I recently got admitted to a highly selective, 12-week-long Climate fellowship program with a focus on business and operations covering topics ranging from energy to circular economy and manufacturing to nature-based solutions to engineered carbon removal.

Having completed my first week of the Climatebase fellowship, I wanted to share my thoughts here. The fellowship kicked off with an excellent keynote address by Jonathan Foley from Project Drawdown. In his address, Dr. Foley discussed the current trajectory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and where we have to get to them by 2050.

Here are a few things that I took away:
1. Emissions reduction projects are going to play the biggest role rather than carbon removal projects
2. Funding for projects is disproportionately focused on electricity, transportation, and to some extent carbon removal sectors
3. Everyone can play a role in emissions reduction starting with exploring making small, economic switches in everyday life
4. We need modular solutions, which we can repeat thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of times, continuously learn and apply our learnings to improve solutions and drive down costs, not large-scale, one-time projects where we can not learn as much or drive down the costs

I’m excited to explore the different ways in which I can reduce emissions in my personal life and how I can play a role in reducing emissions at work. If you are interested in learning more about the fellowship or if you want to talk about climate, please feel free to reach out. As always, I am all ears and constantly looking for opportunities to apply my skills in roles and areas where I can have the biggest impact.