April 2, 2025 • 33 mins
AI’s role in climate is often framed around increased energy use and emissions, but what if it could help solve the crisis? In this episode of Bloomberg Intelligence’s ESG Currents, we explore how Amazon Web Services is helping foster AI-driven climate-tech companies, including through the Compute for Climate Fellowship. AWS’ Head of Climate Tech Business Development, Startups and Venture Capital Lisbeth Kaufman joins BI director of ESG research Eric Kane to discuss how she drew inspiration from The Toxic Avenger, and highlights real-world applications of computing and AI in fusion energy, crop yields, pest mitigation and textile production.
This episode was recorded on March 17. Learn more about the climate-tech startups discussed or apply for the fellowship here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
ESG has become established as a key business theme as
companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition,
social mega trends, mounting regulatory attention and pressure from other stakeholders.
The rapidly evolving landscape has become inundated with acronyms, buzzwords,
and lingo, and we aim to break these down with
(00:32):
industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, your guide to navigating
the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time, Brought
to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, part of Bloomberg's Research department
with five hundred analysts and strategists working across all major
world markets. I'm Eric Caine, director of ESG Research for
(00:53):
Bloomberg Intelligence, and today we're talking about the intersection of
tech and climate. Specifically, we're talking about climate tech and
how artificial intelligence can help address the climate crisis. And
who better to discuss this with than Lizbeth Kaufman, who
is the head of Climate Tech, Business Development, Startups and
(01:14):
VC at Amazon Web Services or AWS, and also the
co chair and co founder of the Compute for Climate Fellowship. Lizbeth,
thank you so much for taking the time to join
the program.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, thank you so much, Eric, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here and share about the amazing
startups that we're working with and the fellowship that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Excellent, excellent, So let's dive right in. You founded Aws's
Climate tech startup. Was wondering if you could just tell
us a little bit about your role, what the group does,
and ultimately the problem that you're trying to solve for.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, thank you. So yeah, So I lead the Climate
Tech Startups team at Amazon Web Services, and so to
give you a little context about kind of where we
sit at Amazon, and broadly, sustainability is a big deal
at Amazon, and so there's kind of three areas of focus.
(02:10):
The first is about making our operations as sustainable as possible,
and so with that, Amazon has the Climate Pledge, which
is the goal to get to net zero carbon emissions
by twenty forty and the Amazon has done a lot
in that space. It's the largest purchase corporate purchaser of
(02:33):
renewable energy in the world five years in a row.
A lot of people don't know this, but we now
run our operations across the whole company with one hundred
percent matched renewable energy include so it includes AWS but
across all of Amazon. So that's the first area, make
Amazon more sustainable. The second is then to help our
(02:54):
companies our customers become more sustainable. And then the third
is where I come and so that is supporting our
climate tech startups and helping them build solutions to the
climate crisis. So the Climate Tech Startups Team, our goal
is to help climate tech startups succeed at addressing the
(03:17):
climate crisis, and we have resources to help them do that,
from technical support, to funding and also go to market
and growth growth support. So this fellowship, the Compute for
Climate Fellowship, is a part of these resources. And you know,
in our in our goal of helping climate tech startups,
(03:40):
we set this program up because as you and I'm
sure your your audience are well aware, the climate crisis is,
you know, as the impacts are just getting more widespread,
we think it's more important than ever to support climate
tech startups.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely, yeah, excellent. So I do want to obviously come
back to the Compute for Climate Fellowship piece, but maybe
we'll get to that a little bit later. And I
want to talk a little bit more about, you know,
some of the startups that you've worked with already, but
I think it's also always valuable to hear from our
guests a little bit about their career journeys. So curious
(04:18):
if you could walk us through how ultimately you got
to the position that you're in right now, which obviously sounds,
you know, super exciting.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so yeah. I've been working in tech
and startups and climate for about seventeen years now, and
first and foremost, I'm a founder, so I was before
joining AWS. I founded and ran a venture backed startup,
so CEO of that ran it for six years, ran
(04:45):
product and growth and fundraising and all of that. So
super passionate about startups, and that's part of the reason
AWS recruited me onto this team. It's kind of an
amazing team of all former founders, and we're all focused
on really like understanding our startup customers and then helping
them succeed. So so yeah, so founder builder. And then
(05:10):
I also have a background in climate, so before I
started my company, I've been inspired and passionate about climate
and the environment for a long time. Actually goes back
to probably my childhood. So my dad is a independent
filmmaker and he started he one of his more famous
films is called The Toxic Avenger and it's about an
(05:33):
environmental superhero. So I grew up with that as kind
of my superhero, and that got me really excited about
the environment. And and when I, you know, when I
came out of college into the working world, that's what
I wanted to work on. So I worked in in
d C for a while focused on climate policy. So
I worked at a few different places, probably most notably
(05:54):
in the US Senate is a Senate staffer focus on energy,
environment and agriculture, and that was a fantastic place to
learn and uh and so that background, now combined with
my startup founder background, has helped me in this current
role set up the Climate Tech Startups Team so that
(06:16):
we can help climate tech startups.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Interesting. It's funny when you know, oftentimes younger people will
kind of ask me about what they can do to
get into the space and the right steps to take.
And you know, we've interviewed a lot of people, so
I have I feel like I have a good sense
of the paths that people often take to sustainability or
essue or climate work. But that's definitely the first time
that I've heard anyone trace it back to the toxic avenger.
(06:44):
So I appreciate that we'll have to add that to
the list. Yeah, so maybe you could tell us a
little bit about, you know, some of the startups that
you've worked with, and you pick a couple or favorites.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So with the this Computer Climate Fellowship, I've had the
opportunity to work with some amazing companies And just to
give you like a brief on that, it's a it's
an R and D funding program to help startups accelerate
their research and development and we fund their projects that
(07:22):
and help them build with our cloud technology. So and
I can share more more details on that too. But
so through that program, we we've got amazing companies in
the program. There is a company in Portugal called smart
x Uh and they are address They're using AI to
(07:43):
address waste in the fashion industry. So they have a
computer vision rig and then they have an AI system
that fabric manufacturers can use to detect flaws in their fabrics.
Because I don't know if you know about it, I
(08:03):
mean I didn't know about this. I knew there was
a huge amount of waste in fashion of course, like
ten percent I think ten percent of emissions maybe come
from the fashion industry, but I didn't know that. One
of the big problems is that manufacturers make a ton
of fabric that's flawed and they don't realize it's flawed
(08:25):
until they're done producing massive amounts and then they have
to throw that all away. So this company, smart x
helps them identify the flaw immediately before, you know, right
when it happens, and they can stop it and fix
it and then they don't have to throw anything away.
And so they came to us in this compute for
Climate Fellowship, and we're helping them with their AI models
(08:49):
to improve accuracy and also enable them to expand the
type of fabrics they can work with and the processes
that they can work with so they can go beyond
just you know, weaving into like processing and dying and
other areas of manufacturing. And this company is amazing. So
they're in Yeah, they're out of Portugal. They I think
(09:11):
they they report that they've already helped save like a
million kilograms of wasted fabric and they have H and
M is one of their customers. So they're just such
a cool example of a startup that's building a solution
that can really have an impact to reduce waste. And
the thing I also love about them is that they're
(09:33):
helping their customers save money, right, like if you don't,
if those manufacturers don't waste all of that fabric, they
save money and help improve waste and address the climate crisis.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, No, that's a great example. I guess I
have to ask for another examples as well. Just I
mean that one's so interesting, so curious to hear about another.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, absolutely, So let's see we have another. So let's
see in climate. You know, there's it's a whole spectrum
of challenges, and one of them is in agriculture. Like
we have a company called igen that is helping farmers
(10:14):
reduce their pesticide use. And so i Gen has built
an ai AI autonomous solar powered weeding robot. So they
are these robots that roam the fields and weed so
that farmers don't have to use pesticides. Yeah, and it's
(10:35):
so cool because you know, traditionally farmers use a lot
of pesticides that runs off into the waterways, our rivers, oceans, lakes,
the places like we want to go to in the
summer or drink from and with e gen farmers can
use these robots to weed instead of pesticides, and so
(10:57):
they we helped them in the fellowship with their AI
models so that they can accurately identify the weeds. That's
a hard problem to do, you know with computer vision.
And then they can expand also into new crop types.
So they're focusing on cotton, I think corn, so cotton
(11:21):
is one of the dirtiest crops and then corn is
just so widespread, so they can really maximize their impact. Yeah.
So another another very cool company. They're out of They're
in the US.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well yeah, yeah, I feel like we could spend all
day talking about these companies. Yeah, I'd love to hear
about the kind of solution side of things. I think
in the e SG space we often tend to, you know,
focus on the downside, the risks, and not so much
on the solutions. So it's always exciting to hear about
some of the solutions that are being developed out there.
(11:56):
So you mentioned a couple of times the compute for
Climate Fellowship. Maybe we can take a step back and
you can tell us a little bit more about how
the idea came to you as the co founder of
that and ultimately what the process is for maybe some
listeners out there who may be interested in applying for
the fellowship.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, thank you. So, so the Compute for Climate Fellowship,
it's an R and D funding program for climate tech
startups to build groundbreaking new solutions with our advanced cloud computing.
And we started this because as the impacts of the
climate crisis get more widespread, we want to make sure
(12:38):
we're helping the startup community address the climate crisis. And startups,
the climate tech startups in particular, have a lot of
R and D to do, like compared to maybe other
types of startups. They're inventing new science and new technology.
They're incredible, and so we set you know, the goal here.
(13:01):
We were sort of asking ourselves, how can we help
these startups speed up their R and D. So we
set we we teamed up with a group out of
UNESCO called the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence ERQUI
for short, and we teamed up about three years ago.
This is our third year of the program. Uh and
(13:21):
and so to you know, to start this fellowship and
now URQUI and a bus we provide so startups apply
with a proposal for a project using our advanced cloud
computing like AI or high performance computing or generative AI,
and then we provide a grant non dilute of funding
(13:43):
in the form of cloud credits, and then we bring
on a meet these these amazing experts from AWS and
ERQUI who have like PhDs and decades of experience in
what the startups are doing. And they so they come
on and advise the startup and help them figure out
how to build what they want to build. And then
(14:05):
through the URQUI and channels, you know, we bring as
much visibility to these startups as possible, get them on
the global stage through u NESCo, and and then you know,
help them build these incredible, incredigable nuke technology.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Super interesting. Yeah, so maybe going back to the ee
Gen example that was the recipient of the fellowship, right,
so how far along in their process were they when
they came to the Climate Fellowship.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, so Igen specifically, they had an early version of
their robots, their AI solar powered autonomous weeding robots. I
love saying that it sounds so futuristic. Yeah, a lot
of adjectives. And then yeah, they had they also had
models that were using the cameras on the robots to
(14:57):
identify the weeds, and they so, but they wanted to
improve on those models, so that they came to us
with kind of like this idea of how you know,
of improving on the models, and then we funded that
and brought in experts to help them with it. But
you know, that's one company I want to I want
to for anyone in the audience, any startup founders in
(15:20):
the audience listening. This is a global program. We accept
startups at any any phase in their you know, journey,
whether you're super early or later on. And uh, you know,
really you just have to be under ten years old,
so you've founded within the last ten years and backed
(15:42):
by venture capital or planning you know, you know, even
if you haven't raised yet, it might be planning to
raise from venture capital. And it can be companies from
all over the world. So we really want to make
this as broad as possible and accept as many companies
as possible. And actually we're very excited because this year
we're really expanding the program. You know, we think it's
(16:05):
more important than ever to support these companies, so we're
more than doubling the size of the program. So last
year we started the program with four companies. Last year
we had eight. This year we want to have twenty.
So we really yeah, so really invite your listeners to
apply and they can go to URQUAI dot org, which
(16:27):
is I r c AI dot org to fund the application.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, very interesting and obviously in the climate space, one
of the challenges that we face is, you know, there's
a lot of noise in addition to a lot of
good work being done. So I'm curious if you could
walk us through, you know, some of the criteria that
you ultimately use to evaluate these applications.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Sure, so the two big things we look for are
innovation in the climate space, are you solving a problem,
an important problem that's maybe never been done before, never
been done in this way, and or innovation with our
cloud services using you know, our high performance computing or
(17:11):
generative AI in a new and interesting way. And then
you know, we we look at we look for companies
all across the spectrum of like the whole climate you know, ecosystem.
I guess on the mitigation side with like clean energy,
sustainable agriculture, the built environment, transportation, and also in the
(17:32):
on the adaptation side. So we have actually nine sort
of focus areas and this year, we've added a new one,
the ninth one that we're we're pretty excited about. So
it's it's uh focus on Indigenous solutions. So we we
recognize that indigenous communities all over the world have been
(17:57):
disproportionately impacted by climate change, and at the same time,
so many indigenous communities have so much wisdom and knowledge
accumulated over thousands and thousands of years in technology that
can help the world address the climate crisis. So we're
super eager to support indigenous innovators and would love to
(18:21):
see applications and accept companies into the program. I can
even share like a cool example that I was that
I was thinking that I came across to give your
audience an idea what we mean by indigenous innovators. Yeah.
So I was at COP twenty nine last year and
I went to a great talk at the Indigenous People's Pavilion,
(18:43):
and there was a woman there who was from Kenya,
and she shared that her language and her culture are
all about bee keeping, and in her language there's a
ton of information about the bees and how to foster
and bees of course are extremely important for agriculture. We
(19:03):
don't have agriculture without bees. So, but the challenges is
that she and her father are the last people to
speak this language, so there's an enormous amount of information
that's at risk. So she's dedicated her life to teaching
other people about her language and the knowledge about bee
keeping that's embedded in it. And then you know, meanwhile,
(19:28):
I met another indigenous innovator who is building generative AI
foundational models trained on his culture's language, and he's from
the Maori people in New Zealand. So like, you know,
imagine if we have generative AI models trained on these
(19:48):
indigenous languages to help preserve them with the communities. And
then also like you know, I don't know, capture that
novel or have that knowledge available for the communities and
to an able them to enable it to live on.
So that's one one, one area, but there's so much more.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Well, that's super interesting. It's definitely outside of the kind
of realm of of you know, solutions or technologies that
we would typically think of I think. So yeah, super
super exciting. So you mentioned, of course some of the
areas that you know, companies focus on. I'm curious to
hear kind of what next steps are for companies that
(20:28):
ultimately you know, get the Fellowship. What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, so so we when a company is accepted into
the Fellowship, we then uh, you know, everything is sort
of set up bespoke around what they want to build.
So we spend about a month with that. We well,
first we bring in experts, these folks across A, W
S and URQUAI to help that to to work with them,
(20:56):
and the whole goal is to build a proof of
concept or this project with our advanced cloud computing. So
these experts come in and help the founders scope out
what that project is going to look like and the
build and the technology they're going to use and how
it's all going to work. And then they spend the
next two to three months actually building the project. And
(21:19):
then after that they present to like a bunch of
leadership across AWS and URQUI, and then we you know,
like to bring them as much visibility as I mentioned
with speaking opportunities and other things like that. So actually
I can share a company that did a really cool
project in the in the Fellowship to give you a
sense of like what they can do in that you know,
(21:42):
basically three month time period of building. So there's a
company called Real to Fusion out of Madison, Wisconsin, UH
and they are building fusion technology with magnetic mirror system,
so fusion. Don't you know, You're audience probably knows about fusion,
but yeah, so enormous potential with fusion to create to
(22:06):
offer abundant, clean, low cost energy with no radioactive waste.
But it's very hard, right, You're basically recreating a sun
or a star on Earth. So Real to Fusion they
needed they came to the Fellowship because they needed help
with this really intensive modeling, plasma modeling and history, this
(22:32):
is a standard model for the whole fusion industry, and
historically it's so big and hard that it's only been
possible on these physical giant supercomputers. There's only two of
these supercomputers in the US there are at National Labs,
and they have a year long wait list to get
access because they're like, you know, very very coveted. So
(22:52):
Real to Fusion as a startup, wants to move as
quickly as possible. So they came to the Fellowship with
the goal of doing that modeling in the cloud for
the first time ever. So what we did was we
worked with them to recreate the supercomputer in the cloud
using our high performance computing services, so they could run
(23:13):
their models in the cloud. And so instead of waiting
a year to get access to those supercomputers, they were
able to set up their modeling in a week. Amazing. Yeah,
and they were able to do you know, So that's
the kind of thing that you can build in this
sort of two to three month timeline. And with Realta
and with Fusion, now we hope that this sort of
(23:37):
democratizes access to these modeling for the whole fusion industry.
It's going to speed up Realta's R and D, and
now we hope it can speed up the whole fusion
industry so they can get to this commercial grade fusion faster.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on real
to fusion. Yeah, sure, very exciting. So, as I mentioned
a little bit earlier, I'm always excited to hear about,
you know, some of the climate tech that's being developed
and kind of the solution side. Given we spend so
much focus, you know, time on the kind of gloom
and doom elements of climate, but I do think there's
(24:11):
a place where you know, the solution side and the
gloomen doom kind of interact, which is that obviously we
all know, you know, AI is driving a considerable increase
in energy demand, water demand, things like that. So curious
how you see that balance between the kind of the
downside of AI driving more energy demand and the upside
(24:33):
you know, helping to ultimately, you know, create some of
the solutions that you've talked about. How you see that
balancing over time?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah. On one side, there's this
question of energy usage of AI, right, and at AWS,
we're really focused on making the cloud the most sustainable
way for our customers to run their infrastructure. So you know,
(25:00):
Amazon AWS has done a lot to make the cloud
to reduce the energy usage of the cloud and make
it more sustainable. So I think I mentioned this already,
but a lot of people don't know this. But A
tows already or runs our operations with one hundred percent
matched renewable energy. I feel like, I feel like a
(25:21):
lot of people don't know that. When I like to
ask people, pull them how much do you think how
much our operations do you think? People will say ten
percent or seventy percent, But it's actually one hundred percent.
So that helps, right, If we're going to use a
lot of energy, let's make it renewable. And then we
also are very focused on ensuring that the whole, you know,
(25:43):
the rest of the system is low carbon and sustainable.
So there are guidances on using low carbon concrete, low
carbon steel, and the physical buildings. And then you mentioned water.
We have a goal to get to net positive water
by twenty thirty, to actually give back more water to
(26:05):
communities than what we use. So and we're well on like,
we're on track for that. So that's sort of the
side of where AWS are. Sorry, we're about your question
about AI using a lot of energy. And then I
think it's also interesting to look at the other side
that you mentioned, which is how AI can be a
(26:25):
tool to address the climate crisis because with climate change,
speed is so critical. Right Like you and I, we
have three year old kids, and I think about what
the world is going to be like in twenty fifty
when my daughter is twenty eight years old. That's not
very far away. We need to move as quickly as
(26:47):
possible to make that world a good place to live.
And one thing AI is very good at is speeding
things up. So I get excited about the potential of
AI and the start ups that are using AI to
do things more quickly and do things that were just
never possible before. And I can share another company that's
(27:08):
doing just that. So there's a company phyto Form, which
is out of the UK, and they are using AI
to address food stability and to so there they have
an AI platform that I identifies genetic traits that can
(27:29):
make crops more climate resilient so that no matter what
happens with climate disasters, farmers can continue to grow food
and feed the world. So they, you know, they have
this AI platform that discovers the genetic traits and then
they came into the Fellowship and we helped them improve
(27:50):
the accuracy of that that platform and more quickly identify
the traits. And recently their work has borne fruit, as
they like to say, and I think pun intended, they they.
So they just announced that they have a new tomato crop.
They've invented a new tomato plant that uses less water,
(28:14):
less land, and four hundred percent more and produces four
hundred percent more fruit. Well, so you know, if there's
a drought, this tomato can continue to produce food. So
that's kind of thing that like you know, it just
wouldn't be possible without AI.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
That's amazing. Another great example. So maybe just as a
final question, I'm curious to hear how you see, you know,
what's happening with politics in the country impacting the work
that you're doing and potentially the work of the startups
(28:53):
that you're working with, and you know, to be a
little bit more specific, obviously we're seeing the current presidential
administration and cutting a lot of funds to climate technology
things like that. So yeah, just curious to hear kind
of how that impacts your work and ultimately the work
of the companies that you're helping.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Sure. Yeah, you know, Amazon has now been around for
thirty years. They've been through five administrations, so they're you know,
this isn't their first rodeo on on working with different administrations.
And our goal is to you know, work with administrations
to ensure that we at Amazon at a bus can
(29:33):
invent on behalf of our customers so you know, a
bus and Amazon remain committed to sustainability. You know, well,
we have our climate pledge to get to net zero
by twenty forty I mentioned, and we're doing all still,
you know, lots of stuff to continue to make the
company more sustainable. And then in terms of the startups, Yeah,
(29:57):
there's certainly a lot of you know changes with this
this new administration, UH, and that's a lot for companies
to grapple with, big and small. But the good news
about this space is that there's still a lot of
private capital that's already allocated for climate tech startups. So
(30:20):
Siteline Climate has UH put out of a study showing
that there's eighty six billion dollars in dry capital among
climate tech vcs and investors that is, you know, ready
to deploy to invest into climate tech startups. So there's
(30:40):
still money flowing into this space. And you know, the
thing about startups is that they love challenges like if
if and you know, if anyone is going to figure
out how to address the climate crisis, it's these companies.
So you know, whatever the government policy is, it's not
gonna you know, these companies are going to figure it out.
(31:04):
They're going to figure out how to address the climate crisis.
And I like to kind of you know, we've talked
about a lot of a lot of companies here and
I like to kind of envision, like what is this
world that they're building for US. So, you know, we
talked about real to fusion with clean clean energy, clean
(31:27):
fusion energy, so that could create a world where it
unlocks innovation right and drives prices down. It makes so
much affordable for the world. And then uh, there's e
gen who's helping to reduce waste in agriculture and make
healthier food and healthier environments. There's phyto form, which is
(31:51):
enabling us to use less land to make food and
with that less smaller footprint than the you know, the
rest of the land could be dedicated to natural ecosystems
and have like healthy, thriving environments that are so critical
for business and also quality of life. So I don't know,
(32:13):
I like this all comes together and kind of paints
like a pretty great picture of the future for like
our kids or the kids of the people listening here.
So I think these startups are the ones who are
going to figure it out.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yep, that's super interesting. Yeah, I really appreciate all the insights.
It's great to hear about the work that you're doing
at AWS, the work that you're doing with the Compute
for Climate Fellowship in particularly, really great to hear about
some of these startups and the challenges that they are
hopefully going to solve for. So, Lizabeth, thank you so
much for taking the time to join us.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Thank you. Can I make one last plug for the
Compute for Climate Fellowship absolutely, thank you so for the
startups listening. We'd love for you to apply to the
Compute for Climate Fellowship. It's a global program. Applications are
open now through a Parl sixth and you can apply
and we'd love We're eager to fund your most innovative
(33:05):
ideas and you can apply at Urqui dot org. So
that's IRCAI dot org. And I think we'll have links
probably right.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Absolutely, we'll have links in the description for the episodes. Absolutely,
thank you wonderful. So, as always, you can find more
information on all things ESG by going to our dashboard
BI space ESG go on the Bloomberg terminal. And if
you have an ESG quandary or burning question you'd like
to ask bi's expert analysts, please send us an email
(33:37):
at ESG Currents at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you so
much and we'll see you next time.
ESG has become established as a key business theme as
companies and investors seek to navigate the climate crisis, energy transition,
social mega trends, mounting regulatory attention and pressure from other stakeholders.
The rapidly evolving landscape has become inundated with acronyms, buzzwords,
and lingo, and we aim to break these down with
(00:32):
industry experts. Welcome to ESG Currents, your guide to navigating
the evolving ESG space, one topic at a time, Brought
to you by Bloomberg Intelligence, part of Bloomberg's Research department
with five hundred analysts and strategists working across all major
world markets. I'm Eric Caine, director of ESG Research for
(00:53):
Bloomberg Intelligence, and today we're talking about the intersection of
tech and climate. Specifically, we're talking about climate tech and
how artificial intelligence can help address the climate crisis. And
who better to discuss this with than Lizbeth Kaufman, who
is the head of Climate Tech, Business Development, Startups and
(01:14):
VC at Amazon Web Services or AWS, and also the
co chair and co founder of the Compute for Climate Fellowship. Lizbeth,
thank you so much for taking the time to join
the program.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, thank you so much, Eric, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here and share about the amazing
startups that we're working with and the fellowship that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Excellent, excellent, So let's dive right in. You founded Aws's
Climate tech startup. Was wondering if you could just tell
us a little bit about your role, what the group does,
and ultimately the problem that you're trying to solve for.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, thank you. So yeah, So I lead the Climate
Tech Startups team at Amazon Web Services, and so to
give you a little context about kind of where we
sit at Amazon, and broadly, sustainability is a big deal
at Amazon, and so there's kind of three areas of focus.
(02:10):
The first is about making our operations as sustainable as possible,
and so with that, Amazon has the Climate Pledge, which
is the goal to get to net zero carbon emissions
by twenty forty and the Amazon has done a lot
in that space. It's the largest purchase corporate purchaser of
(02:33):
renewable energy in the world five years in a row.
A lot of people don't know this, but we now
run our operations across the whole company with one hundred
percent matched renewable energy include so it includes AWS but
across all of Amazon. So that's the first area, make
Amazon more sustainable. The second is then to help our
(02:54):
companies our customers become more sustainable. And then the third
is where I come and so that is supporting our
climate tech startups and helping them build solutions to the
climate crisis. So the Climate Tech Startups Team, our goal
is to help climate tech startups succeed at addressing the
(03:17):
climate crisis, and we have resources to help them do that,
from technical support, to funding and also go to market
and growth growth support. So this fellowship, the Compute for
Climate Fellowship, is a part of these resources. And you know,
in our in our goal of helping climate tech startups,
(03:40):
we set this program up because as you and I'm
sure your your audience are well aware, the climate crisis is,
you know, as the impacts are just getting more widespread,
we think it's more important than ever to support climate
tech startups.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely, yeah, excellent. So I do want to obviously come
back to the Compute for Climate Fellowship piece, but maybe
we'll get to that a little bit later. And I
want to talk a little bit more about, you know,
some of the startups that you've worked with already, but
I think it's also always valuable to hear from our
guests a little bit about their career journeys. So curious
(04:18):
if you could walk us through how ultimately you got
to the position that you're in right now, which obviously sounds,
you know, super exciting.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so yeah. I've been working in tech
and startups and climate for about seventeen years now, and
first and foremost, I'm a founder, so I was before
joining AWS. I founded and ran a venture backed startup,
so CEO of that ran it for six years, ran
(04:45):
product and growth and fundraising and all of that. So
super passionate about startups, and that's part of the reason
AWS recruited me onto this team. It's kind of an
amazing team of all former founders, and we're all focused
on really like understanding our startup customers and then helping
them succeed. So so yeah, so founder builder. And then
(05:10):
I also have a background in climate, so before I
started my company, I've been inspired and passionate about climate
and the environment for a long time. Actually goes back
to probably my childhood. So my dad is a independent
filmmaker and he started he one of his more famous
films is called The Toxic Avenger and it's about an
(05:33):
environmental superhero. So I grew up with that as kind
of my superhero, and that got me really excited about
the environment. And and when I, you know, when I
came out of college into the working world, that's what
I wanted to work on. So I worked in in
d C for a while focused on climate policy. So
I worked at a few different places, probably most notably
(05:54):
in the US Senate is a Senate staffer focus on energy,
environment and agriculture, and that was a fantastic place to
learn and uh and so that background, now combined with
my startup founder background, has helped me in this current
role set up the Climate Tech Startups Team so that
(06:16):
we can help climate tech startups.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Interesting. It's funny when you know, oftentimes younger people will
kind of ask me about what they can do to
get into the space and the right steps to take.
And you know, we've interviewed a lot of people, so
I have I feel like I have a good sense
of the paths that people often take to sustainability or
essue or climate work. But that's definitely the first time
that I've heard anyone trace it back to the toxic avenger.
(06:44):
So I appreciate that we'll have to add that to
the list. Yeah, so maybe you could tell us a
little bit about, you know, some of the startups that
you've worked with, and you pick a couple or favorites.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
So with the this Computer Climate Fellowship, I've had the
opportunity to work with some amazing companies And just to
give you like a brief on that, it's a it's
an R and D funding program to help startups accelerate
their research and development and we fund their projects that
(07:22):
and help them build with our cloud technology. So and
I can share more more details on that too. But
so through that program, we we've got amazing companies in
the program. There is a company in Portugal called smart
x Uh and they are address They're using AI to
(07:43):
address waste in the fashion industry. So they have a
computer vision rig and then they have an AI system
that fabric manufacturers can use to detect flaws in their fabrics.
Because I don't know if you know about it, I
(08:03):
mean I didn't know about this. I knew there was
a huge amount of waste in fashion of course, like
ten percent I think ten percent of emissions maybe come
from the fashion industry, but I didn't know that. One
of the big problems is that manufacturers make a ton
of fabric that's flawed and they don't realize it's flawed
(08:25):
until they're done producing massive amounts and then they have
to throw that all away. So this company, smart x
helps them identify the flaw immediately before, you know, right
when it happens, and they can stop it and fix
it and then they don't have to throw anything away.
And so they came to us in this compute for
Climate Fellowship, and we're helping them with their AI models
(08:49):
to improve accuracy and also enable them to expand the
type of fabrics they can work with and the processes
that they can work with so they can go beyond
just you know, weaving into like processing and dying and
other areas of manufacturing. And this company is amazing. So
they're in Yeah, they're out of Portugal. They I think
(09:11):
they they report that they've already helped save like a
million kilograms of wasted fabric and they have H and
M is one of their customers. So they're just such
a cool example of a startup that's building a solution
that can really have an impact to reduce waste. And
the thing I also love about them is that they're
(09:33):
helping their customers save money, right, like if you don't,
if those manufacturers don't waste all of that fabric, they
save money and help improve waste and address the climate crisis.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, No, that's a great example. I guess I
have to ask for another examples as well. Just I
mean that one's so interesting, so curious to hear about another.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, absolutely, So let's see we have another. So let's
see in climate. You know, there's it's a whole spectrum
of challenges, and one of them is in agriculture. Like
we have a company called igen that is helping farmers
(10:14):
reduce their pesticide use. And so i Gen has built
an ai AI autonomous solar powered weeding robot. So they
are these robots that roam the fields and weed so
that farmers don't have to use pesticides. Yeah, and it's
(10:35):
so cool because you know, traditionally farmers use a lot
of pesticides that runs off into the waterways, our rivers, oceans, lakes,
the places like we want to go to in the
summer or drink from and with e gen farmers can
use these robots to weed instead of pesticides, and so
(10:57):
they we helped them in the fellowship with their AI
models so that they can accurately identify the weeds. That's
a hard problem to do, you know with computer vision.
And then they can expand also into new crop types.
So they're focusing on cotton, I think corn, so cotton
(11:21):
is one of the dirtiest crops and then corn is
just so widespread, so they can really maximize their impact. Yeah.
So another another very cool company. They're out of They're
in the US.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well yeah, yeah, I feel like we could spend all
day talking about these companies. Yeah, I'd love to hear
about the kind of solution side of things. I think
in the e SG space we often tend to, you know,
focus on the downside, the risks, and not so much
on the solutions. So it's always exciting to hear about
some of the solutions that are being developed out there.
(11:56):
So you mentioned a couple of times the compute for
Climate Fellowship. Maybe we can take a step back and
you can tell us a little bit more about how
the idea came to you as the co founder of
that and ultimately what the process is for maybe some
listeners out there who may be interested in applying for
the fellowship.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, thank you. So, so the Compute for Climate Fellowship,
it's an R and D funding program for climate tech
startups to build groundbreaking new solutions with our advanced cloud computing.
And we started this because as the impacts of the
climate crisis get more widespread, we want to make sure
(12:38):
we're helping the startup community address the climate crisis. And startups,
the climate tech startups in particular, have a lot of
R and D to do, like compared to maybe other
types of startups. They're inventing new science and new technology.
They're incredible, and so we set you know, the goal here.
(13:01):
We were sort of asking ourselves, how can we help
these startups speed up their R and D. So we
set we we teamed up with a group out of
UNESCO called the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence ERQUI
for short, and we teamed up about three years ago.
This is our third year of the program. Uh and
(13:21):
and so to you know, to start this fellowship and
now URQUI and a bus we provide so startups apply
with a proposal for a project using our advanced cloud
computing like AI or high performance computing or generative AI,
and then we provide a grant non dilute of funding
(13:43):
in the form of cloud credits, and then we bring
on a meet these these amazing experts from AWS and
ERQUI who have like PhDs and decades of experience in
what the startups are doing. And they so they come
on and advise the startup and help them figure out
how to build what they want to build. And then
(14:05):
through the URQUI and channels, you know, we bring as
much visibility to these startups as possible, get them on
the global stage through u NESCo, and and then you know,
help them build these incredible, incredigable nuke technology.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Super interesting. Yeah, so maybe going back to the ee
Gen example that was the recipient of the fellowship, right,
so how far along in their process were they when
they came to the Climate Fellowship.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah, so Igen specifically, they had an early version of
their robots, their AI solar powered autonomous weeding robots. I
love saying that it sounds so futuristic. Yeah, a lot
of adjectives. And then yeah, they had they also had
models that were using the cameras on the robots to
(14:57):
identify the weeds, and they so, but they wanted to
improve on those models, so that they came to us
with kind of like this idea of how you know,
of improving on the models, and then we funded that
and brought in experts to help them with it. But
you know, that's one company I want to I want
to for anyone in the audience, any startup founders in
(15:20):
the audience listening. This is a global program. We accept
startups at any any phase in their you know, journey,
whether you're super early or later on. And uh, you know,
really you just have to be under ten years old,
so you've founded within the last ten years and backed
(15:42):
by venture capital or planning you know, you know, even
if you haven't raised yet, it might be planning to
raise from venture capital. And it can be companies from
all over the world. So we really want to make
this as broad as possible and accept as many companies
as possible. And actually we're very excited because this year
we're really expanding the program. You know, we think it's
(16:05):
more important than ever to support these companies, so we're
more than doubling the size of the program. So last
year we started the program with four companies. Last year
we had eight. This year we want to have twenty.
So we really yeah, so really invite your listeners to
apply and they can go to URQUAI dot org, which
(16:27):
is I r c AI dot org to fund the application.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, very interesting and obviously in the climate space, one
of the challenges that we face is, you know, there's
a lot of noise in addition to a lot of
good work being done. So I'm curious if you could
walk us through, you know, some of the criteria that
you ultimately use to evaluate these applications.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Sure, so the two big things we look for are
innovation in the climate space, are you solving a problem,
an important problem that's maybe never been done before, never
been done in this way, and or innovation with our
cloud services using you know, our high performance computing or
(17:11):
generative AI in a new and interesting way. And then
you know, we we look at we look for companies
all across the spectrum of like the whole climate you know, ecosystem.
I guess on the mitigation side with like clean energy,
sustainable agriculture, the built environment, transportation, and also in the
(17:32):
on the adaptation side. So we have actually nine sort
of focus areas and this year, we've added a new one,
the ninth one that we're we're pretty excited about. So
it's it's uh focus on Indigenous solutions. So we we
recognize that indigenous communities all over the world have been
(17:57):
disproportionately impacted by climate change, and at the same time,
so many indigenous communities have so much wisdom and knowledge
accumulated over thousands and thousands of years in technology that
can help the world address the climate crisis. So we're
super eager to support indigenous innovators and would love to
(18:21):
see applications and accept companies into the program. I can
even share like a cool example that I was that
I was thinking that I came across to give your
audience an idea what we mean by indigenous innovators. Yeah.
So I was at COP twenty nine last year and
I went to a great talk at the Indigenous People's Pavilion,
(18:43):
and there was a woman there who was from Kenya,
and she shared that her language and her culture are
all about bee keeping, and in her language there's a
ton of information about the bees and how to foster
and bees of course are extremely important for agriculture. We
(19:03):
don't have agriculture without bees. So, but the challenges is
that she and her father are the last people to
speak this language, so there's an enormous amount of information
that's at risk. So she's dedicated her life to teaching
other people about her language and the knowledge about bee
keeping that's embedded in it. And then you know, meanwhile,
(19:28):
I met another indigenous innovator who is building generative AI
foundational models trained on his culture's language, and he's from
the Maori people in New Zealand. So like, you know,
imagine if we have generative AI models trained on these
(19:48):
indigenous languages to help preserve them with the communities. And
then also like you know, I don't know, capture that
novel or have that knowledge available for the communities and
to an able them to enable it to live on.
So that's one one, one area, but there's so much more.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Well, that's super interesting. It's definitely outside of the kind
of realm of of you know, solutions or technologies that
we would typically think of I think. So yeah, super
super exciting. So you mentioned, of course some of the
areas that you know, companies focus on. I'm curious to
hear kind of what next steps are for companies that
(20:28):
ultimately you know, get the Fellowship. What does that look like?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, so so we when a company is accepted into
the Fellowship, we then uh, you know, everything is sort
of set up bespoke around what they want to build.
So we spend about a month with that. We well,
first we bring in experts, these folks across A, W
S and URQUAI to help that to to work with them,
(20:56):
and the whole goal is to build a proof of
concept or this project with our advanced cloud computing. So
these experts come in and help the founders scope out
what that project is going to look like and the
build and the technology they're going to use and how
it's all going to work. And then they spend the
next two to three months actually building the project. And
(21:19):
then after that they present to like a bunch of
leadership across AWS and URQUI, and then we you know,
like to bring them as much visibility as I mentioned
with speaking opportunities and other things like that. So actually
I can share a company that did a really cool
project in the in the Fellowship to give you a
sense of like what they can do in that you know,
(21:42):
basically three month time period of building. So there's a
company called Real to Fusion out of Madison, Wisconsin, UH
and they are building fusion technology with magnetic mirror system,
so fusion. Don't you know, You're audience probably knows about fusion,
but yeah, so enormous potential with fusion to create to
(22:06):
offer abundant, clean, low cost energy with no radioactive waste.
But it's very hard, right, You're basically recreating a sun
or a star on Earth. So Real to Fusion they
needed they came to the Fellowship because they needed help
with this really intensive modeling, plasma modeling and history, this
(22:32):
is a standard model for the whole fusion industry, and
historically it's so big and hard that it's only been
possible on these physical giant supercomputers. There's only two of
these supercomputers in the US there are at National Labs,
and they have a year long wait list to get
access because they're like, you know, very very coveted. So
(22:52):
Real to Fusion as a startup, wants to move as
quickly as possible. So they came to the Fellowship with
the goal of doing that modeling in the cloud for
the first time ever. So what we did was we
worked with them to recreate the supercomputer in the cloud
using our high performance computing services, so they could run
(23:13):
their models in the cloud. And so instead of waiting
a year to get access to those supercomputers, they were
able to set up their modeling in a week. Amazing. Yeah,
and they were able to do you know, So that's
the kind of thing that you can build in this
sort of two to three month timeline. And with Realta
and with Fusion, now we hope that this sort of
(23:37):
democratizes access to these modeling for the whole fusion industry.
It's going to speed up Realta's R and D, and
now we hope it can speed up the whole fusion
industry so they can get to this commercial grade fusion faster.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Right. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on real
to fusion. Yeah, sure, very exciting. So, as I mentioned
a little bit earlier, I'm always excited to hear about,
you know, some of the climate tech that's being developed
and kind of the solution side. Given we spend so
much focus, you know, time on the kind of gloom
and doom elements of climate, but I do think there's
(24:11):
a place where you know, the solution side and the
gloomen doom kind of interact, which is that obviously we
all know, you know, AI is driving a considerable increase
in energy demand, water demand, things like that. So curious
how you see that balance between the kind of the
downside of AI driving more energy demand and the upside
(24:33):
you know, helping to ultimately, you know, create some of
the solutions that you've talked about. How you see that
balancing over time?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah. On one side, there's this
question of energy usage of AI, right, and at AWS,
we're really focused on making the cloud the most sustainable
way for our customers to run their infrastructure. So you know,
(25:00):
Amazon AWS has done a lot to make the cloud
to reduce the energy usage of the cloud and make
it more sustainable. So I think I mentioned this already,
but a lot of people don't know this. But A
tows already or runs our operations with one hundred percent
matched renewable energy. I feel like, I feel like a
(25:21):
lot of people don't know that. When I like to
ask people, pull them how much do you think how
much our operations do you think? People will say ten
percent or seventy percent, But it's actually one hundred percent.
So that helps, right, If we're going to use a
lot of energy, let's make it renewable. And then we
also are very focused on ensuring that the whole, you know,
(25:43):
the rest of the system is low carbon and sustainable.
So there are guidances on using low carbon concrete, low
carbon steel, and the physical buildings. And then you mentioned water.
We have a goal to get to net positive water
by twenty thirty, to actually give back more water to
(26:05):
communities than what we use. So and we're well on like,
we're on track for that. So that's sort of the
side of where AWS are. Sorry, we're about your question
about AI using a lot of energy. And then I
think it's also interesting to look at the other side
that you mentioned, which is how AI can be a
(26:25):
tool to address the climate crisis because with climate change,
speed is so critical. Right Like you and I, we
have three year old kids, and I think about what
the world is going to be like in twenty fifty
when my daughter is twenty eight years old. That's not
very far away. We need to move as quickly as
(26:47):
possible to make that world a good place to live.
And one thing AI is very good at is speeding
things up. So I get excited about the potential of
AI and the start ups that are using AI to
do things more quickly and do things that were just
never possible before. And I can share another company that's
(27:08):
doing just that. So there's a company phyto Form, which
is out of the UK, and they are using AI
to address food stability and to so there they have
an AI platform that I identifies genetic traits that can
(27:29):
make crops more climate resilient so that no matter what
happens with climate disasters, farmers can continue to grow food
and feed the world. So they, you know, they have
this AI platform that discovers the genetic traits and then
they came into the Fellowship and we helped them improve
(27:50):
the accuracy of that that platform and more quickly identify
the traits. And recently their work has borne fruit, as
they like to say, and I think pun intended, they they.
So they just announced that they have a new tomato crop.
They've invented a new tomato plant that uses less water,
(28:14):
less land, and four hundred percent more and produces four
hundred percent more fruit. Well, so you know, if there's
a drought, this tomato can continue to produce food. So
that's kind of thing that like you know, it just
wouldn't be possible without AI.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
That's amazing. Another great example. So maybe just as a
final question, I'm curious to hear how you see, you know,
what's happening with politics in the country impacting the work
that you're doing and potentially the work of the startups
(28:53):
that you're working with, and you know, to be a
little bit more specific, obviously we're seeing the current presidential
administration and cutting a lot of funds to climate technology
things like that. So yeah, just curious to hear kind
of how that impacts your work and ultimately the work
of the companies that you're helping.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Sure. Yeah, you know, Amazon has now been around for
thirty years. They've been through five administrations, so they're you know,
this isn't their first rodeo on on working with different administrations.
And our goal is to you know, work with administrations
to ensure that we at Amazon at a bus can
(29:33):
invent on behalf of our customers so you know, a
bus and Amazon remain committed to sustainability. You know, well,
we have our climate pledge to get to net zero
by twenty forty I mentioned, and we're doing all still,
you know, lots of stuff to continue to make the
company more sustainable. And then in terms of the startups, Yeah,
(29:57):
there's certainly a lot of you know changes with this
this new administration, UH, and that's a lot for companies
to grapple with, big and small. But the good news
about this space is that there's still a lot of
private capital that's already allocated for climate tech startups. So
(30:20):
Siteline Climate has UH put out of a study showing
that there's eighty six billion dollars in dry capital among
climate tech vcs and investors that is, you know, ready
to deploy to invest into climate tech startups. So there's
(30:40):
still money flowing into this space. And you know, the
thing about startups is that they love challenges like if
if and you know, if anyone is going to figure
out how to address the climate crisis, it's these companies.
So you know, whatever the government policy is, it's not
gonna you know, these companies are going to figure it out.
(31:04):
They're going to figure out how to address the climate crisis.
And I like to kind of you know, we've talked
about a lot of a lot of companies here and
I like to kind of envision, like what is this
world that they're building for US. So, you know, we
talked about real to fusion with clean clean energy, clean
(31:27):
fusion energy, so that could create a world where it
unlocks innovation right and drives prices down. It makes so
much affordable for the world. And then uh, there's e
gen who's helping to reduce waste in agriculture and make
healthier food and healthier environments. There's phyto form, which is
(31:51):
enabling us to use less land to make food and
with that less smaller footprint than the you know, the
rest of the land could be dedicated to natural ecosystems
and have like healthy, thriving environments that are so critical
for business and also quality of life. So I don't know,
(32:13):
I like this all comes together and kind of paints
like a pretty great picture of the future for like
our kids or the kids of the people listening here.
So I think these startups are the ones who are
going to figure it out.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yep, that's super interesting. Yeah, I really appreciate all the insights.
It's great to hear about the work that you're doing
at AWS, the work that you're doing with the Compute
for Climate Fellowship in particularly, really great to hear about
some of these startups and the challenges that they are
hopefully going to solve for. So, Lizabeth, thank you so
much for taking the time to join us.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Thank you. Can I make one last plug for the
Compute for Climate Fellowship absolutely, thank you so for the
startups listening. We'd love for you to apply to the
Compute for Climate Fellowship. It's a global program. Applications are
open now through a Parl sixth and you can apply
and we'd love We're eager to fund your most innovative
(33:05):
ideas and you can apply at Urqui dot org. So
that's IRCAI dot org. And I think we'll have links
probably right.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Absolutely, we'll have links in the description for the episodes. Absolutely,
thank you wonderful. So, as always, you can find more
information on all things ESG by going to our dashboard
BI space ESG go on the Bloomberg terminal. And if
you have an ESG quandary or burning question you'd like
to ask bi's expert analysts, please send us an email
(33:37):
at ESG Currents at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you so
much and we'll see you next time.
Host
Eric Kane
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com