Private sector sends powerful message for zero-carbon tech, as key coalition tops 50 members

The First Movers Coalition, a flagship public-private partnership to clean up the most carbon-intensive industry sectors, from heavy industry to long-distance transport, has announced a major expansion to more than 50 corporate members worth about $8.5 trillion and a total of nine leading governments, including the US, covering over 40% of global GDP.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry made the announcement alongside Bill Gates, founder of Breakthrough Energy, at a press briefing hosted by the World Economic Forum.

Led by the World Economic Forum and the US Government, the First Movers Coalition targets sectors including aluminium, aviation, chemicals, concrete, shipping, steel, and trucking, which are responsible for 30% of global emissions – a proportion expected to rise to over 50% by mid-century without urgent progress on clean technology innovation.

For these sectors to decarbonize at the speed needed to keep the planet on a 1.5-degree pathway, they require low-carbon technologies that are not yet competitive with current carbon-intensive solutions but must reach commercial scale by 2030 to achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050.

To jump-start the market, the coalition’s members commit to purchasing – out of their total industrial materials and long-distance transport spending – a percentage from suppliers using near-zero or zero-carbon solutions, despite the premium cost. If enough global companies commit a certain percentage of their future purchasing to clean technologies in this decade, this will create a market tipping point that will accelerate their affordability and drive long-term, net-zero transformation across industrial value chains.

Today, the First Movers Coalition launched a major expansion across three dimensions:

1. New corporate members

Global technology giants Alphabet and Microsoft, along with AES, Aveva, Ball Corporation, BHP, Consolidated Contractors Company, Ecolab, Enel, EY, FedEx, Ford Motor Company, HeidelbergCement, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, National Grid, Novelis, PWC, Schneider Electric, Swiss Re and Vestas are new members. With this expansion, coalition membership exceeds 50 companies, with a collective market value of about $8.5 trillion – or more than 10% of the Fortune Global 2000.

2. New government members

In addition to the US Government, the coalition welcomes India, Japan and Sweden to the Steering Board, as well as Denmark, Italy, Norway, Singapore and the United Kingdom as government partners. These government partners will invite companies from their countries to join the coalition and will pursue public policies to commercialize the green technologies corporate members commit to purchasing.

3. New sector commitments

The coalition is launching two new sectors: carbon dioxide removal and aluminium, which join the four existing sectoral pledges (aviation, shipping, steel and trucking) launched at COP26.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said: “The purchasing commitments made by the First Movers Coalition represent the highest-leverage climate action that companies can take because creating the early markets to scale advanced technologies materially reduces the whole world’s emissions – not just any company’s own footprint. With today’s expansion, the coalition has achieved scale across the world’s leading companies and support from committed governments around the world to tackle the hardest challenge of the climate crisis: reducing the emissions from the sectors where we don’t yet have the toolkit to replace unabated fossil fuels and swiftly reach net-zero emissions.

Børge Brende, President of the World Economic Forum, said: “The coalition’s members are truly the ‘First Movers’ who are focused on scaling disruptive innovations that pave the way for long-term transformation rather than the lower-hanging fruit of short-term process efficiency gains. Once the tipping point is reached in the market, the First Movers Coalition will demonstrate that a net- or near-zero transformation across the value chain is not only possible but that it will be no more expensive than the high-emitting alternative.”