Sustainability Leaders

In the latest episode of Sustainability Leaders, Michael Torrance, Chief Sustainability Officer at BMO, hosts Helena Viñes Fiestas, who is Chair of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, Co-Chair of the Taskforce on Net Zero Policy, and Commissioner of the Spanish Financial Markets Authority. Helena provides her perspective on sustainable and climate finance, sustainability reporting, and governance, in the EU and around the world.

Note: This episode deals with wildfires and the damage they inflict on the built environment, topics that some may find challenging.

Between 1980 and 2023 the U.S. had 22 wildfires that individually caused more than $1 billion in damage, with 18 of those occurring since 2000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wildfire seasons are lasting longer and fires are causing more damage. In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Alma Cortes Selva, Senior Advisor with the BMO Climate Institute, sits down with Dr. Kimiko Barrett, Wildfires Researcher and Policy Analyst with Headwaters Economics.

In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Melissa Fifield, Head of the BMO Climate Institute, and John Uhren, Managing Director of Sustainable Finance at BMO Capital Markets, reflect on what they saw and heard at Climate Week New York and the trends that will drive sustainable business and investment in the future.

“A phrase I heard a lot throughout New York Climate Week was around climate pragmatism, being eyes wide open around what needs to happen for sustainability to be properly characterized and prioritized by different businesses,” said Uhren. “When you focus on the pragmatic parts, the efficiency gains of looking at things like EV drivetrains over combustion engines, for example, or heat pumps over boilers, these all make commercial sense for a business.”

Risk management is an important driver of why companies form their own human rights policies. But collaborative approaches to human rights aligned with the key voluntary standards can also be opportunities for companies. In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Michael Torrance, Chief Sustainability Officer at BMO, discusses business, human rights and sustainability law with Yousuf Aftab, partner with the law firm Steptoe. Their conversation spanned Yousuf’s work on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as well as how he advises companies on developing human rights policies.

The mission of the company Booking Holdings—which includes the brands Booking.com, Priceline, and OpenTable—is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Kate Heiny, Vice President of Sustainability at Booking Holdings, explains that in order to do that, we need a world worth experiencing. Melissa Fifield, Head of the BMO Climate Institute, sits down with Kate for a wide ranging conversation on the intersection of travel and sustainability and opportunities in the travel sector.

“There's this beautiful alignment for us in terms of making sure that we continue to make travel available for billions of people, and journeys in the future, and that the world is a place that everyone wants to experience,” Kate said.

In the latest episode of Sustainability Leaders, Michael Torrance, Chief Sustainability Officer, BMO, is joined by Matt Morris, associate with Hitachi Ventures, the global venture capital arm of Hitachi Group. They discuss what it takes to commercialize new forms of clean energy and the investment theses of Hitachi Ventures, including the potential of fusion and fission.

"As we think about the clean energy transition … focusing on the supply chains that can enable the development of new energy assets are likely going to be the drivers for making all of these new assets economical," said Morris. "So, we're just at the beginning of seeing what our new generating assets in the clean energy revolution are about to achieve."

The energy transition bears risks but also brings opportunities for investors. That insight drove the conversation led by Jayen Veerapen, Senior Advisor with the BMO Climate Institute, with Pooja Khosla, CEO of Entelligent, a developer of analytical tools to help the financial industry understand the future impact of climate change and energy transition. Also joining to discuss BMO’s collaboration with Entelligent was Fabrice Tenga, Managing Director and Head of Equity Derivatives Financial Engineering, BMO Capital Markets.

“Every company is either a producer of energy or a user of energy. So, energy transition, yes, it impacts power companies, utility companies, but it also impacts technology companies that have a strong demand or use that energy component. It also impacts strongly the finance sector, because the funding of these companies is coming from the finance sector. So, we live in a very interconnected ecosystem of energy,” said Khosla.

“Standards help people understand what they're buying and if there are any significant impairments to value. And now we're living in a world where the physical impacts of climate change to commercial real estate is growing, insurance costs are going through the roof, and investors are demanding to know more about the risks in any given portfolio,” said Holly Neber, Chief Resilience Officer with AEI Consultants. Indeed, the commercial real estate industry faces growing risks from extreme weather and natural hazards. In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Alma Cortés Selva, Senior Advisor with the BMO Climate Institute, discusses with Holly Neber why property resilience standards are important and how they can help mitigate climate impact on real estate.

In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Jayen Veerapen, Senior Advisor with the BMO Climate Institute, focuses on renewable natural gas (RNG), the state of the U.S. market, and the case for rising RNG demand in the future. His guest is Mark Hill, Co-CEO of Novilla RNG, a developer and operator of dairy RNG projects.

The power grid in North America, which is already complex, is seeing demand rise for low-cost and emissions-free electricity. In this episode of Sustainability Leaders, Stephen Uwazota, Director of Sustainable Finance and Clean Energy at BMO, discusses ways in which long-term energy storage solutions can help improve grid resilience. His guest on the show, Curtis VanWalleghem, CEO of Hydrostor, has an innovative and cost-effective approach to the solution--advanced compressed air energy storage. All it takes is air, rocks, and water.