The telecom exec focused on climate impacts

Presented by GE:

Jun 29, 2022 View in browser   By Gloria Gonzalez Presented by GE VERBATIM Shannon Thomas Carroll is looking for reliable climate data. | Photo courtesy of Shannon Thomas Carroll Shannon Thomas Carroll, head of global environmental sustainability for AT&T, knows how difficult it is to find reliable climate data. When sustainability officials at the telecommunications giant began searching for local-level data on climate impacts as part of the company's efforts to shore up its infrastructure in response to climate change, they had a lot of trouble finding usable information. So AT&T engaged the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in 2019 with about $1.6 million in funding to help with its resiliency project, which culminated in the development of a tool to model how climate change will impact weather disasters over the next 30 years. In May, the company publicly unveiled new projections on how future wildfires and droughts will affect the contiguous 48 states. Carroll spoke at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach about why the company launched and funded the project, what the data says and doesn't say about climate risk and the importance of getting internal stakeholders on board. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.   A message from GE: Uncertainty over the wind production tax credit (PTC) has significantly slowed new U.S. wind projects while competitors seek to capture more of the global wind market. Restoring the PTC is crucial to continued U.S. leadership in manufacturing around the world and creating jobs at home. Learn more about the economic potential of the U.S. wind industry.   When did the company first start making connections between its business operations and sustainability? In some form or fashion, whether they knew it or not, everybody was doing sustainability. When you think about the energy that it takes to power a network, for example … to use less energy, you buy less energy, which means you save the company money. And a byproduct of that is you reduce emissions. We actually brought in an independent third party to do a SWOT analysis [in 2016] for our company on where we're at on climate change. The climate resiliency program, that really spawned out of that. There are a lot of recommendations … but one of them stood out: it was "Look, you have all these resources at your disposal … network engineers who are best in class, your own IT resources, you have your own weather center. Why don't you combine all this expertise and go find this other expertise that you don't have, like climate scientists, and put a program together and see if you can't better forecast or predict the impact of climate change on your business?" How do you make the business case to make these investments, but also make the data publicly available?  On climate resiliency, there's not always a very clean, traditional business case. But there is what I call the common-sense business case. If you're spending tens of millions of dollars a year recovering from severe weather events, that is significant. If you can find a way to cut any of the recovery costs down, that's a good thing. We thought about how hard it was for us to find the data. Let's say we're the most climate-resilient company in the world. If our utilities, if the communities, if the businesses that we all work with in our value chain, if they're not also climate-resilient, it doesn't matter. It's the weakest link type of thing. You really need everybody to be climate-resilient. As much as you could keep it to yourself as a perceived competitive advantage, it just wasn't the right thing to do. Did you and your team find anything that surprised you when you were looking at the data?    One of the best uses of the data is to show where you don't have risk because there's a limited amount of resources. What you realize if you follow the data is that some areas along the coast actually don't flood and that's a good thing. If you're talking about a wildfire, less extreme winds is a good thing. If you're talking about a slow-moving hurricane, slow winds is not a good thing. When you look at states that aren't traditionally thought to be at risk for wildfires, although they're not at high risk, there are some at moderate risk that you wouldn't normally think about. There's lots of those types of gems in there.   INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY.     What doesn't the data tell you yet? What it doesn't tell you is when. Sometimes that becomes an expectation. We don't know that and that's just the truth and you have to be honest about that. The other thing is you can't always pinpoint. We get within 200 meters on inland flooding. That's pretty close. But even within 200 meters there's variance in topography because there could be things that are concrete and things that are grass within that topography. How do you go about making sure you use and incorporate this data in your company's disparate operations?  It's been a long process to do this. But one of the things we did the right way very early on … is we brought in all parts of the business that were going to be impacted in some form or fashion and that was a lot of parts of the business. The internal stakeholdering — I can't overemphasize how important that is, just educating people on what we're trying to do. That makes it easier, but it is still really difficult. If you're in networking engineering for the last 15-20 years, you have not had to consider climate data as part of your job. Beyond your company, where is your industry at in terms of sustainability and where does it need to go? The larger [information and communications technology] industry is doing well. I think technology has been on the cutting edge, understandably, of a lot of things that we look at. And quite frankly, the technology industry can be part of the solution to climate change. I think that's fair to say, that's accurate to say. Obviously we all use energy ourselves, so we all better be reducing our energy and on board to net zero. That's an expectation now and I think when you look broadly around this sector, there's a lot of commitments to net zero. I think it's time to go beyond that. Big goals are great, but now you have to report out on those goals. You have to [make] progress towards those goals and you have to be transparent in how you do it.   A message from GE:   YOU TELL US GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. We deliver data-driven storytelling, compelling interviews with industry and political leaders, and news Tuesday through Friday to keep you in the loop on sustainability. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporters Lorraine Woellert and Jordan Wolman. Reach us all at gmott@politico.com, dkahn@politico.com, lwoellert@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Want more? Don't we all. Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free!   A message from GE: Together with our customers, GE provides one-third of the world's electricity. As the only U.S. company developing breakthrough technologies across wind, gas, grid and nuclear, we support clean energy tax credits to create jobs and help ensure a more secure energy future for our country. Clean energy credits like the wind production tax credit (PTC) will enable continued investments in American energy and help: ● Create domestic jobs ● Build a strong domestic supply chain ● Reinforce U.S. energy independence ● Strengthen national security ● Meet our decarbonization targets GE urges Congress and the Biden administration to work together to enact clean energy tax credits to provide the U.S. energy industry with certainty and support for the future. Learn more.   WHAT WE'RE CLICKING — As drought dries up Lake Mead, treasure hunters are flooding in, the Washington Post reports. — Volkswagen is moving to expand its U.S. EV charging business, while a company executive says building enough batteries to power the vehicles is a bigger challenge than phasing out combustion engines. — Environmental justice groups around the country are beginning to receive money under the Biden administration's Justice40 initiative, the AP reports.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.       Follow us on Twitter Debra Kahn @debra_kahn Greg Mott @gwmott Lorraine Woellert @Woellert Jordan Wolman @jordanwolman   Follow us

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