Land, data & decision-making - Rebecca Mills, The Lever room

[Music] Kia ora, I'm Vincent Herringer and you're listening to this climate business. Every week we talk to entrepreneurs, innovators and experts leading New Zealand to net zero. I hope you enjoy the show. Rebecca Mills is the founder of the Lever Room, a strategy and technology company working across carbon, climate and nature. Amongst her many claims to fame, Rebecca helped build the B team. The Global Initiative founded by Richard Branson and Joachim Zaits. She now leads women in climate tech Australasia. She lectures at the University of Otago and I met Rebecca most recently at the Melbourne Sustainable Business Live, Sustainability Business Live, such a hard thing to say, event in Melbourne last month. And we decided that we're way over due to catch up. So welcome to the show, Rebecca. Kia ora, thanks Vincent, and really nice to be here. So it was nice to see you at that show and I had some reflections on it as a key we're going there, but what about you? What did you, any sort of top line thoughts about that event? The Sustainability Business Live in Melbourne, what really struck me about that conversation is that we've really moved from medals, so medals of, aren't we great to the mechanics? So it felt a lot less self-congratulatory than other sustainability events sometimes can. And it wasn't just, you know, look at our targets, look at our commitments. It was much more practical. How did we make this work? What's broken? How do we stop it from breaking? How do we embed this to the business? So it felt a lot more practical ideas of actually what was working and what wasn't. That was kind of the big, the big difference, more, you know, moving from what's the machinery that's needed, the cross-governments, governance, evidence, whether the information can actually help us make use of useful decisions. Thank you. Did you find the scale of ambition? I mean, obviously Australia is a bigger country, but my sense was that they were doing and they were acting, whereas it feels like in New Zealand we've slowed down a bit, possibly a government thing, but the industry picking up on that lack of momentum at a policy level, but any reflections on that? Well, I think across both countries we're really seeing that the ambition is still there, but what people are grappling with is that evidence and how we can change that risk that they're seeing and move that into decisions. So and what I mean by that is in New Zealand, for example, we've got to edge on the closeness to each other. Australia does have that edge of scale. They are a couple of years behind us on their climate-related disclosures, obviously, but in New Zealand the feedback loops are much shorter. We're closer to the decision makers, the land, the communities, and those consequences of getting it right. And we're seeing that with some of the discussion around how far should we go and would our ambition should be. And while it's true that Australia's got more corporate scale, stronger links to APAC markets, arguably, they're really just finding the commercial urgency now around that climate risk, transition planning, etc. And both markets are moving from values to value. So they're moving from sustainability is just about values to actually it's about good business value. And we're seeing that across both countries and I actually think that's all actually growing rather than diminishing. I haven't seen any signals of that and certainly not a now look. Some of the price signals coming through are driving that. I was struck by a statistic, I'll probably get it wrong, but from memory, the chair of the Climate Change Commission, Matt Kean, talked about when he was the Minister of Finance in the New South Wales Government, they would put aside 250 million a year for weather events or natural disasters. Within his 10 years that had scaled to a billion dollars, reflecting the reality of these climate events on the stage, whether they've flut, floods or droughts or extreme winds and so on. And my sense was that the reality of climate change is starting to really impact balance sheets, adaptation, disaster recovery, is that what you're picking up to in New Zealand is that the numbers now, the commercial reality of climate change is starting to be reflected in the decision making. Yeah, absolutely. And that's across two main avenues. The first one is the physical climate risk, which you've raised. And obviously we can see that a lot more now. We've got reports, left, right, and centre. But a nice story on that's not enough. A data needs to hold up and not be sort of both Melbourne, Australia and indeed, further into Europe, US, is the questions on physical climate risk aren't just, is it material? The question people are asking is the much sharper one, which is which asset, which hazard, which timeframe, what decisions change? And that's where I think the market's heading generally across both the emissions side of things, but also the physical climate risk. It's less shiny, it's more real. And I think the market across Australia is done uploading intention and it wants to see the working. So most successful companies that we're working with are the ones that can turn that ambition into actual evidence. And that's what people are ready for. They're ready for being people's workings and how does it actually, where does the rubber hit the road and what's real here? There was a huge flurry of activity around reporting and the climate dysplasia's requirements was a big task for sustainability teams. I'm sure you were involved with some of those with your clients. Australia seems to be going through that same process a couple of years down the track. What happens after those initial audits are done, the risks are identified, the ambitions and the strategies might be set. Have those audits turned into action in New Zealand corporates? Absolutely. And the first year of reporting and we involved quite heavily in that space and support companies on governance, the strategy and risk side and the metrics and the measurement. But what we've seen is this latest triumph of reporting, the integration between what's that risk and opportunity that we're seeing there, how does that actually link to our business model, our strategy and how can we use this for commercial advantage? And people are using that as an edge for commercial advantage and we are helping organisations implement tools to be able to do just that because wouldn't it be great if we could have highly successful low carbon companies born from New Zealand and Australia and growing while reducing emissions. And there are more companies that we are seeing being ambitious and building that into their business models in a way of making money and gaining that commercial advantage. How does it manifest itself? Is it just around finance and being transparent with your investors and with your banks or is it actually manifesting itself from innovations, your products, new technologies that they might be investing in? Yeah, I mean, it's all of those things and really it depends on the sector. There's different sector strategies and kind of elitians that are forming and the areas that we're quite interested in is, you know, in two big buckets of you've got the property side, residential built environment side and then also the rural land, agriculture, water culture, etc. And different clients that we work with in those kind of two main buckets and obviously EWI looking across both of those are taping different strategies that could be for example that they are using physical climate risk as a lever for making better acquisitions if they are in the business of investing in land. So they're using that for climate intelligence as businesses intelligence or others are acknowledging that cost is carbon and carbon is cost. And so they are pulling out the carbon from their products and using that as commercial advantage and marketing over their competitors. And so there's a whole toolbox of opportunity and we're only just getting into that and that's the stuff that really excites me and us and why are we kind of building tools and technologies to help with that because that's what's going to drive this sort of fly well that we need is, you know, let's be real here, is that we're really going to need to see commercial opportunity and we see massive commercial opportunity with people. Yeah that's cool. We'll talk about that tool in a minute because I know you're working on something pretty cool but I think it was you Rebecca. that Tommy and anecdote are talking to a director of a AGRIC company, might have been a horticultural company who has started out very skeptical in all what is all this work stuff about climate. And when you were able to demonstrate the impact down the line on, I think it was Kiwi Fruit orchards. And you turned this guy around, right? He was like completely convinced now of the role that climate forecasting could play in a long-term agri strategy or Hort strategy, which seems so kind of mental now that I talk about it, seems so simple. But those kind of mind-shift moments are happening, aren't they? They are. And I think the reason for that is twofold. Well, I suspect the reason is twofold. One is that people are getting more comfortable about actually being really straightforward, asking the hard decisions if something is not clear why not, how can this make me more money? And I think that's really healthy, you know, in these times for people to actually have the ability to ask those hard questions of how can we decarbonise while, you know, thriving. And that's right. And what I find is that with good science and technology, people can actually see first hand, you know, visually what's happening. And if we were able to create tools that connect that measurement and that impact outcome and make that a lot more explicit and a lot more grounded in science, then people are going to have the trust in this because, you know, let's be fair to people who are working in this space. It has been quite murky for some time, but we're getting a lot more evidence on data now and that's really exciting. It is exciting because it starts to depil it as well and it takes it away from a sort of philosophical argument, which it never should have been, right? It's about physics and chemistry and, you know, the physical reality of our planet, but has been so horribly politicised. But what you're saying now is the data in the science, the financials, the market opportunity, they're starting to line up in a way that ordinary people can talk about, right? And they're kind of used to this sort of language. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, you know, the big thing here is that we're moving from sustainability carbon climate to being, you know, a value's moral decision on some of these companies to one of value and competitive advantage. And obviously you can have both of those, you know, it's not one or the other. But we're talking about physics, chemistry, you know, what's actually happening, this is real world science. And with real impact on the supply chain and on the biosphere science, let's find my background. So a lot of the approaches that we take across both carbon measurement tools technology is really grounded in, how do we get a good handle on actually what's happening here? And how does this practically influence things? So we can see how that increases the bottom line, which is what we want to do. Yeah, totally what we want to do. And I think there's such an alignment between, sort of values and value around long term planning. And that's what those, these disclosures, I think, are forcing organisations to do is to get out of that short term cycle and start to anticipate, well, what if we were in business in 20 years time? You know, what kind of scenario might we have to construct around that? And I'm sure that this climate, this is me going on a bender, I'm sure the climate discussions are starting to have an influence on the strategic thinking about where are our markets, what kind of business do we want to be in? What sort of, how could we behave if we think that we want to be in business in 20, 50 years time? Yeah, I mean, people are asking those questions. And I'm very serious questions. And you know, boards have got a lot going on with AI, which is both, you know, a challenge and an opportunity to your political landscape, et cetera. So, you know, I wouldn't pretend that this is, you know, the only kind of mega, you know, macro scale challenge that are facing boardrooms across Australia, but an increasing number of people are really seeing this as an opportunity, as well as a risk if they actually do their good diligence and get the good data. And that's what we were interested in. I think that's where we are quite interesting because they lay down that challenge to say, well, we're not thinking we're going to go anywhere if we don't have to. And unless we're really forced to, we're going to stay here. So, how do we survive and thrive here in 300 years time? Yeah, and I mean, New Zealand and we've got that important layer, T.O. moldy layer. And it's best that, you know, brings that more relational place-based intergenerational lens to climate, land, nature, business. And really asks, from a system perspective, what's the health of the system, what are our obligations, what are we leaving behind? But how can we make what's right in front of us better? And so, you know, that's a very entrepreneurial approach to optimisation. And we're seeing more eWi across the country, really wanting to optimise to maximise those outcomes. And I think that's a real strategic advantage that New Zealand has is that integrated thinking and how that translates into business as well for eWi, but also, you know, across corporates, you know, not for profit, start up and beyond. We see a lot of that T.O. moldy lens being really helpful as we're needing to grapple with some of these long-term challenges. It's cool. It's a great kind of layer to put on top of planning, I think. I want to change the topic somewhat. We talked in Melbourne about this climate prediction tool or scenario planning tool that you're working on. Are you able to talk about that or is it too soon? Yeah, no, oh, you're good. Thanks for bringing up and very happy to talk to us. I mean, it just blew my mind what you were planning to do. And it, well, first of all, tell us what it does and how you're progressing with that. Yeah, great. Well, I mean, firstly, the big shift for us at the Lebera Romas, we're starting to productise or make more accessible what we've learned through years of advisory work. So, you know, we've been in the game since 2008, and I was in the field quite a bit of that, but we're getting a lot more practical about how to actually help companies individuals within them implement and create the outcomes they're looking for. So, the big theme is that yes, we're doing that technical strategic work, but we're turning that into, you know, looking at one of those repeated pain points into actual clearer practical tools and pathways. Yeah, great. Yeah. And that climate risk intelligence product platform that we're talking about is the first cab off the rank on that, and I can talk about that if it's helpful. Yeah, please do. What does it do? Yeah, so, can a P with a C in an eye on the end, can a P is our physical climate risk platform? And so, what we were finding is that a lot of the physical climate risk conversations was way too generic, and businesses knew that climate risk existed, but to be more useful, as we say, with those explosions, and actually the EMEFMA and museum is pointed out is they really want to see what asset, what's the hazard, which time frame, so what decisions does this actually change as you were alluding to before? How does this integrate into where the business is moving and the management decision? So, that's what can a P is built to do. So, it makes climate risk decision ready. It's a spatial platform that moves the conversation from broad language of reporting to where risk matters, what's driving it, and what that decision can inform. And, you know, we've done that because two assets can look really similar on the balance sheet, and completely different under flood, hateful, coastal scenarios. And so, we've, you know, utilised good technology, AI, and built a data stack to be able to give people access to real practical information around what that means for their piece of land, their proper data infrastructure, and, you know, have just opened the doors, able to get your access to that tool, you know, through our website there as well. And we're really excited to be launching that to the market, you know, in the next, we're putting our first customers onto the platform now. That's cool. So, it's able to mash up kind of geological and geographic data, what else, you know, sort of on biodiversity data, sort of on the ground stuff. And then, and then start to lay climate scenarios on top of that. So, might, what, what, wait, that look in different kind of, I don't know, warming scenarios or storms or what, tell me more about how you mash that stuff together. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And so, if you, you know, can imagine uploading your site to platform while looking at a property title, something like that, I'm a Kiwi Fruit grower and I've got an orchard and I need to know, I need to, as part of my kind of planning, but also my reporting, I need to talk about my climate risks and opportunities? Yeah, yeah, that's right. So every, you know, there's many companies in this country who need to do climate related disclosures and all of them need to do physical climate risk and you might be one of those or actually you might just think I'm not doing this because it was mandatory and I actually want to know what's coming in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 up to 100 years and so you're able to upload your title or your property, you know, select what you're doing with that land. So what's the land use? And then run a full earth system model that then shows you 30 to 40 climate metrics as well as information on water, soils, etc so that you can see how to best optimise your land use between now and the future time period that you're looking under, under different future scenarios. So you can look at those and actually the critical thing that we've built with canopy is made it more decision useful. What does this mean for you? If you're an Apple grower, how much wind is going to make those apples, you know, fall off the tree and you know, make it really decision useful so that you can drive it and you can see that and you don't just get all sorts of spreadsheets and data drawn at you. I just found when you were describing it to me earlier, I just found it amazing because the number of inputs into that, you know, just to do year one would be quite incredible but then you're extending it out to potentially a hundred years. And obviously it gets quite fuzzy at that point because you know, who knows what's going to happen a hundred years but that dataset is massive and messy, right? Yeah, that's right. It's massive and messy and you know, it's an interest, been an interest and an act of area of work behind the scenes of physical climate risk and the earth system modelling for about 10 years of mind and we've really got to the, you know, got to the stage. Now there's been some really good work in New Zealand and beyond. We've got to the stage of being able to utilise these big earth system models and terabytes of data and actually making a visual dashboard which is usable for people without, you know, these huge supercomputers. So we're really pleased to be in that more deep-tept space but with a really simple interface for people so they can make clear decisions which don't cost them the earth as far as, you know, going all corners of the globe and doing their own physical science and, you know, it just makes it a lot more accessible to us. It's incredible. What kind of data is available in those, those, that earth systems data you're talking about, are they kind of, you know, made available by NASA and NIOA or so on? Or do you actually have to create those yourself? Yeah, it's a mix of our own datasets and data layers and what exists, you know, already between satellite data, you know, lidar data, datasets that we've compiled over many years ourselves and also, you know, on the ground, you know, modelling data across many different variables and, you know, my background being in environmental science and, you know, a wear of the various datasets we've been able to create a stack to be able to increase the accuracy on that. And that becomes quite interesting when you are looking at the opportunity to make the best commercial use of that land while you're also creating resilience into the future. And it's very much the same approach that we've taken with another product about called tilt, which is on the emissions side of actually compiling large datasets for people to understand and measure their emissions a lot faster and therefore cheaper and more accurately. So tilt is another product give us. As a business owner myself, I'm in the consulting business and I dream of having products. What's it that tell me about the process of creating products because I find it really hard to invest time and product development, but also keep the, you know, keep the money flowing through consulting. That's such a delicate balance, isn't it? How have you done it? Yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the advantages that we have is that we've been around a little while and on the advisory side, it's really given us, you know, spendings since 2008 over 15 years now. We've spent a good amount of time with people to be able to understand their pain points and what are the real barriers for them to be able to measure, reduce, report advance and, you know, climate outcomes. And so each of our products and we've got three of them in the moment, canopies, one, tilt is for emissions and we've also got a certification, a net georecetification. All of them have come from working with our partners and clients on real problems that they have and wanting to make it better for them. We weren't sort of, you know, so we were working on it with them. And that's been a real, you know, interest in an excitement that they've been able to see the journey of, you know, us productising and helping with technologies for them to solve problems. That's really fun. Yeah, it's really good. The other thing that you did a couple years ago was, I think you did the first really decent report into oceans, New Zealand's oceans as a strategic asset. And we've always known that we've got a huge, you know, kind of footprint in fact, isn't Zealandia kind of the largest continent. But not many people had really thought about oceans as this kind of ecosystem that needs to be both managed and cared for but also could be exploited in, you know, in a good way, but also in a bad way. What, that report was commissioned that report and what did you find? Well, that was self-driven and I, you know, threw my relationship with Sir Rob Fennick, myself and Sir Rob for you passed away. We're really noticing that as you say, you know, New Zealand's got the fourth largest EZ in the world. Our oceans are a mess of sequestration, you know, opportunity, carbon sequestration, ecological opportunity that livelihoods for our people, security for our economy, you know, source of vodka, popper, etc. And we noticed together that New Zealand didn't have a good strategy or roadmap to really harness the collective effort across our ocean space. So I thought, well, you know, and historically it's been a really difficult space with different parties having diverse views and actually I thought, well, something that's clear between them is we all want abundance. So what would be those opportunities and action that could help New Zealanders shift towards that sustainable production and address those most urgent challenges, loss of biodiversity and create their abundance. And so I set to ask, for help when Sir Rob passed away asked how of a great group of diverse New Zealanders to say, you know, how could we do this? What are those building blocks of change? And for me, a big part of that was really because I saw that there was a premium opportunity for sustainable business coming out. There was the ability to really ramp up our carbon capture and storage and to, you know, optimise the well-being for this country and ocean space is just so massive. It's huge and it's dark and murky and we don't always harness the value that's there. So myself, but the likes of, and I just want to acknowledge the cross-mace who, as well as Jane Taylor, who have been incredible touchstones through the process of creating that. And obviously over the last 30 years, many others, you know, including Rainwind Purt from ADS, but others like Shelley Campbell, Tom Hishin, even from the founder of King E and others, E and Taylor, have really wanted to nudge the dial and that's another space, the ocean space that I think we've got real opportunities and real business opportunities as well. No one had really thought about it as in such a holistic way and it kind of implies a, you know, you think about fisheries. There's a minister of fisheries, but there isn't a minister of fish. And in the same way, we sort of, we think about the ocean as a simply as a resource of a sort of a source of chi. But we, not many people have thought about it as in this holistic sense of being a, you know, but also part of the stewardship, right, of what we're responsible for. Has that road map been, was that interest from government or from other organisations that have taken up any of your recommendations? Yeah, absolutely. And I guess the first thing to say is that the goal of doing this piece of, quite a large piece of work, which is, you know, within one road map. um, was to put together, um, a collective vision, which was, which was agreed across the spectrum. So we, we had commercial fisheries, um, to Ewi Māori, to business leaders, to Rangatahi, you know, right across, to be able to, um, get that roadmap of what we could do. So first of all, the delivery of the reporter South, demonstrated that we actually got that, um, you know, that collective, um, vision for that future and roadmap of what that meant. Um, and then secondly, right across the political spectrum, we've had take up of this, um, as far as actually what is a major pathways to be able to secure that, um, future, and how do we therefore invest in the things that have been, um, you know, suggested from the things of ocean conservation to renewables and carbon capture and storage, etc. So, um, there's been a lot of work and, and the work has been integrated into both government departments, um, as well as, you know, not for profits and, and taken and used, which was what it was there for. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's great news. Yeah, that's excellent. Um, we always like to ask people about their personal journey. How did you become interested in sustainability and, and you've turned it into quite some career in a business? I guess there's, there's two facets to that. One of them is that I just love learning, like genuinely love learning, and I remember being at university and, um, wanting to understand world around me and just getting smaller and smaller and a bit like you, Vincent with your, um, science, the next thing I'm, I'm studying at the spirit chemistry and environmental microbiology and things. And, um, of, of the living world, so the physical hard science and that's really just wanting to understand everything works, um, all an early thing. And I can remember when I was nine coming home and saying, well, girl, often live aid and, rainbow worry run the same time and just thought, all, you know, wouldn't it be great to contribute. So I guess I've had it as part of my journey for many, many years and creating a business and being an entrepreneur and a female founder who's building, you know, multiple technologies and products now they're really just to fill the love of solving problems more than anything. And, you know, when you are committed to helping people find solutions, those problems, you know, you can find them all over the place. And that's what we've done with, you know, the use of AI tools and measurement and things. It was because people were saying this is just to be expensive. And this is just too difficult and how to remeasure, for example, purchase goods and services and capital goods hundreds of thousands of line. So we've built up tools to be enabled them to be able to do that or how do I get certified when I won't be susceptible to green washing risk. So we've launched a net zero scope one and two certification. And so I guess my journey to kind of answer the question of how I got into it is the same as what it is right now, which is my love of learning and my love of solving problems and the good thing about the space that you and I are in this and is some really big problems to solve. So I think it's just naturally attractive for those of us who like to understand how things work whether it be science or technology or business. I think curiosity is a wonderful attribute. We also killed the cat, but so we have to be careful. But it sounds like, you know, kind of asking questions. I think about this for my kids, you know, when they want career advice and goodness knows I'm not the right person to give it, but I just asking it continually challenge them to be curious about what problems still need solving. And you know, whatever skills you can bring to that right where they design science, communications, law, find a nally problem and get into it. Yeah, I mean, and that's what that's what it's all about, you know, the nally are the problem the better. I find that, you know, there's all sorts of diverse careers that we can now take and are a lot more accessible that even before. And that's just so interesting and exciting that we're, you know, living at this point in time and I feel really privileged to, you know, be at helm of the lever room where we've got this deep knowledge advisory over many years, we were now able to solve other kinds of problems and just move faster at a time that's needed. And I feel very fortunate to have gotten into this space early before it was a thing really and you know, it was really us and espn back in in 2008 and not a lot else something you probably don't know if you remember and obviously idea log which what you were doing and others, but you know, so. And the benefits of that and that our portfolios as long as you're arm and further, but you know, it feels really privileged position to be in. Yeah, really does solutions. I think we've really seen an ecosystem and tech which we haven't talked about what we'll do save that for another time, but the tech sector as well and the emergence of this kind of sustainable tech sector with bench capital with entrepreneur with incredible science coming out of the likes of outset and other places very exciting. Hey Rebecca, we better go and actually do some jobs. Just so lovely talking to you and it's amazing that we've left it for so long, so let's not do that again. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for much, Vincent. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this climate business. If you liked the show, please give us a star rating or a review. It helps other people find the podcast. Thank you for watching.