Ep 43: Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative and Electricity Maps

Hello and welcome to the scope 3 podcast. I'm Oliver Hari and I'm Tom Eidl. If you're trying to solve supply chain emissions reduction in your organisation, this is the podcast for you. And if you're looking for honest, helpful and human stories, insight, tips, advice and ideas for getting to grips with scope 3, this is definitely the podcast for you. And if you need some help navigating all of those solutions, platforms, technologies, all claiming to solve the scope 3 challenge, this is absolutely the podcast for you. This is the scope 3 podcast. Thanks for joining us and great to have you on board. And welcome back to the scope 3 podcast. This is episode 43. Dexter Olly, welcome back. How you doing guys? Just about hanging on, I think I've just done the seating plan for the strategy days. I say just done it. It took me all all last night and a good core of a bottle of whiskey. But other than that, yeah, things are great. I've got lots of people I think will be very happy with the people they're meeting and seeing and working. I always know when you're busy working because you haven't been on Instagram posting from some golf course somewhere for a year. Thank you very much. Yes, yes. Although you've obviously noted that I shot 72 the other week. I even had someone who I've never met before at the golf club message me privately and say, how have you played so well, what did you do? And I think the fact that someone was asking me for my advice was hilarious because the previous week and indeed this weekend I shot nearly 90. So it's a complete accident. And so therefore he was completely misled thinking that I was good at golf. I only saw you trying to wangle a free round of golf and Augusta Georgia. The algorithm just brought this in front of me last week. That was right. So someone posted on LinkedIn about a job for an agronomist at Augusta National Golf Club, one of the most famous clubs in the world. And I couldn't resist commenting on LinkedIn and say, well, if you want someone to come in and look at the sustainability of Augusta National, I can help. Gotta keep trying. You think it's very important. Well, the algorithm decided it was very important that I know that you were trying to wangle a free round of golf. Everything's important, Dexter, I do. You should do that by now. Wonderful stuff. Well, look, we've got a couple of great guests, three great guests on this week's episode. All you spoke to Devin and Bridget from PCS, PSCI. We also spoke to the guys at electricity maps. It's all that coming up. Before we get into all that, I thought we'd spend a bit of time looking at your latest research coming out of these three peer group, Ollie, which is fascinating. Lots of rich data and insights. All the information telling us some really interesting things about the current state of play, I guess, when it comes to dealing with scope three and finding solutions and all the things that people are grappling with. Just so everybody understands then, you're speaking to scope three guys all the time. And this latest bunch data, was it more than 200 people responded to this? Yeah, give us the context, what we're looking at here. I know this is a moment why it almost feels like I sound intelligent about this topic. And it's purely because lots of people have told me what they think and feel. So, what we do, obviously, for every meeting of the scope you've been, and we've got the big London modern, obviously, as we record happening next week, is we ask everyone what they've achieved in the last year, what they want to achieve in the year ahead, what their challenges have been, what their advice is for others. And we also ask them for what their big questions are for all of the big themes of scope three, which we then brief all the speakers with. So, the speakers are essentially briefed with what the room wants to hear, rather than the other way around. And it's bags of stuff. Yes. And there's over 230 different responses. We've got tons of data. And because we do this every month, I was able to also review where we are a year on from last year, which I thought was fascinating. But so we've got a top ten challenges on scope three and they haven't really changed. I think pretty much month on month, it's still about data, still about supplier engagement, although the number one really is about shifting from scope three data into real supplier action. So that's a theme that runs throughout this is people really wanting to drive action, not just collect data, which has been an understandable theme for a while. But it feels like it's definitely coming to a head. Obviously, as was the end of last year, the concerns about changing regulations, standards and all of that, more from that one from you Dexter, I'm sure in a second. Ultimately, helping procurement, really help focusing on prioritisation. I think one big theme that's coming through for this year is about business case, which again, it sounds like a cliche. We've been wanting business cases forever. But I think what people really want and need now, particularly in the environment, is case studies aren't enough. They can't go back to their business with case studies. They need to go back to their business with business cases, which is what you really do with case studies. If you want your business to follow them, it's to write business cases. And so I think one of the commitments that we're making for the next week and so on is to try and share as much business cases rather than just case studies as possible for action, which I think is really important. I saw a Bane study recently that said 70% of procurement execs expect to allocate more money to more sustainable suppliers by 2028. And the problem with that is you can't do that without good quality data and really taking action. So I think, I think there's all of this kind of speaks to a kind of impatience across the system. People really just wanted to do more and do it in a way that really drives change across the system. Let me just dig into some of this stuff. There's a big piece on supplier engagement, which I know that your peers have been telling you is one of the biggest challenges and has been for a while now. What is the more specific challenge here? Is this about kind of broad engagement? It's not really working, so it needs to be a bit more targeted. And then I wonder when are we going to see some green shoots with this? First of all, we've been talking about supplier engagement for a long time. What's changed in how peers are approaching that engagement with suppliers? That's a good one. So I think ultimately, looking at the data, people, I think the comment that we pulled out was the concept of supplier engagement. People are wanting to understand more about how to actually make it happen, make it more targeted and to actually get action out of the suppliers, rather than education. So they want suppliers to act, not just be educated. I think that's an absolute key one. So you know, ultimately, with the big news that's relevant to this is in the next week, we're going to be launching our supplier decal program, which is in saying, don't just educate the suppliers, get them into cohorts, get them into programs to buy renewable energy, invest in energy efficiency, heat decarbonisation, and also we're launching more on how to source low carbon materials and things like that. So it's really about helping suppliers to take action, not just to be educated on it. I guess what that means in practice is less supplier engagement webinars and activities where you're sort of teaching them to suck eggs at a lot of the time for some of them or just helping them get started, but actually trying to give them practical business cases, tools, initiatives, programs, projects that they can actually sign up for. You can actually track progress on. So increasingly, not just getting them to sign up to activities and projects either, but being able to track actual reductions from them. So I think that's the big change. Ultimately, the desire to get better data from them remains, and I think there's a lot of interest in creating PCF's supplier training. So it's training for suppliers on PCF's, how to actually get product carbon footprint data better more easily from suppliers is another area where increasingly the peers are wanting to get more from it. So yeah, there's been a lot of talk about PCF's over the past year. Has not there? Like it's been a big focus, but the actual volume PCF has been exchanged is still limited. I mean, I know there's been a lot of success through PACT and all of that, but it's still compared to compared to the actual volume of corporate data being exchanged and the amount of information across the system. It's still relatively low and still needs a lot of work. Yeah, consistency, quality of them. The ability to compare them, there's a lot of work to do on that front, I think. What's some of the other things here? To prove in reductions in credibility seems to be sort of a key topic as well. A lot of anxiety around double counting things like that. What is worrying peers most in this respect would you think thanks to in terms of sort of proving progress? Well, I think overall, this points to the pressure that the rollbacks are having on the system. A lot of these changes are really about quantifying impact, driving change, all of that sort of stuff. So I think what's coming through here is actually a lot of the kind of internal conversations in these organizations where people are asking more challenging questions of the day to direction you say, "What are you actually doing in the supply chain there? Are you actually making a difference?" Show me the data, show me what you're actually, the change that you're actually driving. So I think everybody across this system is feeling a bit more pressure. Then there's also, right, there's big standards questions here as well, right? So how all of this connects, how you actually quantify all of this and report on it. And I think a lot of the challenges that the peers are raising here are really legitimate and absolutely need to be addressed. And I think personally, they need to be addressed within the current standards and systems that we have, like the GHG protocol, for example. But, you know, as we were talking about a bit earlier, like the idea that the diagnosis of the problem is absolutely valid. But what we're finding is lots of random solutions out in the mic. And I think carbon measures is jumping on that. And I think that's a huge challenge for the wider system because we don't need another standard. I think we actually just need to double down on what we've got. We need to make sure that that works. I think too much confusion in this space, we're getting the peers are getting to a point where they're really starting to drive change. You can see it. And then the data that Olli was showing us, right, it's really starting to happen. You know, the movement from just gathering information is starting to happen. Real expectation of driving change across system is starting to happen. And then if you throw another standard into that, you just kind of messed the whole confusion. Yeah, yeah. And actually, Olli, when you look at what's changed in the last 12 months, I mean, there's quite a few sort of good news stories in here, isn't there? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I looked at the difference between this year and last year. And it is almost exactly 12 months. And the big difference in the challenges is definitely, you know, for another one was getting, instead of getting better data, it's actually turning that data into reductions. Instead of just supply engagement as a principle, how do you actually do it at scale and targeted? So those two things need to happen as well. You can't just engage everyone with the same message. The tools and standards, confusion. So, you know, too many tools, too many standards, too much of everything. It was really about how do you, instead of navigating all those things, how do you actually make sure you implement and integrate them effectively, which I thought was really good? The big one I really liked was this desire to go from involving procurement to helping procurement own it as well, which I thought was really interesting. So, because just involving them as one thing, getting to own it, and there'll be plenty of people who disagree with the idea that procurement should own it, but I think on some level, they should own it. And then ultimately, people clearly moving from just ambitions and targets to facing the consequences of the targets that they've set. You know, how do they continue to have credibility around those targets, trade-offs, return on investment and business case for all of it, I think that makes sense. But just reflected on what you said, I think, you know, the Mark Carney speech at Davos, I don't think I think struck a chord with a lot of people, because I think it bleeds down to this as well. We can call bullshit on a lot of the stuff that we've been doing for a long time. You know, nostalgia is not a strategy and all of that sort of stuff, hope isn't a strategy either. I think the whole world is calling bullshit on things that are bullshit. And I think at the end of the day, a lot of work on scope 3 has been mucking about and not focusing on the things that we need, procrastination even, I think, in the face of complexity. So I think there is a hopefully a general vibe that is positive that can shine a light on the stuff that doesn't work. And if more and more leaders are shining on the light on the stuff on scope 3 that frankly hasn't shown any movement or isn't working, that's got a very good thing. So I think it is putting pressure on people to do more and show more results that increasingly are linked to lower costs and lower risk and as well as lower impact. So I don't think that's bad. That's absolutely right. I mean, like, look at that procurement involvement to procurement ownership piece, right? If procurement properly owns this, you know, it's a functional reporting line within the business, right? And that is where all data needs to sit, right? If you've got data on suppliers sitting in lots of different parts of the business and nobody's fully accountable for this stuff, right? Somebody in sustainability is the client of the data but somebody in procurement is getting the data. You know, you've got a complete mismatch there. And so as you say, evolution of the space in response to just being more serious and taking more serious action, it means that we are getting to a place where business, this is proper business data that's just expected to be of a high quality and just is used in mandatory reporting and regulatory reporting line. And that changes the whole game. It's not voluntary. It's mandatory. Yeah, exactly. And the summary that the admittedly the AI gave from all of the 230 insights about the year ahead was 20, 26 is the year's Scope 3 moves from data foundations to managed and I would chuck actual decarbonisation programmes embedded in procurement driven by suppliers and judged by reductions. I love that judged by reductions bit. And the less pithy version was less counting, more cutting. Love it. And I love the fact that all this stuff is driving what's going to happen next week and all of your presenters and people that are sharing stuff on stage. It's all very much linked to what the peers are asking for, which is great. It's exactly how it should be. So we're looking forward to all that. We're going to put out a couple of articles and newsletters this week that's kind of summarise all this stuff. So it'd be very useful to anyone listening to what's to grab that as well. But yeah, that's cool. So let's get on with this episode. This episode of the Scope 3 podcast is supported by our friends at Electricity Maps. Electricity Maps is on a mission to decarbonise electricity by building the world's most comprehensive granular and useful electricity data platform. If we're going to make the very best use of clean power, we're going to need to rethink the power system, orchestrate it in ways that balance supply and demand at all times. And without real time data, it's going to be really very, very hard. Electricity Maps sees a world where granular data is used to bring back physical representiveness into electricity accounting and where any grid connected system reacts to grid connections in real time in order to reduce their cost and emissions. If you want more information, head to ElectricityMaps.com. Now in the first part of the show, Oli has a chat with Bridget Ferrari who's been on the show before you might remember. She's from Takeda and he's also talking to Devin Carlsdale from Bristol Myers Squibb, two other people helping shape how the pharmaceutical industry tackles scope through emissions through the pharmaceutical supply chain initiative. They go inside what large-scale collaboration really looks like in practice how you align dozens of companies send a clear signal to suppliers and avoid overwhelming them with conflicting asks. If you're working on supplier engagement and decarbonisation programmes or wondering how collective action actually accelerates change, it's a conversation that's full of really great insight. We hope you enjoy it. So as we go into 2026 with the podcast, me and Tom like breaking some rules really, so the idea of having one guest on and having new guests on, we're breaking both of those. We couldn't resist having a double act on again for the podcast and offers ever returning guests. Bridget Ferrari of Takeda, you should be on it, I say yes. What an honor more so than pretty much anything I've ever been acknowledged for in my life. Well there you go. I'm excited for all the right things. And of course you're all the first member of our scope free running club that's taking place in a week's time or so, isn't it? Yes. Very excited. You're far too enthusiastic, but however we're joined by another very good friend of the group and of herself Devin Carlsdale of Bristol Myers Squibb. So hi Devin, welcome. Yes, thanks I, thanks for having me, glad to be here. Yeah, you're extremely welcome. Now I think one thing it's said, so we do, do, do represent the pharmaceutical industry a lot on the scope free pee group and all, indeed on the podcast, but I don't think we make any apologies for that because there's such amazing stuff happening. And one of the things we wanted to talk about, you're both involved heavily in the pharmaceutical supply chain initiative and you've had quite a year and probably we've got quite a year ahead of you in terms of activity. And it is, as I said in the world of collaborations, one that is doing some great stuff. So we thought we'd talk a little bit about your, your work there on the episode today. So why don't we start there, but before we do that, let's introduce yourself. So Devin, do you want to start? What's your, what's your background, where have you been and how do you define yourself in the role and in the PCI? Yeah, absolutely. So again, Devin Carlsdale, I come from Bristol Myers Squibb, a global biopharma company based in New Jersey and the states here. And there's a manufacturing footprint in North America and Europe and we have a presence all over the world. But I really, run our responsible sourcing teams, so all things scope three and supply chain decarbonization, also looking at human rights and other ways to make sure our third parties are meeting our expectations. How it got here, long and winding rail, we could probably spend a long time on that, but I think at the core of it, right? I'm just super committed to trying to make an impact at scale. And I think supply chain is the perfect playground to do that. And so shortly after joining five, five and a half years ago, I was introduced to the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative, which is the industry's largest consortium of pure companies that come together to address environmental and social common sort of challenges that they can bring solutions to again at scale. And I realized this is the perfect place to collaborate. And I've been just delighted at the level of collaboration and willingness, because in general, I think the pharmaceutical industry may get a wrap for being ultra competitive. And in the commercial space it is. But the good news is in this pre-competitive space, we're all in it to win together, because it is a common challenge. So I've had the pleasure of partnering with Bridget over the last year in co-running the D-Carp Committee. And we have this common challenge. And it's actually the D-Carp Committee is one of many committees that PSCI hosts. And again, it's all the member companies deciding which are the priority areas for our industry, D-Carp being one of them. And not to congratulate ourselves, but it is the largest most popular committee. And with good reason, there's a lot of common pain points around it. The agenda's growing very fast. And I think there's a deep need to figure out how we can come together with common messaging and common solutions. And so this last year has just been a whirlwind of scaling what the committee has to offer. The topic team has to offer to bring our third parties along for the ride. So happy to get into that more. But that's kind of the overview we've been. I sometimes forget that the PSCI is more than just decarbonisation. I have to say, maybe it's because I'm so embedded in it. But you are, of course, you're much broader than that. There's no doubt lots of other wonderful people in one of our committees doing great stuff. But I do often forget that. So it's great to have you back, Bridget. And obviously, we've been doing lots this year and very excited things. But for those that, of course, haven't listened to every episode, because I'm sure there's people out there who don't listen to every episode. Maybe introduce yourself in your background as well. Yes, so thanks, Oli, Devon. I'm Bridget Ferrari. I am the director for Supplier Sustainability at Decada and the co-lead for the pharmaceutical supply chain initiative with Devon. I've been the co-lead since the team started. Since the group started, I think, back in 2022, because I'm just fascinated by the work that we're doing and the opportunity and potential. And as soon as I found out that my trusted and beloved prior co-lead, Lucy was moving to chair the PSCI. My first thought was, I need to recruit Devon. And so that was my first phone call. And we've been moving along ever since. So quick background. I've been at Decada for just over almost nine years. I have a background in supply chain and sourcing in early start of my career. And I was asked to start a sustainable supply chain program years ago when it was very new. I had no background and no knowledge, except many years of Catholic school and being told that I can do better. We can do better. There is improvements made around the world that needs to be happening on a regular basis. And how can I help with that? So the supply chain sustainability program was like drinking water after being in the desert or walking into a forest after seeing just black and white. It was just exactly the questions I asked about supply chain that nobody really wanted to answer. And how are we treating the people that do the work for our company? How are they getting paid fairly? Are we managing the waste? The materials fairly ethically across the globe? So this was the answer to so many of those questions and just became this enormous puzzle that I've been trying to work out ever since. Excellent. So let's talk about, let's dive into that decarbonization committee then and the efforts of the work that you're doing, the PSCI. What does that committee do? What does he talk about? What are the challenges that you're trying to tackle for your members? Well, I would say ultimately, the biggest thing we're trying to solve is we have this common, again, challenge that is the majority of our respective emissions are found in our supply chain. I know at BMS, it's 83%. I know at a common pharma company, it's anywhere from 70 to over 90% of our emissions sit in our scope three. And of course, as we all know well in this podcast, it is through indirect influence and purchasing power and negotiations and incentives, et cetera, that we're going to all collectively leverage to influence change, but it's as bridged alluded to, it's a puzzle. And so what the committee is trying to do is say, what are the ways that we can do this in a common way, a pre-competitive way that can really get at the core pain points that are really sort of stymying our suppliers to get after the agenda as quickly as possible to address those emissions. So we have a few work streams. And so for example, we have a work stream that is dedicated to driving capability around science-based target setting. And actually just this past autumn, we launched during that the decarpt summit and an announcement that we were going to have a subsidized service to basically have a third party come and educate our third parties on how to set science-based targets, answer common questions, but also answer those niche kind of stickier questions about things like scope and practicality of actually designing a decarpt strategy for their organization, things of that matter. So that's one work stream. Another one is all things supplier engagement. How do we get after this huge supply base, thousands of suppliers who have a huge distribution curve of maturity and bring them into one house under one narrative and bring them up the scale of maturity to decarbonize faster together. And then we have all things sort of capability building. And so we've delivered some really amazing assets in the world of like a decarpt playbook. We've got initiatives going around on green heat and other things of that nature. And so all of that is to say, if there are already solutions out there, we are the first ones to say, let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's figure out as an organization how we endorse those initiatives and partner and accelerate change. But if there's things that simply don't exist or not in the context of pharma, how do we then start to design and build that out to make it as clear and concise and compelling as possible for our suppliers? So those are some of the highlights. I don't know, Bridget anything to add. - I think one thing I would add is understanding the power of the collective effort in aligning around common approaches but also understanding, I think one of the really interesting exercises that I go through once a year is looking at all of the member companies that have a science-based target. Because what are the commercial interests? What are the interests when my category managers go out to talk to their suppliers? They're interested in looking at what's the revenue impact, what's the potential for increasing sales. So taking that effort to look at, just see normative of how much of the pharma market is represented by members of the pharmaceutical supply chain initiative that have a science-based target. You know, looking at those commercial incentives that in a pre-competitive way, which is of course critical, to understand how can we make this easier, how can we make this more clear cut, how can we provide more solutions, more support for our collective interests and our collective goals? So I think looking at it from that perspective is also really important because that is ultimately what we're trying to do is address the environmental impact while also trying to drive the commercial benefit. - Yeah, everyone talks about collaboration. It's a very romantic idea. It's always to take away from every conference. And it's almost sort of said that it's really easy, but it's not easy. Is it collaboration? It can be quite slow. It's decision by committee in some cases. There's lots of competing ideas. Everyone wants something special for themselves, even though they also want to collaborate. So maybe can you reflect on some of those reality, some of those challenges that you guys have faced in the PSC eye? You know, what isn't quite as easy as you think when it comes to sort of collaborating on these things? Well, you've just described Ali the planning of the PSC eye decarbonization summit in a nutshell, like Billy. I mean, it was months of bringing together this very large tent of actors who were all very passionate and very keen to deliver an amazing and unprecedented event. But in many cases had potentially different ways of working, different outcomes they were interested in securing. What I would say too, the big challenge in Pharma is we have the great benefit of having a group of peers that are quite advanced and quite mature and are looking to really be on the cutting edge of what good looks like, not just in Pharma, but I think across industry. And then you've got a group of members that are somewhere in the middle. And then you've got actually a relatively long tail of new or emerging peers in this space. And so how do we deliver a product that is reflective of all members' needs? That's encompassing of all majorities to say you're going to get benefit out of this. And so it was not for many painstaking meetings to flush some of that out. But I think what we came to, which was quite compelling, and we got a lot of good feedback on this, was that we designed the summit by maturity pathway, if you will. And so we made sure that if you were advanced, there were sessions for you that were compelling based off of where you were. We're not talking about science. space target setting 101. We're not talking about setting a greenhouse gas inventory, right? We're now talking about more advanced topics, such as green heat, such as product carbon footprints and life cycle assessments. We're talking about things that you actually need now in your journey to keep heading to that next level. However, we also come to understand that we had the majority of our participants that were there. We were somewhere in the middle or in the earlier stages of their journey. So we made sure that the summit was also designed to have sessions that were just starting out or progressing for those folks somewhere in the middle. And I think that really struck a balance to say this is a all are invited experience, but we also have to tailor this in a way that's going to meet suppliers where they are in this journey and do it in a compelling way. However, on top of all of that, right? So you've got all the minutia in the content and the journey setting that segmented by maturity. We made sure that the commercial imperative was overlaid and something that is relevant for all players in a very uniform way. Because whether you're starting out or you're much further down the road, you must hear that this is getting embedded into whether it's contracts, whether it's RFPs, whether it's incentives, whether it's in carbon pricing. And that message, we were very, very keen to get into the stage when we had about 13 CPOs or other senior executives represented from our member companies who sat on three panels across the two days, who did a fantastic job threatening that needle across all of those sessions to say, not only do we care about this, but here's how it's actually materializing in our procurement practices. So that was the through line. And then it's the how we segment it across the sessions. Just a quick shout out, Ali, to you for helping us organize and get those. Oh, that's very come on. I was getting impressed. You and Rona getting those those sessions set up that was really that demonstrated the commercial power and imperative, not just coming from those of us heavily and deeply involved in decarbonization, but also this does represent a commercial interest. And this is an important business differentiator and strategic differentiator and how companies operate if they want to remain competitive. Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it was it was the realization they were going to do this. And this was a sort of microcosm of all the work that you do in the PCI. Yes, it was an event. Yes, supplies are getting involved, but it had to reflect everything you'd learn, everything you knew. And I think one of the successes was building out that essentially a panel of suppliers who informed the summit. And frankly said things like please get procurement leaders involved. Otherwise, we don't really believe that anything will change after we attend these education sessions and come back with the ideas to the procurement team. There was that feeling that there can be this disconnect between what you guys want the suppliers to do and what the procurement professionals will say when they're coming back to them with new low-carbon solutions in the future. So it's making sure the suppliers felt that, you know, that you were serious about that. The alignment question, I mean, that's just what PSCI does is it aligns the asks it makes it clear, it gets everyone on the same page or close to being on the same page. I think I was in. But as you said, the meeting suppliers where they are, it's the old cliche. But if you if you try to help suppliers on something that they've already done or try to help them something that they can't certainly can't do any time soon, you lose them. And I think that that was a was a real success. Now, there was some fantastic outcomes, because what's the point of doing something if it doesn't produce outcomes? And I know you spent a lot of time on this Bridget and and reviewed the sort of questions that were asked over the over the over the two days. And what was some of the insights? What was some of the actions that that feel like they're coming out of it? What was some of the insights? Yeah, so it was really interesting. There were 303 questions asked across 13 different sessions. And there were really six areas that kind of emerged as core capability gaps related to, you know, as is always a discussion point data, but interestingly enough, it was a span of questions related to data going from the most mature PCF LCA type data questions all the way to, you know, where do I start? So the data question is always a big one. Also, you know, what was particularly insightful from some of the questions in the feedback we got was just how do we stream line things like tools, templates, systems? How do we better participate or partner with our suppliers to make this less of a bottleneck in a little bit more effortless or seamless? Particularly, even just to me, something that emerged was the issue related to governance capability building within procurement. We're so focused on suppliers and helping raise the abilities capabilities of our suppliers. I think sometimes we're missing our teams are the ones that are actually delivering this, you know, our individual respect for procurement teams. So how can we help them develop that knowledge? And so what that's really done is help us develop a view for some of the actions or some of the things that we're going to prioritize in 2026. So we're going through that process now taking all of those insights, all of the feedback, some of the, you know, the attendees were very generous in giving us indicators or their thoughts about what would be more useful, more helpful, and really using that to develop priority lists for 2026 and beyond. So those insights really form a much more nuanced and robust funnel for things that we should be looking at and that we are looking at. And in 2026, as we look at, how do we accelerate? How do we make this more actionable action oriented and achievable across the span of maturity and the value chain? And so Devon, we're about a week away as this goes out from meeting up in London for the scope of strategy days. We have so many of your colleagues coming along. We've got a PSI meeting on the first day. So what do you think are going to be some of the key things that the PSI, but individually and collectively, I suppose we've got to focus on for this year ahead? What do you think is going to be your priorities, do you think? Yeah, so I think we have the good problem of having delivered a really a well received event last autumn. You know, we had almost 1400 attendees from over 800 unique companies that that represented, I think we were in the trillions of dollars of market cap of members, you know, of suppliers, as well as member companies that were in attendance there. We've got this big ground swell. I think folks now understand what the power of collective engagement really looks like. But now we have the good problem of saying, how do we now rise to meet that expectation as we move forward? And for me, I keep coming back to we really have to wrestle this question of what is decarbonization as a service look like? And what I mean by that is that there's been a lot of noise in this space over the last few years. And rightfully so, everyone's coming to the table with solutions and silver bullets around data. And you know, really insightful programs with experts, but as as someone who perhaps doesn't do decarbonization as as a living at the from the supplier side, this can look extremely noisy and extremely disjointed and very hard to latch on to. And especially imagine you're working with a handful of different pharmaceutical companies, you may be getting a myriad of requests that are not the same necessarily at nature. So you can appreciate that this is overwhelming and the risk of that is we lose engagement, we lose acceleration, we lose the reason why we're here, which is actually to affect change and decarbonize. So the main principle I'm looking to wrestle with, you know, at the scope through peer group in London is, how do we start to because the actions will come? I have no doubt we have a group of really sophisticated members in our committee, who are all committed to again demystifying and harmonizing things like PCFs and data exchange, like how we continue to embed this commercial imperative, how we get the SBTI setting right and accelerated across our supply basic, these things will come. But for me, the bigger question as we move into 26 is, how do we create this harmonized experience? If I'm the supplier and I'm getting invited or or maybe a little bit more sort of directly asked and requested and expected to engage on this journey, knowing how complex it is, how are we as the stewards and as the face of the pharmaceutical supply chain, as on all things decarb, creating an experience that is coherent and easy to adopt so that we're taking away any excuse from a complexity perspective, not to get involved, and actually go and take action. If we can solve to that, right, then I think that the actions and the content behind it will come. I think it'll be a great opportunity to go a little bit deeper on some of the topics that we've been discussing as an industry, but also learning from some of our fantastic peers that are doing the good work on this topic as well. So I look forward to hearing more about some of the progress that's been made over the past year, hearing from some of the some of the kind of leading other leading thought. Oh, you know, the deep thinkers. So there we go, that's a bit of work. I'm a topic in just what's developing, how can we bring that back to the decarb team with PSCI and not only ideas and innovations, but also just are there other industry group, how are other industry groups working, how are they partnering together? What can we learn from them that we haven't thought of and what can we share that it worked for us that you really was right. Yeah, I think it's worth mentioning that our good friends, Rob Williams and Chris Lowe have been supporting this But the PSCI is the central hub of activity on sustainability and supply-tailing farmers. So there are so many other initiatives. You've got obviously SMI, you've got Activate, you've got Energize, you've got CPHI, you've got so many different other things. But the PSCI has taken the lead to help both members and suppliers understand that complexity of initiatives and be the hopes for a home or the map or the hub for that, which I think is really important. And it's great to see that. And, but yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head as well. Devin, about the supply voice. We need to understand the supply voice, but also understand the person in the supplier that we're talking to. Because quite often when you're told to do something that you know you need to do, you just need to convince your boss to do it. It's not more education that you need. It's business cases that you need. I know I need to do this. Stop telling me I need to do this. Give me more business case. Give me more excuse. Give me more demand. Give me more signal that I can take to my leadership. And then I think sometimes just educating to death. Sometimes just an always everyone. When actually what they need is tools. So yeah, it's great to see you thinking feeling that. Okay, last question. And I know you've got both got so many good friends and people to shout out about. So who do we want to kind of acknowledge? Who's working in the PSCI or your organization that we should give a shout out to? Yeah, I mean, there's no question. You know, we look at our partners on the work stream leads. I think that's an easy place to go between Diana Killian and Sandra Matamoto, Santa Jorge Jimenez Elesias, Chris Lowe. They're Nava. I mean, there are others, but you know, there is a group there that's leading the work streams that has been doing a really big lift in the last year. Certainly in the last year, if not longer, to bring this agenda to stage. So I would happily point to them as other leaders who are bringing a lot of expertise to the space. Yeah, absolutely. Bridget? Yeah, so I think an under celebrated or recognized person doing a lot of great work in this is our dear friend, Rebecca Bocaugh, or Bex Bocaugh. She stepped in as the PM when we realized how we normist this entire summit would become and how much more work it would be than a couple of people could really execute. But more than, so not only was she a fantastic partner on keeping us on track and focus, but also she did a lot of content developed for the idea, the concept behind target setting as a service and helping our suppliers develop that concept. So I think Bex brings a different view to this. She does work for SLR, who is a secretariat for PSCI. But I think her, without her, we would not have been successful. We would not have been nearly as successful as we were. So she's not only a fantastic project manager, but she's also deeply knowledgeable about decarbonization, scope three, the firm industry. And it's just fantastic to work with. Yeah, great shower. I have to say, being in the middle of the conversation about this summit, looking in Bex and Simon's eyes as the people that were trying to herd the cats, I felt like I had a lot in common with them and trying to please everyone and trying to bring everyone together. So that cannot be underestimated the work that they do. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on, guys. You're also part of one of my favorite WhatsApp groups, I have to say. [LAUGHTER] And we're not always having a go at Chris Lowe, are we, and taking the McAdmin, but it's a wonderful-- it's great fun working with you guys, always has been. And looking forward to seeing you in London in a week's time also when this comes out. And here's to another amazing year together. And maybe even more events and summits and supplier engagement, I guess. Amazing. Thanks for the time, man. Thanks, Ali. Thanks, Demon. [MUSIC PLAYING] OK, next up, I'm joined by Olivia Karadi. He's the founder of Electricity Maps, and one of the people who's done more than most to change how organizations understand electricity emissions. We talk about why annual averages hide the real impact of electricity use, why hourly data changes decision making, and how companies can move from carbon reporting to actual emissions reduction. Whether you're grappling with scope 2 today, or trying to understand how electricity shows up in scope 3 through cloud and data and digital services, it's a conversation I think you're going to enjoy. Here it is. Olivia, welcome to the scope 3 podcast. How's things? Thank you. Thank you for having me. No worries. And happy new year to you as well. Likewise, yes. Excellent. Just so our listeners can get an idea of who you are, and where you are, LBA. Just give us a brief background. Absolutely. So I'm half French, half Danish sitting in Copenhagen right now, a very frosty weather this morning, lots of snow, which is nice. But you know, puts some challenges when you're biking to work as I'm doing. And my background, originally, is in engineering and machine learning in the energy sphere. I've done a couple of things and recently I have been working on electricity maps while I say recently, but actually it's been quite a few years. We're very soon rounding the 10 years of existence of the electricity maps project, which is, you know, makes me older, I guess. Let's go back in time a bit then. So before electricity maps, what were you doing? So you launched almost 10 years ago. Before that then, Olivia, what were you doing? Yeah, so we can start maybe at my studies. I was working very closely with the energy space because I really wanted to work in forecasting. I loved really using computers and data in order to make magical things. And for me, predicting the future was pretty magical. With, you know, formulas and numbers was like, how is this even possible? So I worked in Copenhagen in a research institute at the Technical University of Denmark where we were trying to predict the electricity consumption but also trying to predict how much the wind turbines would be producing depending on what the weather conditions were like. Denmark was one of the first places in the world where you had that much wind back in the days. So there were a bit pioneers there. And after that, I went to IBM Research where I was working on simulating large electricity grids and studying how they would cope with increasingly fluctuating wind and solar supply. So based on the weather conditions, you have electricity prices that start to fluctuate drastically and the thing we were trying to study is could all your home appliances, dishwashers, washing machines, but also industrial systems, could they ramp up and down in order to reduce the amount of balancing that would be required on the grid? So work on these things that I went to Google for a bit of time, working on some things that were a little bit dissimilar. I didn't work on energy stuff there but was working on Google Maps. And you start to see a thread there, energy, Google Maps, and so I went into a startup afterwards. French startup didn't do anything energy related, but was lucky enough to scale it up for during two years, reach 30, 35 people. And then after that, I left because I wanted to get back into the energy sphere and started electricity maps at that point in time. Yeah, with your studies and your background and even working with Google Maps, I guess you were destined to start a business like electricity maps. What is it that electricity maps does then, Olivier, walk us through it, what's the platform doing and how are people using it? Yeah, so right now it's an electricity data platform that centralizes all information there is about the electricity system. The way that I typically describe it is to say, pick a globe, point to any location, and then we'll tell you everything there is to know about the electricity system at that particular location. Whether it's real-time electricity prices, whether it's historical carbon content of the electricity or whether it's a prediction of how much wind production there is going to be. We're trying to capture all of it in one platform, but it didn't start out that way back in the days. The real question that I wanted to answer back then was how much are renewables actually supplying or covering of the electricity demand on the grid? You know, there was this newspaper that was saying Denmark ran 100% on wind yesterday. I'm like, well, but what about today? What about the day before? And how often does this happen actually? And then I just answered that question by building this visualization that showcased in real-time how much of our electricity is actually covered by renewables and by low-carbon electricity. And that became quite popular and then it turns out folks required our data in order to build services. And so we started to build out from there, build an API, build forecasting capabilities, and that expanded slowly over time and became the global data platform we are today. - So who's using the platform today? - Mostly large tech companies, either using a lot of electricity themselves or building products that indirectly are using electricity. So a couple of examples is we can start with Google being one of our biggest partnerships and the biggest historical partner that we have as well. They're doing a couple of things. They have data centers which have a bit of flexibility. What they're doing is that they end up classifying every piece of computation that needs to happen at Google, whether it's internal calculations or external, and then they give it a priority. and based on that priority. you can start shifting things around in time. So saying this thing is actually not that important, it just needs to finish within 24 hours. And then this thing gets pushed at the end of the queue if the electricity is super dirty in one location. - Right. - And then what I can also do is shift location. So they say right now the electricity is very dirty in a particular location, but in another data center, it's actually quite clean. So we're gonna shift it around. So what they get from us is a forecast for all of their data centers of how clean the electricity is or is going to be. And then they have the scheduling system that can help optimize their data centers. So that's an internal use case. They're optimizing their own electricity consumption. But something else they did, and we're talking about scope three today, that's very relevant for a lot of companies out there. A large portion of their scope three will be the cloud provider they're using. And that cloud provider is electricity consumption. And so Google Cloud was one of the first hyperscalers to come with a tool on top of Google Cloud that can tell you here's the carbon footprint of your computations on the cloud or your cloud usage broken down by service and by day. And that type of resolution was unprecedented at the time. I still don't think anyone is really matching that resolution. And so that's the second thing that we're doing with them, but they've expanded it to other services now. If you're using Google Workspace, meaning Google Mail, Docs, Sheets, and so on, you also can have a breakdown of the carbon footprint of these services that under the hood it uses our data to know how dirty is the grids when Google is using electricity to process your emails or to power some communication that are running, right? So that's one example of something we're doing with a large tech company like Google. And I love that. And we talk a lot on the podcast about, yes, it's great having data and visibility about impact. But actually, if you can use that to take action to reduce and decarbonize, that's something quite different. I love what you're doing there. So it's you're giving the information to make better decisions, right, at certain times the day. Absolutely. And one of the biggest levers is on window where we're talking cloud computing is figuring out what region you're going to deploy your services on. And that's something we did with Google quite early on where they build a tool that could help you pick the region based on average. This region tends to have cleaner electricity. So therefore, it's one of the lowest, let's say, high-impact low-investment actions you can make. It's very simple to move your load to a different location. You don't even need to do any time optimization. The second level is to start optimizing over time, saying, now I'm going to reduce my compute because then electricity is dirty. That's a little bit more complicated, right? But the location thing, that's a big impact. Is anyone else doing this? Or are you kind of-- Do you mean in terms of companies-- What do you mean do? --providing service? Yeah. There's not that many companies are providing the level of coverage and granularity that we are. To my knowledge, we are the only ones providing a global coverage. There's some other companies that are providing partial information, sort of European focus, and so on. But the global coverage is pretty unique to us. And it comes from the fact that early on, parts of the platform were open-sourced, meaning that if you knew about data in a particular location we weren't covering, then there was the ability, as a developer, to contribute to the platform, and turn that area that was previously unknown to us into an area that we suddenly had data that we could cover afterwards. Yeah. And it was pretty unique. Yeah, it's cool. And I assume that your platform is evolved significantly since 2016 when you launched. How then do you sort of get that balance right between offering that sort of the rigor, the accuracy, that scientific accuracy with the need for kind of something that's fairly simple and usable from an inside point of view that enables you to take action? How do you get that balance right? For us, it was about setting a minimum quality bar that we wouldn't compromise on. And once we set that bar, it was about expanding to new regions. And as soon as a region was eligible to be at that level, we would integrate it into the system. But we would never, let's say, reduce the quality or reduce the user experience because we suddenly got access to some data. Which did create sometimes, let's say, some user confusion because they could see the data on other platforms. We had a case one day where-- well, actually, a good example is the UK system. You have the carbon intensity forecast that's openly available. And that's data that is broken down by regions. The problem is that's only a forecast. So we actually aren't capable to integrate that level of granularity historically into our systems, because it's only a forecast. And that means that if you look at electricity maps, the UK is not broken down in smaller regions. We would love to do that. But we haven't been able to identify a data source yet. If anyone out there is listening and one has figured it out, then reach out and we can do it. But so far, we haven't. Yeah, too right. And you mentioned Google being a big part of yours. But I wonder then, are there industries that are kind of structurally better or worse positioned to tackle the emissions related to electricity? I mean, typically, I'm always looking at whether these companies have an incentive. And what is interesting about the big tech corporations is that they are providing services to companies who in the end care. I mean, the tech sector has historically being less margin squeezed than other sectors. Therefore, if you're a company like Spotify, then you probably have a little bit of leeway into pushing, pressuring, Google, and other providers into doing something. So they have an incentive to act. If you look at larger industrial incumbents that are not really visible to the greater public or to companies who are going to pressure because they set ambitious climate goals, then these are going to typically move a bit slower. The second component to that-- so the first component is sort of incentive or external pressure. The second component for me is whether or not you have enough flexibility that granular accounting makes sense for you. I mean, if you're running a system that needs to run 24/7, you have absolutely no wiggle room. I mean, the transportation systems in any country, the trains, and so on, you're not going to say this train is not going to run right now because the wind isn't blowing because electricity is expensive. So these guys won't really have an incentive into going into granular accounting and leveraging the whole depth and the granularity of our platform. But like a Google or electric vehicles, there's something there, right? Absolutely. And then who within the organization are you engaging with or who gets the most value from your platform? Is it sustainability guys? Is it procurement guys? Is it operations? Who are you really engaging with selling the platform? So it's typically two different areas of the organization that resonate a lot with the value proposition that we have. One, you mentioned it, you know, sustainability. They have climate goals. They need to reduce their emissions. They need to track them in a way that's very accurate that isn't going to be seen as greenwashing. So there, we're helping a lot of organizations there. And the second piece is more on the product side of things. If you look at, for example, Google Cloud, we're working together with their product team in order to ship this Google Cloud carbon footprints that helps companies reduce their footprints. We have the equivalent in the electric mobility industry where we will be working with product managers that are building smart charging features, for example, in order to help them communicate to the users, you know, the carbon benefit of charging at the right time or the price savings they could unlock from or forecasts. Yeah. So you're almost 10 years down the track now, Olivier. You're looking possibly youthful, which, you know, like so many of our guests on the podcast. We've had so many young, young looking people on the podcast. What's been the hardest thing about running this business and sort of scaling it to where you are now? What's, what have been the big challenges for you? I think the biggest challenge was that we, and I still think we, so we have been at, I still think we are a bit ahead in terms of the timing. If we break it down almost into first principles, the data we have and the result that almost of electricity maps is to look at the electricity system in real time. If you are only caring about doing your annual report with annual data, and you're actually not caring about whether your electricity came from this place at the hour by hour level, then there's really no incentive for you to use us. You could just use a spreadsheet and say on average, my electricity was 80% clean, done deal, right? And most of the carbon accounting rules right now on scope two, they're just mandating you to do an annual accounting. And so we know that, given amount of solar and wind on the grids, annual accounting just doesn't make sense. You can't power your factory with solar during the night, For example, and that is a a loobhole that exists in annual accounting, that the greenhouse gas protocol, which is the leading standard in these things, is currently revising that and changing it. But we're still a couple of years away from a place where this gets mandated to companies. So I've been really beating the drum off. We need to be accurate about where electricity comes from on an hour by hour basis. If you don't do that, you will be perceived as greenwashing, there will be problems. But we're still at the place where everyone has adopted that. And so in a sense, we're still a little bit pushing companies to do it, whereas the real incentive hasn't really gone out yet. And that's the biggest challenge, I would say. Yeah, OK, OK, that. I mean, the growth in clean energy has been almost the beacon of hope when, in times of doom, when we talk about climate resilience and the whole movement around sustainability, that it's always been a beacon of hope. But you've been looking at this stuff for a long time now. Are we underestimating just how complex the transition to clean energy actually is in the world? I know some places it's easier than others, but it depends who we actually is referring to. Because I think there's a lot of doomsayers saying, yes, this is way more complex than we think. And it turns out it's simpler, and you have the other way around. And maybe a good way to structure this is to think about everything up to like 70%, 80% renewable is that they're probably overestimating the complexity. Putting wind and solar on the grid is one of the simplest things we can do. Operating from 80% to 100% renewables-- I mean, one, you have diminishing returns. And two, the complexity of coping with the once-in-a-year event is where there's no wind and it's winter. And everyone turns on their heater and so on. That's complex. But you reap so many benefits by getting to like these 70%, 80% already, then that this is like uncontroversial. We should just do it, right? Yeah. That's the way that I'm looking at it. But in general, I think we're making it too complex. But I mean, it's easy to say also, for me, I'm more on the data side of things. I'm not running the operating system. The actual electricity grid, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're just looking in. You're enjoying running this business. It's a difficult question to answer, because I guess some days are better than others. But what's it like being running this business? And what advice would you give to other founders of climate-focused companies like yours? Well, build something you enjoy using. It would be my advice. I mean, I've always really loved data that's real time that is spatial. Because it's very concrete data. It's not this abstract, maybe, you know, financial data that lives in some abstract space. It's actually what's happening right now, where I am. And I think that getting insights from real time localized information is just fascinating. Or at least I'm very fascinated by looking at weather data, because I'm like, this is going to impact whether I, you know, take a warm coat on when I'm going biking to work today or tomorrow. So it's real time data has always been fascinating to me and extracting insights from it. And so every time that I play with the electricity map, user interface gets me new ideas, new stuff to build. And that makes the whole process enjoyable. This loop of analyzing the data, finding insights, and then sort of scaling it up to make sure others can also find the insights from it. But really, you got to enjoy the product, I think. If you don't enjoy the product, it's difficult to stay motivated in a long term, right? It is. And I wonder, because we've been asking a lot of founders about what the future looks like. We're not far from 2030, which I know is a key date for a lot of your customers, probably. What would success look like for you at electricity maps by 2030? Where do you want to be then? How different will the business look? So historically, we've been focused only on the carbon side of things. It's what we're known for. So if we help companies understand their granular carbon footprint, what we realized is that in order for change to happen, we need to provide much more than that. Folks want to reduce their costs at the same time, reduce their emissions. And so electricity maps have been evolving now a little bit silently since maybe 18 months from the carbon side of things to now start to add other signals. We have grid alerts. We have electricity prices. We're looking at power generation outages. There's a lot of things that we're starting to implement into the platform to make it a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to build stuff that interacts with the electricity grid. That's taking time. It's ambitious. It requires hiring extremely smart folks. But that's the ambition level that we have by 2030. And I'm putting this tagline, which says we're the most comprehensive electricity data platform out there. That's where we want to be by 2030. Yeah, it's very exciting. How many of you now live here? How many in the team? Roughly 30 people, all based in Copenhagen. Yeah, right. And I've just got this vision of you looking out the window there with a wind turbine moving. Your bike calls it downstairs. So this is the way to live, right? Absolutely. And right now, it would also-- everything would be covered in snow as well. But yes-- indeed, yeah. Well, look, I wish you all the best with electricity maps. Thank you for taking some time to talk to us about it and the ambition behind what you're doing. It's incredibly exciting. So thank you for joining us. Well, thank you. And thank you for having me. That is it for another episode of the scope three podcast. Thank you for tuning in. For those going to London next week, we shall see you there, which will be all very exciting. And for those that are not, we're going to miss a great event. Yeah. Anyway, miss it all, I think ultimately. Hopefully, well, 300 people can't come, but 350 can. So hopefully, as I said, everyone listening in will be able to-- we've obviously got Chicago, so if anyone's over in North America wants to come, we're all set for Chicago now on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, which will be a damn sight warmer than London in February. And I'm looking at the weather, actually, for London in February next week. It's not great. There's even a scope three run club that thinks they're getting up at 7 AM, right? On the 3rd of February. To run down the edge of the-- I mean, it's going to be like 2 foot snow, so I'm not-- There's no way I'm doing that. Absolutely no way that I'm doing that. So yeah, but everyone else that's not able to come, yes, they'll be low. So as you said, Tom, you are beautifully hope for me. I know you are beautifully putting together a lot of the insight from the strategy days, and obviously the surveys we've done. So everyone tuning in, we'll be able to take that insight, share it with their business, share it with your bosses. The other thing is, obviously, our do project list will be coming out so people can literally around the world sign up for all the activities and projects. And hopefully, in the next week or so on our website, we will have the Mac of the scope three. With all the different activities, we'll have a decision tree where you can say what your problem is, and it will direct you to the right activities, which is really cool. I'm very excited about that. So there'll be plenty for people to get involved in. So this is just a big year. As I said, I think it's an opportunity for everyone to lean on the experience of others and get more done. So no excuses really. Yeah. And just to say the next episode of the scope three podcast, we're going to record a lot of it next week in London. So I'll try and grab as many of you as possible to come and chat to me, including the person that picks up the scope three. What do you call it? The scope three person of the year? Or what? Every peer of the year is going to rhyme. So yeah, Stella from Unilever, she's no longer a Unilever now. She's moved on to another business. She picked up the gong last year. And yeah, it's a complete mystery who will win it? Is she out there? Who could it possibly be? It could be anyone. But no, there's some very good candidates. But I think it'll end up at its rightful home, the beautiful trophy. So we'll see and hear about more about that position. Lovely. Good stuff. Well, we shall see you next week in London. Dexter, you looking forward to it? Yeah, I think the Americans say pumped. I'm pumped for it. I'm looking forward to it. Very much. Everyone's looking forward to getting pumped. That's right. I also made something else sometimes. There we go. It's not a long event. I can promise you. On that note, we shall see you in London. We'll see you in London, guys.