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Abstract:
As drivers of climate action enter the fourth decade of what has become a multi-stage race, Net Zero has emerged as the dominant organizing principle. Hundreds of corporations and investors worldwide, together responsible for assets in the tens of trillions of dollars, are lining-up for the UN Race to Zero. This latest stage in the race to save civilization from heat, drought, fires, and floods, is defined by steering toward zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Alicia Seiger will discuss the material of her recent book, Settling Climate Accounts, which probes the practice of Net Zero finance. It elucidates both the state of play and a set of directions that help form judgements about whether Net Zero is going to carry climate action far enough. The book delves into technical analyses and activates the reader’s imagination with narrative accounts of climate action past, present, and future. Settling Climate Accounts offers context and foundation to ground the rapidly evolving practice of Net Zero finance. Targeted at seasoned practitioners, newly activated leaders, educators, and students of climate action the world over, this book embraces the complexity of climate action and, in so doing, proposes to animate and drive hope.
Speaker
Alicia Seiger, Lecturer, Stanford Law School; Managing Director, Precourt Institute Sustainable Finance Initiative; Managing Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance
Alicia Seiger is a lecturer at Stanford Law School and leads sustainability and energy finance initiatives at Stanford Law, Graduate School of Business, and the Precourt Institute for Energy. Alicia has served as an advisor to the Governors of California and New York, the New York State Comptroller, and numerous pension fund, endowment, and family office CIOs on the topics of climate risk, opportunity, and resiliency. A student of sustainability since 1992, Alicia has designed and executed climate and energy strategies for businesses, foundations, investors, and NGOs since 2004. She has served on the management teams of multiple startups, including at TerraPass, a pioneer of the US carbon offset market, and Flycast Communications, one of the world’s first web advertising networks. She serves on the boards of Ceres and PRIME Coalition, the G7 Impact Taskforce Advisory Panel, PG&E’s Sustainability Advisory Council, and co-founded Stanford Professionals in Energy (SPIE). Her first book, and edited volume of Stanford research entitled “Settling Climate Accounts: Navigating the Road to Net Zero” is forthcoming October 20, 2021.
Moderator
Galina Hale, Professor of Economics, co-Director of CAFIN, University of California at Santa Cruz
Galina Hale is a Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. Previously she was a Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Franciscoon and the economics faculty at Yale University. She also taught as a visiting faculty at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Galina began to study economics in Russia, first in Moscow State University and then at the New Economic School. She briefly worked as a consultant for the Russian Ministry of Finance and as chief editor for a weekly newsletter of the Russian Central Bank. She received her PhD in economics from UC Berkeley.