气候变化中的资本主义：挑战与机遇
本次演讲的核心问题在于：资本主义——这个通常被视为驱动消费和增长的模式——能否成为解决气候变化的强大工具？史蒂夫·霍华德 (Steve Howard)，作为全球投资公司 Temasek（淡马锡）的可持续发展副主席，分享了他近三十年的深刻见解。他曾任 IKEA（宜家）首席可持续发展官，并协助创建了多个气候变化相关的组织，如 We Mean Business Coalition, The Climate Group 和 Tilt Collective。他开宗明义地指出，我们必须认清一些“硬核真相”。
第一个硬核真相是：“每一个企业都是一台机器”。企业无论是从其运营结构（hardwired）还是文化（softwired）上，都被设计成高效执行特定任务。正是因为这种根深蒂固的设计，它们在当前运作中表现出色，但也因此对根本性变革产生了巨大的惯性。
霍华德以一个约15年前的亲身经历为例：他曾在一家全球汽车制造商的总部，与该公司的首席技术官（CTO）对话。他直截了当地提出：“电动汽车无疑是未来。” 然而，这位CTO拍着桌子断言：“只要我还担任CTO，我们就绝不会生产电动汽车。” 尽管他当时说得“绝对正确”，因为他后来不再是CTO了，但这个例子深刻揭示了组织内部根深蒂固的抵制。
Original English
How can capitalism help solve climate change? I'm Steve Howard, I'm vice chair of sustainability at global investment firm Temasek. I've been wrestling with this question for about three decades. Formerly I was chief sustainability officer at IKEA. I've helped set up several climate change organizations. We Mean Business Coalition, the Climate Group, and recently Tilt Collective. And I've come to conclusions that there are some real hard truths. The first hard truth: every business is a machine. They are hardwired and softwired to do what they do. That's why they're really good at it. Let me give you an example. About 15 years ago, I sat in the headquarters of a global car manufacturer with their chief technology officer. I said to him, "Surely the future is electric vehicles." He slapped the table and said, "Never, while I am CTO, will we make an electric vehicle." Now he’s absolutely right, because he’s no longer CTO. (Laughter) (Applause) Amazingly enough, I got a taxi the other day in one of that company's electric vehicles. (Cheers) But it's very easy to make that about him and his leadership. But I realized that day that in the buildings around us, there were hundreds of proud, skilled engineers who'd spent their careers making ever-better internal combustion engines. The company had spent 100 years perfecting global supply chains for spark plugs and carburetors. This was an internal combustion engine vehicle company, and change for companies like these is incredibly hard. And many companies, from manufacturing to technology and even finance, are hardwired and softwired to do what they do. Now of course, there are exceptions, but they’re exactly that: they’re exceptions. And we’re sorely mistaken if we think all companies will change themselves by themselves.许多人可能倾向于将这种阻力归咎于个别领导者。然而，霍华德强调，当时公司内部有数百名技术精湛、满怀自豪的工程师，他们毕生致力于不断改进内燃机技术。这家公司更是投入了100年时间，去完善火花塞和化油器等关键部件的全球供应链。本质上，这是一家以内燃机为核心的公司，对于这类企业而言，变革的难度是难以想象的。因此，如果妄想所有公司都能凭自身力量发生改变，那将是“严重的误判”。
第二个硬核真相，则是关于金融市场的本质：它们“极其短视”。霍华德引用一位私人银行领导的话说：“史蒂夫，我从未见过一个长期投资者。” 而一位对冲基金的领导则直言：“史蒂夫，你必须记住，我们是追求利润的生物。我早上醒来会想，今天能赚多少利润？晚上睡觉前，我会想，我今天赚了多少钱？” 这种赤裸裸的利润驱动，使得市场被“固化”在追求短期利润，而牺牲了长期价值的创造。
更令人担忧的是，自由市场在很大程度上“搭了便车”。经济学家们会谈论**“外部性” (Externalities: Costs or benefits imposed on third parties not directly involved in a transaction)**——这些成本并未被市场参与者直接承担，但却真实地影响着人类与地球。这些成本涵盖了对自然的破坏、环境污染、栖息地丧失、人类健康受损，以及日益严峻的气候变化带来的剧烈成本。这些真实存在的代价，并没有被纳入市场定价体系。也就是说，公司不必为它们造成的环境和社会影响支付账单。虽然经济学家们可能在具体数字上存在争议，但可以肯定的是，这些未付账单已达数万亿美元，并且每天都在以惊人的速度增长。
Original English
My second truth is that financial markets are incredibly short term. The leader of a private bank said to me recently, "Steve, I've never met a long-term investor." A hedge fund leader said to me, "Steve, you have to remember we're profit-seeking creatures. I wake up in the morning and think, how much profit will I make today? I go to bed at night and think, how much profit did I make?" So markets are baked in to pursue short-term profit over long-term value creation. The other thing is the free market has had a free ride. If you asked an economist in the room, they would talk about externalities. It's external to the market, but it's not external to people and the planet. These are the costs that are borne of the impacts on nature, of pollution, the destruction of our habitats, the impact on human health, and of course, the dramatically escalating costs of climate change. They're not priced into the market. The companies don't pay the bill. Now economists can debate the exact number, but we know they're in the trillions of dollars, the bills mostly unpaid, and it's rising by the day.迈向长期主义：投资者与政策的力量
那么，我们如何才能从这种普遍的短期导向转向长远视角呢？对于大型资产所有者，如养老基金、主权财富基金和捐赠基金而言，其长期的财务成功与整体经济的健康发展息息相关。一个包容、有韧性的经济体，一个积极应对气候变化的经济体，才是最有可能实现可持续经济增长的模式。
不作为的经济代价是惊人的。剑桥大学近期的一项研究估计，若气候变化得不到遏制，将可能导致全球 GDP 损失四分之一，这相当于五次持续不断的“新冠大流行”的冲击，且这种“大流行”不会自行消退。这有力地表明，投资于气候变化解决方案，即使是那些“艰难的”领域，也是长期投资者必须做出的财务选择，而非仅仅是道德义务。
霍华德以 Temasek 的经验为例，这家公司正迈入其50周年。其宗旨是“让每一代人都能繁荣发展”。为了与气候变化的紧迫性保持一致，他们不得不进行“自我重塑 (rewire)”。这包括：量化碳组合排放，设定碳预算，引入内部碳定价机制，将员工激励与可持续发展成功挂钩，设定明确目标，并与所有投资组合公司进行深入互动。同时，他们还需调整投资策略，重塑投资团队技能，并开拓新的合作伙伴关系和平台公司，以构建投资于当下和未来可持续企业的必要能力。
Original English
So how do we go from short term to long term? It's a difficult thing to do, but if you're a long-term investor, a large asset owner, a pension fund, a sovereign wealth fund, an endowment, a family office, then you're exposed to the total economy. The best guarantee of your long-term financial success is economic growth itself. And we know an inclusive, resilient economy where we tackle climate change is the one with the best economic growth. Again, the numbers have been run time and time again on the impacts of unabated climate change. Cambridge University did one recently. Their estimate was unabated climate change will wipe out a quarter of global GDP. That's five Covid pandemics, and it's a pandemic that doesn't go away. So if you're a long-term investor, if you're an asset allocator, a principal owner of capital, it's in your interests to invest in solving climate change, not just in the easy things to do, but in the hard things to do with conviction capital. Now, at Temasek, we are a longer-term investor. We've just had our 50th anniversary. Our purpose is so that every generation prospers. We have stakes in some of the companies today that were the companies that we had when we started 50 years ago. But in order to align ourselves with climate change, we had to rewire ourselves. We had to measure carbon portfolio emissions, set carbon budgets, put an internal carbon price in, align our staff incentives with success, set those targets, engage all our portfolio companies. And then we had to realign our strategies, reskill our investment teams, invest in new partnerships and new platform companies so that we had the capabilities to invest in the sustainable businesses of today and tomorrow. Now our portfolio of sustainability-aligned investments is 40 billion SGD, up a lot from a few billion just a few years ago. It’s growing, and it’s a start. This is a journey we're on, but we're well on the way.这种战略调整带来了显著成效：目前，Temasek可持续发展相关投资组合的总价值已达400亿新加坡元，较几年前的仅数亿新元有了大幅增长，这标志着一项重大旅程的稳步推进。
第三个硬核真相是：“政策是主控开关”。若要为气候技术构建公平的竞争环境并激发创新，就需要制定“长期、响亮、合法”（long, loud, legal）的政策。
- “长期”的政策应能覆盖完整投资周期（例如，技术研发需要十年，那么政策也应至少持续十年，而非仅一年）。
- “响亮”的政策意味着发出的信号必须清晰明确，不容忽视。
- “合法”的政策则必须具有约束力 (teeth)，合规性不能是可选的。
尽管大多数企业可能不会主动拥抱政策，但它们渴望的是清晰度和公平的竞争环境。霍华德强调，若想让自由市场成为一个公平的市场，政策扮演着决定性的“主控开关”角色。这种作用不仅限于大国，对于城市、州或小型国家而言，政策同样可以发挥巨大的影响力。
新加坡的碳税就是绝佳的例证。它提供了一个明确的价格信号，为二氧化碳排放定价，从而对其外部性进行了量化。这使得新加坡的企业，包括 Temasek 的许多投资组合公司，能够将长期目标转化为具体的减排行动和计划，并构建相应的商业案例。该政策还与全球碳市场挂钩，允许部分税收义务可通过国际碳信用额度来履行。因此，这使得 Temasek 旗下的平台公司 GenZero，能够更有信心地投资于那些致力于在全球范围内移除和减少排放的项目，例如基于自然的解决方案和森林恢复项目。
政策同样能成为“胡萝卜”而非仅仅是“大棒”。新加坡在植物基蛋白和细胞培养肉类审批方面采取了“超快速”的监管流程。对于初创企业而言，时间是以天和周来衡量的，能够快速进入市场、接触客户、测试产品并产生收入是无价的。如今，新加坡已成为这些企业的中心枢纽。这种快速的监管审批和周密的规划，不仅惠及初创企业，对于大型基础设施项目同样意义重大——它避免了长达数年的官僚延迟，从而能快速推进绿色项目落地，吸引绿色投资。
Original English
The third truth: policy is a master switch. If we want to level the playing field for climate technologies, we need long, loud, legal policies. This can unlock the investment and get innovators innovating. Long, if you have a technology that takes ten years to develop, there's no use having a policy that's just one-year long. You need it to last a full investment cycle. The policy must be loud. The signal must be unmissable. Legal means it must have teeth. Compliance can't be optional. Now, most businesses don't embrace policies, but they want clarity, they want a level playing field. And we know if we want a free market to be a fair market, policy is a master switch. And in this environment we can say, actually we need all the countries, we need large countries to have policy and not to roll them back. But actually whether you're a city, a state, a smaller country, policy can be hugely powerful. Let's take the Singapore CO2 tax, the carbon tax in Singapore. That's provided a price signal. It's priced an externality by putting a price on carbon. It's allowed the businesses in Singapore, including many of our portfolio companies, to turn long-term targets into concrete actions and plans to decarbonize their business. They can create the business case because of that carbon price. It's also had a link to global carbon markets, and global carbon markets are going to be increasingly important over the next decade, because you can meet some of your obligation for the tax with international carbon credits. So it's allowed our own platform company, GenZero, to invest with greater confidence in projects that are removing and reducing emissions elsewhere. Nature-based solutions, forest restoration projects. Policy can be a carrot as well as a stick. In Singapore, they went for super fast regulatory approval for plant-based proteins and cell-cultivated meats. If you're a startup, you measure time in days and weeks, not years. So being able to get to market quickly and meet your customers, test your products, and get revenue in is invaluable. Singapore has become a hub for these companies now. But it's not just for startups that fast regulatory approval and good planning is a big boon. It's for big infrastructure projects as well. Why be tied up for years if you can have effective, fast planning. Then it gets green shovels in the ground and green investment flowing.“更好”的驱动力与集体行动呼吁
第四个硬核真相，只有一个词，却极其重要：“更好”。这个原则，霍华德在宜家工作时深有体会。他以宜家推广LED照明为例：最初，LED灯价格昂贵，销量有限，且光线仍显生硬。但基于其卓越的能效和技术发展潜力，宜家预见了其未来。于是，公司设定了在整个业务范围内实现100% LED照明的目标，并将所有投资与其“日益改进的LED”相结合。通过与供应链沟通，并利用自身的采购力量，为新的工厂和生产线争取到了资金支持。 当LED技术发展到不仅节能，而且价格合理、光质出色（堪比日光）时，它们便“一飞冲天”，迅速售罄。宜家也成功实现了其目标，从2015年起，只销售LED产品。这个例子表明，一旦产品或技术变得“更好”，便能带来惊人的规模效应。
“更好”的原则同样适用于众多其他新兴技术。太阳能、风能、电池和储能等技术，正迅速从“绿色溢价”转向“绿色折扣”，变得越来越经济实惠。这些“更好”的技术，不仅降低了成本，还为商业模式创新 (business model innovation) 创造了平台。
霍华德分享了一个由 Temasek 的影响力投资伙伴 Leapfrog 投资的印度初创公司案例。该公司为两轮和三轮摩托车驾驶员提供电池更换服务。驾驶员无需长时间排队充电，只需在几分钟内完成电池更换，费用固定，同时可以喝杯茶。这种模式更清洁、更便宜、更安静，并且机械效率更高，深受用户喜爱。该平台目前已拥有超过75,000名司机，每月完成超过三百万次电池更换。
然而，在“更好”技术蓬勃发展的同时，资本的稀缺性依然是重大挑战，尤其是在新兴市场以及那些尚未达到完全商业成熟度的技术领域。这包括可持续航空燃料、绿色氢能、绿色水泥、绿色钢铁，以及细胞培养肉和植物基蛋白等前沿产业。霍华德明确指出，这些正是“未来的产业”，投资者和政策制定者必须认识到这一点并大力支持。
他以水泥行业为例：Temasek 多年来一直投资于大型房地产企业，而这些企业是钢铁、水泥和混凝土的主要使用者。水泥（以混凝土形式存在）是仅次于水的第二大人类使用材料，年消耗量高达300亿吨，却占全球二氧化碳排放量的8%。这个高度商品化、利润微薄的行业，在全球范围内拥有大量固定资本投入，创新和转型异常困难。Temasek 投资了一家公司，其开发了一种“末端处理”解决方案，能够捕获水泥生产过程中本会排放到大气中的二氧化碳，将其重新矿化并重新整合到水泥中，从而实现零污染和更优质的水泥。然而，这类突破性技术需要“耐心资本 (patient capital)”的支持。仅这项技术就耗费了10万小时的研发，并需要巨额资金才能在整个水泥行业推广。
Original English
My fourth truth is just a word. It’s only one word, and it’s a really important one. Better. I learned this when I was in IKEA. And I'm going to give you an example. When I started in IKEA, we had some LED lights. They were expensive, sales were limited, and the light was still harsh and stark. But we knew because it was so much more energy-efficient and the technology was developing, we knew they were the future. So we set a target for ourselves to go for 100 percent LEDs across the business. We aligned all our investments with ever-better LEDs. We communicated across the supply chains, we used our own purchasing power to secure finance for new factories and production lines. When we got to the LED that was not just energy efficient but was affordable with a great quality of light, the next best thing to daylight, they flew off the shelves. And we hit our target of being able to only sell LEDs from 2015. When you get to better, you get scale really fast. So if you look at the total global lighting sector, in 2010, it was less than one percent LEDs, more than 99 percent all the other types of light bulbs. By 2020, it was more than 60 percent. We flipped the entire global lighting sector that had been around for more than 100 years in a decade. When you get to better, you get to scale really fast. And we know that there are many other technologies that have got to better. They've moved from the green premium to the green discount. Solar. Wind. Batteries. Storage. It's very exciting. And when you get to better, these technologies create platforms for business model innovation. Our impact investing partner, Leapfrog, has invested in a startup in India. It's a young startup, they're doing battery swapping stations for two-wheeler drivers and auto rickshaw drivers. So rather than have a long queue to refuel, you can drive in, in two minutes your battery is swapped out, it's a fixed price, you can have a cup of chai, you drive away. It's cleaner, it's cheaper, it's quieter, it's mechanically more efficient. The customers love it. They've got 75,000 drivers on their platform and growing. They’re doing more than three million swaps a month. Now we know that there are many other areas where in emerging markets, this business model innovation with these better technologies -- pay-as-you-go solar is a great example there -- but capital is scarce. We need capital allocators to allocate capital for emerging markets. The other area where it's really hard to find finance is for those technologies that haven't achieved full commercial parity yet. The big industrial plants that are going for their first, second or third of a kind plants, sustainable aviation fuel, green hydrogen, green cement, green steel, those cell-cultivated meats and plant-based proteins. Now these industries, let's be clear, are the industries of the future. If you're an investor or a policymaker, you have to know they're the future and lean in behind them. And it will be cleaner, cheaper, better, faster, tastier future. Let's take one example. We have invested at Temasek for a long time in large real estate businesses. They are big users of steel, cement and concrete. If you take cement in the form of concrete, it's the second most abundant material we use after water, 30 billion tons a year, eight percent of CO2. It’s hyper-commoditized, very slim margins, lots of sunk capital in cement factories around the world. It's hard to innovate, hard to transform. We've invested in a company that's got an end-of-pipe solution. Basically, it's a bolt-on technology that captures the CO2 that would otherwise cause climate change and pollute the atmosphere, it remineralizes it and incorporates it back in the cement so you get zero pollution and more cement. But you need patient capital behind these sort of companies. That company alone has taken 100,000 hours of R&D on the technology, and it's going to need a lot of capital to roll that out across the cement industry.演讲的最后，霍华德发出了一项集体行动呼吁：
- 致政策制定者：请推行“长期、响亮、合法”的政策框架，为外部性定价，从而释放您经济体内的绿色工业革命潜力。这将创造未来的绿色就业机会，并为您的经济体筑牢未来屏障。
- 致资产分配者（养老基金、捐赠基金、家族办公室、主权财富基金等）：请拨出一部分“耐心资本”，全力支持气候变化解决方案，特别是那些难以获得融资但至关重要的未来产业。这符合您的长远利益，并将助力您投资于未来的主导产业。
- 致个人：如果您拥有养老金或储蓄，请主动询问您的资金提供方其在气候领域的投资分配情况。若答案不尽如人意，请考虑将资金转移至更负责任的平台。
- 致商业领袖和企业家：请拥抱变革，发掘机遇，并勇于追求“更好”。
霍华德回顾了历史上的成功案例，例如成功解决了酸雨问题、封闭了臭氧层空洞、将太阳能和风能发展为地球上最廉价的能源形式，并已实现十亿家庭LED照明。他提醒听众，人类本身就书写了规则——创造了所有的市场，允许了外部性的存在，制定了所有政策，并建造了所有机器。因此，通过“重塑资本主义”，我们完全有能力协同解决气候变化问题，共同迈向一个更清洁、更经济、更美好的未来。