The First Movers Coalition sent a clear message to government and business leaders during a press conference at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos May 22-26: Technology innovation is needed to get the planet to Net Zero.

According to the International Energy Agency around half of the emission reductions needed to get to Net-Zero will have to come from technologies that are currently in the demonstration or prototype stage such as carbon capture, sustainable aviation fuels and green hydrogen. Young companies developing these technologies need to raise hundreds of millions – even billions of dollars – to get to scale. Offtake agreements with large corporates are crucial in helping them gain traction.
 
The First Movers Coalition, which was launched by U.S. President Biden and the Forum at COP26 to decarbonize the heavy industry and long-distance transport sectors – the sectors responsible for 30% of global emissions - serves as a kind of buying club. It announced at the Forum's annual meeting in Davos that 20 more companies and eight new countries are joining. With the addition of the newcomers, the number of companies in the coalition now number more than 50. Their market cap represents about $8.5 trillion across five continents and they all are making advance purchase commitments by 2030 aimed at helping clean tech scale.

“This is a demand signal, one of the biggest we could send,” John F. Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, said during the press conference. Also at the press conference were Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat, Salesforce Co-founder and Chairman and Co-CEO Marc Benioff. (pictured here).  Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Microsoft and Salesforce announced that they are collectively promising to spend $500 million on technology to capture and store carbon emissions. Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business.

Leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos May 22-26 signaled dark days ahead, but the meeting also highlighted technology’s role in helping the world deal with some of its biggest immediate challenges such as supply chain resiliency, climate change and food security.
 
Jennifer L. Schenker, The Innovator's Editor-in-Chief, moderated a standing-room only session on building resilient supply chains (pictured here) on the opening day of the Forum as well as two other sessions: one on building effective data ecosystems and hyperconnected networks for the manufacturing sector and another on the rise of the stay-at-home economy and its impact on brick and mortal retail as well as urban landscapes and economies. The role of technology in helping to fix problems and accelerate change was emphasized in these sessions and in a Forum announcement about an ambitious initiative to harness the potential of the metaverse as a platform for collaborative, inclusive and effective international action.
 
The Innovator's paying subscribers can read on to get the key takeaways from the annual meeting.