Opening Keynote

Grace Fu

Minister for Sustainability and the Environment
and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations of Singapore

Minister for Sustainability
and the Environment and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations of Singapore

Ms Grace Fu is the Minister for Sustainability and the Environment of Singapore. She is concurrently the Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations. Prior to her current appointment, she was the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, and held various positions at the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Development. Ms Fu began her career with the Overseas Union Bank and was the Chief Executive Officer of PSA Southeast Asia and Japan before joining politics as an elected Member of Parliament.

Closing Keynote

Bill Winters

Group Chief Executive | Standard Chartered

Bill Winters was appointed to the Board of Standard Chartered PLC as Group Chief Executive. He has had a distinguished career in banking, having spent 26 years with JP Morgan in diverse leadership roles, becoming co-Chief Executive Officer of the Investment Bank. Bill is deeply engaged in driving the climate finance agenda. He is a member of the GFANZ Principals Group and a founding member of the World Bank Private Sector Investment Lab. Bill sits on the Distinguished Advisory Group of the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets and the board of Climate Impact X (CIX) and chaired the Taskforce for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets.

Our Keynote Panelists

Ravi Menon

Singapore's Ambassador
for Climate Action

and Senior Advisor to the National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS)

Amy Merrill

Chief Executive Officer

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market
(ICVCM)

Frederick Teo

Chief Executive Officer

GenZero

Lorena Dellagiovanna

Senior Vice President,
Executive Officer

Hitachi

Dale Hardcastle

Global Head of
Carbon Markets

Bain & Co.

Moderator

Our Catalysts

Ben Gomes

SVP Learning & Sustainability

Google

Steve Howard

Vice Chairman, Sustainability

Temasek

Tomoaki Ichida

Managing Executive Officer

Mitsui OSK Lines

Alan Jacobsen

Head of Materials and Energy Sciences

Amazon Sustainability

Daniel Klier

Chief Executive Officer

South Pole

Kyung-Ah Park

Head, ESG Investment Management & Managing Director, Sustainability

Temasek

Mandy Rambharos

Chief Executive Officer

Verra

Kimberly Tan

Head of Investments & Managing Director

GenZero

Our Host

Tony Á. Verb

Tony Á. Verb is Founding Partner and CEO of Carbonless Asia, an investment, innovation and knowledge platform launched to support the decarbonisation of Asia working with trailblazing governments, investors, NGOs and leading corporations. The core mission of the company is to accelerate investments into scalable carbonless technologies and projects. As the result of a year-long research project with more than a dozen collaborators, he launched his first book “Decarbonizing Asia” covering thematic opportunities.

Co-hosted by

Organised by

Catalysed by

Ravi Menon

Ravi Menon is Singapore’s Ambassador for Climate Action and Senior Adviser to the National Climate Change Secretariat at the Prime Minister’s Office.

He is also Chairman of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) Asia-Pacific Advisory Board and a member of the GFANZ Principals Group.

Ravi was previously Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (2011-23), where he steered Singapore’s development as a green finance hub and led MAS’ efforts to develop a taxonomy for transition financing, forge an international coalition to promote transition credits, and build a blended finance platform to address climate finance gaps in Asia. On the international front, he served as Chairman of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System.

Mr. Menon was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Trade & Industry (2007-11) where he helped to shape energy policies to achieve environmental sustainability, energy security, and cost competitiveness.

Amy Merrill

Amy Merrill is the Chief Executive Officer of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), the independent global governance body that sets and enforces threshold quality standards for the voluntary carbon market.

Prior to ICVCM, Amy was Head of Global Carbon Markets at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES). Between 2011 and 2021, Amy led the UNFCCC support to the development of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and to negotiations and drafting of the Article 6 implementing rules adopted at COP26 (2021). Amy was also the senior lawyer at UNFCCC for the Kyoto carbon mechanisms and is a qualified UK lawyer with more than 20 years of experience. Before her time at the UNFCCC, Amy was a leading carbon and climate finance lawyer in the City of London, working with MDBs and investment banks.

Frederick Teo

Frederick is the CEO of GenZero. He oversees the strategic direction of the company to achieve both climate impact and sustainable long-term financial returns. Prior to his appointment at GenZero, Frederick held various leadership positions in Sustainability, Portfolio Management and Business Continuity Management in his 12 years at Temasek International. As Managing Director of Sustainable Solutions, he established the team and conceived capability programmes in clean energy, urban, and climate and nature solutions.

He led key initiatives such as the establishment of Climate Impact X, a global marketplace and exchange for carbon credits, as well as Singapore’s first brownfield distributed district cooling retrofit project in partnership with SP Group. He also worked on value creation projects with some of Temasek’s large portfolio companies like SingTel and Mediacorp, and led corporate governance and stewardship initiatives within the Portfolio Management team.

Frederick also took the lead in several community programmes. In 2014, he partnered Temasek Foundation to execute a nationwide delivery of mask kits during a severe haze episode and worked with ST Engineering on the development of the world’s first N95 masks specifically designed for young children. Frederick is currently a member on the Advisory Panel of the Centre for Liveable Cities which was established by Singapore’s Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Sustainability and Environment to create and share knowledge on sustainable cities.

Frederick holds a MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a BA and MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Lincoln College, Oxford University.

Lorena Dellagiovanna

Recognizing that sustainability is not simply for compliance, but a value creator for both
business and society, Lorena is responsible for planning and driving Hitachi’s approach to
sustainability as a key part of the Group’s overall business strategy to respect planetary
boundaries and improve people’s wellbeing.

One of her key mandates is to accelerate Hitachi’s ambition as a climate change innovator, in supporting Governments, Cities and customers with their transformation towards a more
sustainable economy, improving energy efficiency and accelerating decarbonization. Lorena
focusses on integrating sustainability into Hitachi’s business models, operations, and
decision-making with the aim to reduce Hitachi’s own emissions, protect resources and
move towards a circular economy.

Celebrating the uniqueness of each group employee as a valuable contributor to the
company’s culture and to attain better insight for understanding the different markets,
Lorena’s mission as CHRO will be to leverage the potential of Hitachi’s diverse workforce to
achieve its business objectives and wider mission to society.

Lorena also serves as a Director on the Boards of Hitachi Energy, Hitachi Digital and Hitachi
Industrial Equipment Systems globally, as well as Hitachi Europe Ltd regionally. She also
represents Directorship of several Hitachi Group companies based in Italy, in the energy,
water, transportation and healthcare fields.

Prior to her current role, Lorena served as Hitachi’s Country Manager for Italy since 2015.
Before that, she was the company’s first UK-based Director of Shared Services business in
Europe and Group Finance Director for Southern Europe.

Dale Hardcastle

As the Global Head of Carbon Markets, Dale leads Bain’s efforts around carbon market and nature-based solutions as well as Bain’s sustainability and decarbonization business in Southeast Asia.

Dale is co-director of Bain’s Global Sustainability Innovation Center (GSIC) in Singapore, an ESG-focused center established to help companies accelerate the time to impact in their sustainability strategies and path to a low-carbon economy.

He also leads Bain’s efforts to connect capital and scale carbon markets through innovative approaches for corporates, investors and resource holders and work with leading conservation organizations and sovereign and institutional investors.

This work to enable corporate climate action is backstopped by two decades of experience working across leading global energy and natural resource companies, food systems, mobility, private equity and technology players. He has led scale transformation efforts – including those to address the energy transition, corporate venturing, de-carbonization, sustainability, and the venture innovation.

Dale has also worked with multiple strategic associations in ASEAN, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste and globally with the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development on sustainability efforts.

Prior to joining us, Dale spent nearly a decade helping found and build Schlumberger’s management consulting business in Asia.

Ben Gomes

Ben leads the Learning & Sustainability organisation at Google, and is also an advisor to the Google Search organisation. He oversees the teams focused on harnessing technology to scale education around the world and combat climate change. The Learning team supports educators and learners around the world with products including Google Classroom, Google Scholar, Google Arts and Culture, and an AI-based tutoring app – ReadAlong. They are also creating academic and learning experiences on Google Search and YouTube. The Sustainability team is focused on decarbonising Google’s operations and building products (Earth Engine, Data Commons, Google Cloud, Environmental Insights Explorer, Search and YouTube) and partnerships to provide information that can enable systemic, global change. As one of Google’s first principal engineers and an early Google Fellow, Ben also led the Google Search organisation, which included Google Search, Assistant and News, for more than 20 years. Prior to joining Google, Ben earned his BS from Case Western University in Ohio and his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley. He was born in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania and was raised in Bangalore, India.

Steve Howard

Dr Steve Howard is currently Vice Chairman, Sustainability, Temasek. He first joined Temasek as Chief Sustainability Officer in January 2021. Steve is a board member of GenZero, which he helped establish, and chairs the Investment Committee. He is also a founding board member of the Temasek-BlackRock joint venture, Decarbonization Partners, and is a member of the Investment Committee. In addition, Steve is Founding Chair of the We Mean Business Coalition and a member of the LeapFrog’s Global Leadership Council. He was, until recently, on the Administrative Board of SEforALL.

Before joining Temasek, Steve was Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA Group and served on IKEA’s Executive Group Management from 2011 to 2017. In 2015, Steve co-founded We Mean Business, a leading climate change coalition of organisations that helped support the Paris Agreement. Prior to IKEA, Steve was Founder and CEO of The Climate Group, a global NGO that has built networks of cities, states, regions, and businesses committed to a net-zero carbon world. Before the Climate Group, Steve consulted on sustainability for major corporations and institutions, working as a partner at ERM Group in London and a Director at URS Corporation.

Steve has worked with various NGOs and UN bodies on a wide range of global sustainability topics. Earlier in his career, Steve worked in WWF, where he established the Global Forest and Trade Network, chaired the UK Forest Stewardship Council and helped launch and chair The Forest Trust. Steve is trained as an ecologist and has a PhD in Ecophysiology and Environmental Physics based on research in Kenya.

Tomoaki Ichida

Tomoaki is the Managing Executive Officer at Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), responsible for The Americas Area and serving as President of MOL (Americas) Holdings. He is also the CEO of MOL Switch, investing in climate tech start-ups. Tomoaki previously served as MOL Tokyo’s General Manager of the Energy Business Strategy Division.

Alan Jacobsen

Dr. Alan Jacobsen is currently the Head of Materials and Energy Sciences within the Sustainability Science and Innovation organisation at Amazon. In the six years he has been with Amazon, he has held various roles in science, innovation, and the sustainability of products and packaging. Alan brings a wealth of experience in early-stage innovation, including co-founding two start-up companies and building a portfolio of over 100 issued patents in his 20+ year career. He is currently leading a team focused on accelerating the invention, development, and adoption of new technologies needed to help decarbonise the materials and energy sectors. He holds a PhD from University of Southern California, MS from Northwestern University, and BS from New Mexico State University.

Daniel Klier

Dr. Daniel Klier is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of South Pole – the leading carbon market and climate advisory firm.

He has most recently served as CEO to the sustainability data and technology platform ESG Book, where he played a crucial role in driving the company’s growth and establishing it as a global industry leader. He was previously Global Head of Sustainable Finance and Group Head of Strategy at HSBC, where he established the bank’s net zero target and ambition to support the energy transition with 1 trillion dollars. Daniel started his career at McKinsey & Company, where he was a Partner, supporting companies to enhance their organisational performance and international growth.

A widely recognised sustainability leader, Daniel has served as the Chair of the Bank of England’s Climate Working Group and Chair of the Institute of International Finance’s Sustainable Finance Working Group. He serves on the Boards of the global sustainability reporting standard GRI and the international organisation Sustainable Energy for All.

Kyung-Ah Park

Kyung-Ah is Head, ESG Investment Management, and Managing Director, Sustainability, at Temasek. She is responsible for integrating ESG across Temasek’s global portfolio working with teams on portfolio company engagement and ESG investments. She also oversees the firm’s sustainability strategy to advance net zero, nature positive, and inclusive growth.

Kyung-Ah has over two decades of experience in the finance industry, majority of which was dedicated to building and leading the global environmental markets initiatives at Goldman Sachs and advancing innovative finance solutions to address climate change. She was most recently the head of Environmental Markets and Innovation and a member of the Sustainable Finance Steering Group. She joined Goldman Sachs in Mergers & Acquisitions and worked in investment banking in New York and Hong Kong. Prior to Goldman Sachs, she was a management consultant at McKinsey in South Korea and South Africa.

Kyung-Ah has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Yonsei University in Korea. She serves on the boards of ClimateWorks Foundation and Resources for the Future and is an advisory member for NYU’s Center for Sustainable Business. She is also a board director of Clifford Capital Holdings.

Mandy Rambharos

Mandy Rambharos was Vice President for Global Climate Cooperation at Environmental Defense Fund. She led work to promote more ambitious and effective global climate action under the Paris Agreement by directing EDF’s multilateral engagement, including at the United Nations and its agencies, as well as the G20 and G7. She also led EDF’s strategy to promote well-designed carbon pricing and markets that support the transformation toward a low-emissions future, while improving the well-being of marginalized communities.

Prior to her work at EDF, Rambharos spent 20 years at South Africa’s Eskom Holdings, the largest electric utility on the African continent. As General Manager for Just Energy Transition, she led the development of Eskom’s wide-ranging strategy to transition from a coal-dominated utility to a renewables company.

Rambharos is a former negotiator for South Africa at the United Nations climate talks. She negotiated Article 6 of the Paris Agreement leading South Africa’s and co-leading the African group negotiations on carbon markets. Mandy led the negotiations for South Africa for many years, and then co-chaired the negotiations on carbon markets for the last few years, including co-chairing the successful outcome on Article 6 at COP 26. In the past Mandy led the negotiations for the G77 and China in the area of Response Measures. She was instrumental to the Just Energy Transition Partnership agreed at COP26 in Glasgow between South Africa and Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.Rambharos is an expert on the energy industry, just transition, mitigation, adaptation, carbon markets, and global climate negotiations.

Mandy serves on on the NBI and Verra boards and is a member of the SBTI technical council.

Kimberly Tan

Kimberly is Managing Director and Head of Investments at GenZero. She oversees GenZero’s investments, and leads the firm’s portfolio construction and investment strategy to achieve its dual goals of positive climate impact and long-term sustainable financial returns. Prior to her appointment at GenZero, Kimberly spent twelve years at Temasek International, focusing on investments in the transportation and logistics sector where she helped to build a multi-billion global logistics portfolio. With a particular focus on China and Southeast Asia, she led deal origination and execution resulting in notable investments including LF Logistics and ZTO Express, market leaders in various parts of the e-commerce logistics value chain. She also played a key role in landmark transactions involving core Singapore transportation assets which required complex technical execution and broad-based stakeholder management.

Kimberly also developed and led a new mobility strategy to build exposure to the electrification and digitalisation of transportation, the enabling supply chain and supporting infrastructure. In terms of external appointments, Kimberly currently sits on the Board of South Pole. She holds a MA in International and Development Economics from Yale University, and a BA and MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Lincoln College, Oxford University.