Patch

"Climate change is a collective problem that no single government, no single business can solve alone." Why are events like Rebalance/Recharge, #VERGE2025, and #ClimateWeekNYC in general so important? Joe Speicher, CSO at Autodesk, has a great answer. But what does he mean when he talks about amortizing the cost of climate solutions? It's going to take massive up-front investment — not just in terms of financial capital, but also social and political capital — to build and scale up things like clean energy, sustainable supply chains, carbon removal, and more. It won't be possible on our urgent time scales to do this alone. By aligning with other leaders in positions of leverage around unified climate action, Joe and others can create powerful network effects that catalyze speed and scale. Interested in the next Patch event? Follow our company page here on LinkedIn to get the latest updates.

How many weeks long is your typical carbon buying cycle? Leave a comment; will be interesting to see how long it's taking companies. Here's a sample timeline for an enterprise-grade carbon credit procurement cycle. This one is set up as an 8-week process including a pilot evaluation. This may feel fast to you depending on your level of experience in the market. 8 weeks may actually be too slow to be opportunistic with certain in-demand or fast-moving projects. However, we often see companies are running much longer processes, even when they're not including a pilot phase. In cross-functional procurement processes, teams may struggle with misalignment, they may be bound by lengthy review procedures with Finance or Legal, or they may have to re-run weeks of work when projects don't meet criteria or sell out during diligence. The hard reality is that sustainability teams overall are chronically understaffed — especially when it comes to carbon expertise. When you don't have enough time in your week to focus on carbon, you have no choice but to run longer cycles. Our latest guide is all about carbon credit procurement, and it's got resources and templates including timelines and checklists to help you level up your workflows. Get it here: https://lnkd.in/gAsQ-ttS Our team can do the heavy lifting for you on strategy, sourcing, diligence, and more. We can't put more hours in your week, but we can extend your capabilities to match or surpass anyone in the market. Give us a call!

Internal carbon pricing: every company should use it 💸 Setting an ICP isn’t just for corporate climate leaders. It’s a tool any company can use to decarbonize and fund climate action. Patch's new report (with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) + University of Oxford) shows how. Quick context: An internal carbon price is a financial value you assign to GHG emissions, which helps internalize the external cost of carbon pollution. In an ideal world, all companies would: → Set ambitious ICPs (based on the social cost of carbon or profit per tonne of CO2) → Link them to actual budget transfers, so funds flow to climate investments both in and outside the value chain But Patch’s report makes one thing clear: the most important step is to simply start. As Microsoft’s former Chief Environmental Officer Lucas Joppa puts it in the report: Begin with Scope 1, and progressively “earn your way” to Scope 3. If every company did this - raising ambition over time - we’d be in a much better place. Great resource for sustainability teams - link below.👇

When our clients and partners ask about the business case for investing in sustainability, these are the data points we will often lead with; they break down into a few main benefits that are pretty intuitive: • Better access to capital and talent • Revenue growth via a "green premium" • Anticipation of future supply chain requirements (including regulatory) And then there's the first one: 5x return on GDP by investing in mitigation and adaptation. That's from World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s 2024 annual report, The Cost of Inaction (link in the comments). It's an inherently global case for investing today: ~2% of cumulative GDP toward mitigation (decarbonization, avoidance, and removal) plus ~1% toward adaptation annually through 2100. That would avoid 10–15% in worldwide GDP losses in the same span of time. That's how you get a roughly 5x payoff in terms of investment to avoided losses. The upper limit is actually higher — BCG estimates it's 5–14x. This calculation sidesteps the classic "prisoner's dilemma" of who goes first, but it is an interesting insight into why the world's largest companies (e.g. the Mag 7 — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Meta, and Tesla) are currently investing so heavily in mitigation: they expect to reap the benefits of those avoided GDP losses for decades. This chart is from our guide to procuring carbon credits, which you can access here: https://lnkd.in/gAsQ-ttS Building a strong business case for carbon market participation is the first step in creating a carbon program that can last for the long term. This guide has a whole chapter on how to do it.

Let's talk about the fundamental tension in procurement — but especially carbon credit procurement, where one of the primary tactics for sourcing credits involves heavy use of RFPs or tenders. The voluntary carbon market is still highly relationship-driven, but it's also nascent and dynamic. That means: • There hasn't been (historically) a single, reliable access point to the market as a whole — leading to reliance on one-to-one relationship building. • With prices, supply, and science constantly evolving, it's advantageous for buyers to frequently gauge the market and/or re-run competitive sourcing processes. We broke down this tension in our latest guide, Clarity in complexity: How to procure carbon credits like a market insider. Link here: https://lnkd.in/gAsQ-ttS It's written by our in-house experts with decades of collective experience in both the buy and supply side of the market, and includes case studies from procurement leaders at Bain & Company, Docusign, Etsy, and Nokia. What do you think — how have you seen this tension manifest in your carbon market interactions?

Our CEO, Brennan Spellacy, crystallizes the role carbon markets will play in the climate crisis in The Hard Part with Evan McCann. It's a great listen. In this clip he analyzes at the transitional moment the so-called Mag 7 tech companies are in. If you're curious how corporate sustainability heads are approaching the current moment, check out the whole interview.

Hey LinkedIn - there are lots of posts about #NYClimateWeek, so I'll make this additive: My favorite takeaway was from Jigar Shah - we're seeing real progress in the energy transition.... and yet we feel terrible about it. It's as if we're halfway through our first marathon, and there's still a long way to go! Thanks to the following for great discussions & takeaways: ✅ WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Roland Hunziker for a number of great talks and events ✅ Patch and Pachama for a great Rebalance/Recharge event (great insights from Jessica Hyman) ✅ Arcadis hosted a number of great events at their amazing space in the Woolworth Building (Thanks Kathleen Abbott!) ✅ and RMI for reminding us of the progress and the path ahead (Jon Creyts) My experience running marathons is that the crowds and the runners get us through it - so see you all next year! Ida Namur Robert Beinstein, PE, ENV SP Kritika Kharbanda Chris Walker Catherine Zhu David Benjamin Brennan Spellacy Dick Cameron James Viray Scott Tew Mike Colarossi Lena Hök Tim Freundlich

Check out the recap post from Rebalance/Recharge. In terms of private sector impact potential, this room represented one of the biggest centers of gravity during #ClimateWeekNYC.