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Mastercard Chief Sustainability Officer talks COP, climate and the road ahead

Listen: Mastercard Chief Sustainability Officer talks COP, climate and the road ahead

In this episode of the ESG Insider podcast, we’re talking to Mastercard Chief Sustainability Officer Ellen Jackowski, who was just named to the TIME100 Climate list of the 100 most influential climate leaders in business for 2024. Ellen was on the ground in Cali, Colombia, for the UN’s recent COP16 biodiversity conference and in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the UN’s COP29 climate conference that wraps up today.  

Mastercard is one of the world’s largest payments networks with more than 3 billion cards in circulation. In the interview, Ellen explains the company’s approach to balancing economic growth with sustainable consumption and inclusive climate action — a focus she says will continue following the recent US election results.  

“[W]e can feel the societal pressure around climate change — but this is absolutely good business as well,” Ellen says. "This is a megatrend that's only growing, no matter what is going on in the political atmosphere of the United States.” 

Ellen also discusses Mastercard’s 2040 net-zero goal, including how the company manages its Scope 3 emissions and how it balances AI’s opportunities with its potential climate impacts.  

Listen to our recent podcast episode featuring key takeaways from COP16 here.  

Read research from S&P Global Sustainable1, Can AI become net positive for net-zero? here.

This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.    

Copyright ©2024 by S&P Global 

DISCLAIMER 

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, S&P GLOBAL does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of S&P GLOBAL. S&P GLOBAL assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties. 

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Transcript provided by Kensho.

Lindsey Hall: Hi. I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, an S&P Global podcast, where Esther and I take you inside the environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping the rapidly evolving sustainability landscape.

For the past 2 weeks, world leaders have gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan for COP29, the UN Climate Change Conference. If you've listened to recent episodes of this podcast, you've heard us talk about how this year's conference of the parties has been dubbed the finance COP.

Esther Whieldon: And this matters because the world will need to significantly ramp up climate-related investments in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change. This is especially true for emerging markets and developing countries. By some estimates, these markets need as much as $2.7 trillion in additional climate investments by 2030 and at least $1 trillion of that will need to come from private investment. COP29 wraps up today, November 22, and we'll be back with more in-depth coverage of the key outcomes in upcoming episodes.

Lindsey Hall: For today, we're talking to a leader from one of the world's largest payments networks, Ellen Jackowski, Chief Sustainability Officer at Mastercard. Ellen was just named to the TIME100 Climate list of the 100 most Influential climate leaders in business for 2024. She was on the ground in Cali, Colombia for the UN's COP16 Biodiversity Conference, which we covered in last week's episode of the podcast. She also traveled to Baku for COP29.

In my interview, I asked Ellen about all of this, Mastercard's sustainability strategy, how the company is managing those tricky Scope 3 emissions, how it balances opportunities from AI with climate impacts and what the recent U.S. election result means for sustainability and climate? Here's my conversation where Ellen starts off by explaining what her Chief Sustainability Officer role looks like in practice.

Ellen Jackowski: I oversee our ESG strategy inside the company, and that includes all of the goals that we've set, making sure that we're making healthy progress against those goals and holding ourselves accountable to that. It also means I oversee our governance as well as reporting. So we have an ESG steering committee inside the company that ensures that every part of the organization that's needed is involved in working towards our ambitions in this space. And then I also oversee our stakeholder engagement process that includes employees internally as well as lots of external stakeholders, investors, customers, et cetera.

Lindsey Hall: A lot of our audience will be familiar with the Mastercard name. Many of them may have a Mastercard in their wallet. But for anyone who's trying to get their head around how Mastercard specifically shows up to the sustainability table, can you talk to me a little bit about what that looks like?

Ellen Jackowski: Sure. And when you say sustainability, I'm assuming you mean more on the environmental side, so I'll focus there. We have a view of our environmental efforts in 3 parts. The first is our goal to be net zero by 2040. So that's a decade ahead of climate science. And we have exciting news that we published this past year in our ESG report, where we showed that the company grew by 13% in terms of net revenue and our emissions decreased by 1%.

So really excited that we're in this moment of beginning to decouple the growth of the company from our emissions. Of course, plenty more work for us to do, but we are well on our way towards achieving our net zero goal. So that's the first piece of work under our environmental programs.

The second piece is around driving more sustainable consumption around our value chain. When you think about who Mastercard is, while we do, of course, have a carbon footprint, we're not a large manufacturer. So it's relatively small, right? We're payments technology. We don't make things per se. So in that sense, the net zero goal is important, but where we can really drive scale and help stop climate change, it's really around this transition to a more sustainable regenerative economy. 

We have over 100 million points of acceptance where all of you who have a Mastercard can use it around the world. We have thousands of banking partners and over 3 billion cards in circulation. So when you think about 8 billion people on the planet and over 3 billion cards, we see a lot of consumption. So we sit in a very pivotal place in the global economy to help drive more sustainable consumption.

And then the third piece of our strategy, so net zero first, driving sustainable consumption second. The third is driving inclusive climate action. And so this kind of marries everything that we've been doing in financial inclusion for well over a decade with our Center for Inclusive Growth and recognizing that many of the tools and programs and capabilities that we've built over this past decade in inclusive growth actually can also help prepare communities and individuals to be more climate resilient and to adapt. So those are the 3 areas of our strategy.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. Let's start with that first one then because I think this really is the big question for a lot of companies, at least the ones that I talked to for this podcast, how do you achieve net zero goals, achieve climate goals while also maintaining economic growth? Like how do you strike that balancing act?

Ellen Jackowski: Yes. Well, and again, we've made good progress, plenty more work to do. And we also know it's only going to continue to get harder, right? As you make your way towards net zero, the last miles of this are going to be incredibly difficult. So no illusion there that this is easy. But what we've been doing, of course, is just looking at our own operations, where are places where we can drive energy efficiency and emissions reduction. So we've, of course, been investing in renewable energy. We're 100% renewable energy at Mastercard, which is great. And we're very careful as we do grow, where are we locating our data centers that sit in our Scope 2 emissions. How are we making sure that the technologies that we're implementing are the most energy efficient across our technology platform.

We're also looking at things like employee commuting and travel, what can we do there. So we've got plans around each of our areas of focus and ownership for our operations in Scope 1 and 2. But then, of course, Scope 3, which is the biggest piece of our emissions, about 80% or so, we have a lot of work that we've been doing with our suppliers. First of all, to make sure they understand the commitment that Mastercard has and how serious we are and the fact that we need their help. 

So we've spent a lot of time with them educating them and helping provide tools and systems for them to be able to report their emissions to us as well as work on strategies for them to decarbonize as well.

Lindsey Hall: Ellen mentioned different emission scopes. And as a reminder, in simple terms, Scope 1 emissions are direct ones from a company's operations. Scope 2 emissions are indirect ones, and those are primarily derived from purchased energy. Lastly, there's Scope 3 emissions. And these occur up and down the company's supply chain as well as when a customer uses the products. 

Scope 3 emissions make up the largest chunk of the carbon footprint for financial institutions like Mastercard. But we've seen that Scope 2 emissions are rising for many companies that operate or lease data centers. Companies are leaning into the digital economy, and that means demand for cloud storage, Internet services and AI is growing rapidly.

All of these things are powered by data centers, which require massive amounts of uninterrupted electricity to function. Some of the world's tech-heavyweights have pledged to supply their data centers with 100% renewable energy. But in practice, a lot of the electricity across the data center industry will continue to come from power plants burning fossil fuels. 

New research from S&P Global Sustainable1 shows that about 62% of data center electricity comes from renewables. That's a pretty high number. But the flip side is that the other 38% is creating greenhouse gas emissions. We'll include a link to that research in our show notes. 

So back to my interview with Ellen, I asked her, how is the company thinking about AI as it relates to sustainability?

Ellen Jackowski: Well, a really important topic and honestly kind of the topic of the day, right? There's a lot being written, a lot of concerns around what is AI going to do to everybody's carbon footprint, especially as we all have big commitments to achieve net zero. So I guess, first and foremost, I think there's consensus that the pathway to net zero will not be linear. So we've made very good strides in Mastercard along our net zero goal. But as we add new technology, we need to, of course, be very aware of how are we ensuring that new technology, the new data centers, the capabilities that are needed to power AI are going to align with everything we need to do to hit net zero.

What we've done internally, a couple of interesting things. One, I think I mentioned as part of our ESG governance structure overall, we have an ESG steering committee. And that committee is made up of all parts of the organization that report to our CEO. So everybody is involved. 

But what we realized we also needed was to double down on the governance of our technology more specifically, particularly because our data centers are the biggest piece of our carbon footprint overall, both Scope 1, 2 as well as 3. So the governance structure really is helping us understand the choices that we're making, the impact that's going to have in terms of the technologies that we're adding to our ecosystem on our carbon footprint, both with what's owned as well as what is leased.

So we've got this system now in place. We're also developing new tools like something that we're calling the sustainability score. So every time we're making investments in technology, we're evaluating not just the new technology capability that we need and ensuring that what we procure is going to deliver the functionality that we need, but also scoring it from a sustainability point of view so that we go in understanding what its impact is going to have on our carbon footprint, so we keep our net zero goal directly in line of sight.

Lindsey Hall: So as you're weighing the -- both potential and the risks that AI presents to meeting your net zero goals and your broader climate strategy, what are some of the big questions that are outstanding for Mastercard, would you say?

Ellen Jackowski: I think the big picture is how is AI going to impact our carbon footprint. But there's also the flip of that question, which is how can AI help solve the climate issues? So I think many companies are looking at both sides of that question. 

And in fact, our Chief Data and AI Officer, Greg Ulrich, just recently participated as a judge in the Bezos Earth Fund AI Challenge, where they were looking to fund some start-ups in AI for climate, a great way for our leader of AI to start understanding and see the latest innovations and ideas around how AI can help mitigate and stop climate change. So I think that's very much in the forefront of what we're also looking to make sure we're thoughtful about. It's not just making sure that we manage AI's carbon footprint, but that we also look at the capability of AI to help reduce our emissions and that of our value chain.

Lindsey Hall: That's a great point. Thank you. And we're talking about AI, which is obviously one of the big buzzwords in the sustainability world right now. But you touched on another one, which we just know our audience for this podcast is so interested in, which is Scope 3 emissions. What conversations are you having about Scope 3?

Ellen Jackowski: Yes. Well, again, Scope 3 emissions are the biggest piece of our carbon footprint. So we have programs in place where we're working with our suppliers, particularly Tier 1, Tier 2, and starting at the top with the biggest ones around understanding what their carbon footprint is, holding them to account to measure, also asking them to set science-based targets, which is also important to us to make sure it aligns with our net zero goals as well. 

And then, of course, working together jointly on reduction strategies. Again, you'll see from our ESG report that we've made very good progress, reduced our Scope 3 emissions by over 40% to date. So again, making good progress, plenty more work to do, but our suppliers are hearing this message, not just from us, but from their other customers, too. So that, of course, always helps.

Lindsey Hall: We're having this conversation just shortly after COP16 has wrapped up in Cali, Colombia. That's, of course, the UN's biodiversity-focused conference. Can you talk to me about Mastercard's presence at COP16 and then more broadly about the work that you're doing on nature?

Ellen Jackowski: Sure. Well, it was the first time that Mastercard participated in the Biodiversity COP. So really an amazing learning experience. I've been going to the Climate COP for quite some time. I think my first one was COP15. We're now on COP29. And why did we go? And why right now? I think big picture, Mastercard certainly recognizes the science that says nature can be 30% of the solution to climate change. 

So with that, given that our own kind of nature footprint is relatively small, again, given that we don't manufacture anything, we want to make sure that we are on record recognizing and understanding how important nature is to the economy, to society on the whole. So to that end, several years ago, we created a program called the Priceless Planet Coalition that has a commitment to restore 100 million trees. And with that, the concept was this is a coalition.

So this isn't Mastercard doing it by itself, but it's really activating and inviting our entire value chain to be a part of bringing nature-based solutions like reforestation to bear. What was exciting as well, one of our Priceless Planet Coalition projects, we have 22 around the world. 

One of them is in Colombia, so the site of where COP16 was happening, not too far away in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and there, to date, we've restored over 700,000 trees. We've created over 1,700 income opportunities for the local community and protected over 600 species in total with the Priceless Planet Coalition, some of those, of course, also in the location in Colombia. So we're really proud of that program. We have over 150 partners that are part of the coalition and COP16 was a great place for us to, one, be very clear with our voice from the private sector of how important nature is, how we value it. It's part of our climate strategy.

Lindsey Hall: While you were there, did you hear any sort of especially interesting takeaways? Were you part of any discussions where you had kind of like an aha moment, would you say?

Ellen Jackowski: Well, one of the big differences between the Climate COP and the Biodiversity COP is the makeup of who shows up. And the Indigenous community was out in force, which was absolutely fantastic to see. I mentioned the income opportunities that were part of the effort that we have in Colombia with our Priceless Planet Coalition site where livelihoods are a key part of every single Priceless Planet project as well as biodiversity and the climate effects of the reforestation. 

So the fact that the Indigenous community was there on site and out in such strong numbers, I had the opportunity to sit down at several different meetings and occasions to go in deeper discussion with like what's going on? What do you need, particularly some of the Indigenous community members that are part of our Priceless Planet Coalition site in the Sierra Nevada. And for me, that was incredibly enlightening, really important and really exciting to see how involved everybody is and was at COP16.

Lindsey Hall: Ellen mentioned her participation in climate-focused COPs going back years. I asked her how these gatherings have changed since she started attending them?

Ellen Jackowski: One, of course, the pivotal moment of the Paris Agreement. That was a very clear shift going from what are we going to do? What's the plan? What's the kind of global agreement to, all right, now we know the targets we've all agreed to and what we need to hit, how are we actually going to do it, how we're going to finance it and how are we going to make sure everybody is included along the way, knowing that at COP29, financing and providing the technological capability support to scale climate solutions is going to be a big topic, inclusive growth and adaptation, of course, is going to be a big topic, and that maps right into the strategies that we're pursuing at Mastercard. So I think really looking forward to what's going to be happening there and continuing to find partnerships and advocate for the solutions that we see have been effective at Mastercard and our path forward.

Lindsey Hall: At Climate Week NYC in 2024, I heard a lot of talk looking ahead to COP29 and a lot of discussion about the fact that this is going to be the so-called finance COP. And as you just mentioned, of course, climate finance is going to be a big focus in Baku. We constantly hear these huge numbers cited when it comes to climate finance gaps. But if you really break that down, like where is the gap, what needs to happen from your perspective or from Mastercard's perspective?

Ellen Jackowski: Yes. And if we get tactical for a minute and look at what some governments are doing, for example, in the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act and providing incentives and funding to help bank roll a lot of the shift that's needed in the transition to more sustainable regenerative economy, particularly in the U.S., a lot of the infrastructure around EVs and the grid and renewable energy. So the innovation that's going to be required here to help slow climate change, the investment that is needed is significant. And so there are these big questions of where is this money coming from?

And it needs to be a combination of governments putting forth their commitments and their dollars where they feel the investment is needed. And also, of course, is private sector and others that have a role to play. The other big topic, of course, in the financing is how is the money getting to, in particular, the Global South, which is feeling the impacts of climate change more severely and immediately than other parts of the world. And there's a lot of questions there about the funding that they need to be able to not just slow climate change in their regions, but also adapt to the effects of what's happening.

Lindsey Hall: What are some of the other conversations or topics that you're expecting to hear covered when you're in Baku?

Ellen Jackowski: Of course, where our countries with their nationally determined contributions, there are commitments that align to the Paris Agreement and making sure that they're as strong as they need to be, but the key piece around inclusive growth and adaptation. I think those are probably the key themes. We're going to be continuing to talk about sustainable consumption from our point of view and what we're doing, the partnerships that we continue to need to strengthen to help this transition.

Lindsey Hall: Can you talk to me a little bit more about the work that Mastercard is doing on that second pillar, the driving sustainable consumption pillar? And what does that look like in practice as you head into 2025?

Ellen Jackowski: Yes. The scale, the reach that we have there between the 100 million points of acceptance and the 3 billion cards in circulation. So there is a really big opportunity for us to help facilitate that transition. So when we think about what is our role, like what's the appropriate role for Mastercard to play to do that? Our theory of change has 3 concepts: inspire, inform and enable. And inspire is all about how do we evolve our brand, priceless to include living, fulfilling sustainable lifestyle. The second pillar is once people are inspired and they want to live a more sustainable lifestyle, how do they know what a more sustainable choice is. So inform is the second piece.

We have our first product, the Mastercard carbon calculator that's on the market that we sell to our -- and offer to our issuers and banks, and they can provide it to the cardholder. For example, at the end of the month, you get your bill, it has everything that you bought and the financial impact of those choices. And you also get your bill and everything you bought and the estimated carbon impact. So it's a great tool to start to understand the choices that you make and what's essentially the cost in carbon terms. Right now, that information is fairly general. It needs to move from the sector level to the merchant down to the individual product. But then we also need to move it post transaction where you get the information now to pre-transaction.

So we're working with some of our merchants on pilots of how do we do that in an effective way that works for the merchant as well as helps the customer, consumer make more sustainable choice. So you're inspired, you want to make -- live a more sustainable lifestyle and make more sustainable choices, you're informed, you know what is more sustainable. Then the last is enable. So how do we take the friction out of low-carbon choices?

 And a couple of examples there. If you've been in New York lately and taken the subway or a bus, you may know that you can just walk up to the turnstile in a New York subway, tap your Mastercard or your phone and then go right in, hop on to the train. You can also just hop on to the bus once you tap and go. Same thing in London. You don't need the Oyster card like you used to or in New York, the Metro card. Instead you just tap and get on the tube. So making it easier to take public transit, which is lower carbon. 

An exciting innovation that we announced a couple of months ago with a company called Freebike in Finland, same idea, but taken to bike sharing. So if you've ever tried to do bike sharing in a city somewhere, the process is you download the app, you fill out your name, your payment information, you process all of that. And if you're lucky, it goes through and you get on the bike in about 15 minutes.

With Freebike and the technology that Mastercard has, now you just literally tap the back of the bike and you get on in 5 seconds, just as easy as you get on the New York subway these days. So taking that friction out of bike sharing. And the stats are currently, with the app process, about 60% of riders who try bike sharing bounce out because they're so frustrated with the app process. So we're hoping through making it easier, taking the friction out, it will be a lot better to choose the low-carbon option of biking to where you want to go versus perhaps a fossil fuel option.

Lindsey Hall: All these examples are pointing to the role that the consumer, that the individual can play. A lot on this podcast, we talk about the role of the private sector and businesses or the role of policymakers and regulators. How do you think about those different stakeholder groups and sort of balancing the responsibilities that they each have because obviously, we need all these different stakeholders to come together if we're going to solve big challenges like climate change or like biodiversity loss?

Ellen Jackowski: Well, Mastercard certainly has a responsibility as a corporation to make the choices easier and more sustainable. And many of our merchants, of course, are working on new technologies, new offerings that are lower carbon. So that is absolutely critical that more sustainable choices are available for people to choose, and they're available at a price that works for their situation that it has the availability that people need to be able to choose the more sustainable option and don't have to go through a lot of hoops to do it.

So I think it does begin with the products and services that are offered need to be focused on sustainability and lower carbon, et cetera. But as you say, everybody has a role to play. So we can try to create the market, but without the demand and people wanting to choose lower carbon things and again, considering price and availability and all those things. It's really important. It's really working both ends of the spectrum. And again, since we kind of sit in the middle of this process, I think we're in a really unique place to help this transition move faster.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. So how would you describe how you're feeling about the direction of travel for sustainability and climate generally?

Ellen Jackowski: Well, science comes out every day, right? These new reports about, for example, the planetary boundaries and how many we're close to breaching, right, or new extreme weather events that continue to happen more frequently than ever before. So we see it in the science, and we certainly are living it wherever you are on the planet today. The climate change is here, and we're all feeling it. So of course, it's scary, it can be overwhelming. It can create a lot of anxiety. But there's also incredible innovation that's going on.

I just came from the Earthshot Prize, where 5 recipients were just awarded the prize to invest in their low-carbon innovations and seeing kind of what people are doing and innovating out there, the amount of commitment and energy and passion that's going into this. A lot of the solutions to climate change already exist. We know this. It's just trying to speed the scale of its implementation. So I am absolutely optimistic. There are a lot of people working on this, a lot of people who care about this. And of course, everybody is feeling the impacts of climate change these days. So we've got to act, and I think we will.

Lindsey Hall: We're having this conversation just a few days after the U.S. elections. And I think there is a lot of what you've just described, some fear, some anxiety, especially among the community of like Chief Sustainability Officers or climate scientists or others who really focus on climate for a living, just uncertainty about what's the outlook. Can you comment at all about how you're thinking about what's ahead and how you keep this momentum going towards finding solutions to climate change in this changing political landscape?

Ellen Jackowski: Sure. Well, the one thing that is consistent is we see more people on our network, both on the merchant side in terms of the sellers as well as the cardholders who are looking for solutions in the space, right? These are new markets that are expanding. So our business is to stay profitable, right, and to provide ease of that facilitation of buying goods and services that people want. And we know people want more sustainable products and services. So it's in our economic and business interest to make sure we're there at the right time, being able to facilitate the purchase of those things.

So this is good to do, right, because we can feel the societal pressure around climate change. But this is absolutely good business as well, and we see that every day. We see that in the investor calls that we have. We see that in the customer meetings that we're having, where our customers are asking for solutions and products and ideas and partnerships. So very focused on the business, the growth of the business and how consumption is changing to be more sustainable. This is a megatrend that's only growing no matter what is going on in the political atmosphere of the United States or otherwise.

Lindsey Hall: Ellen, I've asked you a lot of questions. What have I not asked that you think is important for our audience to understand about what Mastercard is doing as it relates to climate or sustainability more broadly?

Ellen Jackowski: We've talked a little bit about collaboration, right, and partnerships. Again, given who we are, and that's how we work, right? Like Mastercard couldn't exist in its own little ecosystem. We need all parts of our value chain working together to make our business work. I just spend a lot of time, like why am I traveling to all these places, right? I'm getting on a plane. I'm burning carbon to do this. But the partnerships, the discussions, the innovations that happen that we're uncovering in these different events with innovators that show up.

People who've got different experiences, different ideas and different technologies, just I think that's really important that we continue to seek ways to work together to put different types of people from diverse backgrounds with diverse experiences and capabilities together to find these solutions. So for me, that's one of the best parts of the job is seeking out the next innovation, the next way we can work more effectively together to speed the transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy.

Lindsey Hall: That's great. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me to share your perspective, and I hope we can continue the conversation in the future.

Ellen Jackowski: Thanks so much, Lindsey.

Esther Whieldon: Today, we heard Ellen talk about Mastercard's sustainability pillars, driving more sustainable consumption across the value chain, driving inclusive climate action and reaching net zero by 2040. And as she said, the pathway to net zero will not be linear.

Lindsey Hall: Ellen also mentioned the Earthshot Prize. This was inspired by U.S. President John Kennedy's Moonshot Challenge in 1962 to land a man on the moon within a decade. The Earthshot Prize was launched by William Prince of Wales in 2020 to find and scale innovative solutions to the world's biggest environmental challenges by 2030. Every year until then, winners receive GBP 1 million to scale their solutions. And I think this kind of speaks to the message we heard from Ellen today, which I would describe as pragmatic but hopeful.

There are a lot of smart people around the world working to find solutions to these big challenges like climate change and nature and biodiversity loss. Partnerships and collaboration, as she said, go a long way, but there's also still a long way to go, and we need concrete solutions, not just high-level rhetoric. We'll be back next week with coverage of how stakeholders are approaching climate challenges and solutions in our coverage of COP29. So please stay tuned.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. 

Esther Whieldon: And a special thanks to our agency partner, The 199. See you next time.

Copyright ©2024 by S&P Global  

This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.     

DISCLAIMER  

By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, S&P GLOBAL does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of S&P GLOBAL. S&P GLOBAL assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.  

S&P GLOBAL EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST.