With a former member of the UN Climate Panel now serving as Director of climate strategies and markets in the US, DNV is prepared to strengthen its efforts to combat climate change and to contribute to building trust in a low-carbon economy.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” The words once uttered by Mahatma Gandhi, are strikingly relevant today as we strive to come to grasp with and manage the overwhelming challenges caused by climate change.
For there is no longer any doubt, climate change is real. Scholars, scientists and politicians finally agree about the numbers and graphs. And there is universal acceptance of the reports presented by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Reports that far from paint an idyllic picture.
Thankfully we’re not all out of luck. According to the IPCC we still have time to change our course. If we act now. And if we act swiftly. The prescription is a shift from the old carbon-dependent economy to a new low-carbon economy; a move that includes massive investments in new technologies and solutions.
A new wave of optimism
Mark Trexler has worked with climate change mitigation and policy since the late 1980s. During his term as President of the Trexler Climate and Energy Services (TCES), the firm became the first in the US to specialise in the provision of climate change advisory services.
Today Mr Trexler has an impressive portfolio covering expertise within greenhouse gas market forecasting and the development of emissions trading programmes, making him one of those veterans in the field. He worked with climate change when most weren’t even aware of the threat and when many, including scholars, fellow researchers, and not least politicians, found the same arguments there is wide agreement on today, merely preposterous.
Times change, and today Mr Trexler says a new wave of attention has been directed at the challenges posed by climate change. A new wave, he says, that started about a year and a half ago when the prevalence of extreme weather, hurricane Katrina, the listing of the polar bear – truly caught people’s attention.
“The amount of attention climate change has received in the press over the past 18-24 months has been massive. The issue clearly can no longer be ignored. A huge turning point came during the US presidential elections last year when both the republican and democratic candidate ran campaigns in favour of implementing a carbon cap-and-trade system. Such a sense of bi-partisan agreement on climate policy has never been seen before,” says Mr Trexler.
Moving beyond the talk
National governments have adopted and implemented climate change policies and frameworks for some time already. President Obama, subject to particular scrutiny due to his campaign pledges and the unequivocal look from the rest of the world to the US to take a lead on the issue, is already seen pushing both the national and the international climate change agenda. So surely, with these positive developments there should be ground for optimism about the future?
Well, don’t place your bets just yet.
Mark Trexler elaborates; “Although the Obama administration recently authorised the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate the emissions of CO2, a move many hope will evolve further into the implementation of a US version of a cap-and-trade system, the question remains – can we get beyond the talk?”
According to Mark Trexler we should not be overtly optimistic with regard to expecting soon and major policy actions on climate change.
“85% of the US Senate recently passed a resolution effectively saying that climate policy should not affect energy prices for consumers, thus the prospects for real action seem bleak. Furthermore, although the new US administration is committed to the issue, polls indicate that the US population don’t share the same level of engagement. That might be an additional challenge,” says Mr Trexler.
Increasing demand
So why expand DNV climate change services in the US when the political stalemate just might drag on?
Well, according Mr Trexler, no matter what is happening on the political scene, the demand for carbon advisory services is increasing. For many businesses, a sound climate change approach is increasingly becoming a part of a more socially responsible business policy. “The potential for DNV to expand its climate change services in this environment is huge,” he says.
And one of the advantages of DNV is, according to Mr Trexler, the dedication from the top of the organisation to tackling the issue broadly. “DNV’s CEO Henrik Madsen’s commitment to battling climate change and his vision of DNV expanding and growing within this field made it clear to me that this was a company willing to walk the talk,” says Mr Trexler.
With the addition of Mr Trexler and his team, DNVs Climate Change services in the US has widened its repertoire from verification to also encompass advisory services, fitting well with the organisation’s comprehensive approach to addressing climate change.
The way forward
With regard to what we could expect in the near future, Mark Trexler remains wary. “Copenhagen probably won’t give us many answers. Obama has been too busy with many important issues. And in the end, the political dilemma is always there; if we do hard work now, the benefits will come in the long-term. Getting political legislation passed is very difficult,” says Mr Trexler.
A key to solving the problem is, according to him, education.
“Solving climate change is not going to be easy; it will be costly both with regard to resources and money. In the end, we need to continue educating the public and private enterprise about climate change. Until the public and the businesses are fully educated, we can’t expect them to demand policy makers to pass the right legislation,” says Mr Trexler.