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Giant Ideas
Former BP CEO Lord Browne on solving climate change
Ep. 3
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Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good.
Today we bring you an interview with John Browne. Lord Browne is the former CEO of BP and now one of the world’s most prominent climate tech investors. He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, Intel, DaimlerChrysler, and SmithKline Beecham.
John joined BP out of university and rose up the ranks to become CEO between 1995 - 2007. He turned BP from a former national oil company into the world’s third biggest corporation. He is widely regarded as one of the top CEOs ever to emerge from the UK.
Two years into his tenure as BP CEO, John was accused of “leaving the church” by fellow Big Oil executives after a landmark speech at Stanford in 1997 in which he acknowledged that climate change was manmade and called for action.
These words may be uncontroversial now, but in 1997 they were both brave and very important.
Today John is the Founding Chairman of BeyondNetZero, a multibillion dollar climate fund launched with General Atlantic.
John has been an influential advisory board member at Giant Ventures since we started the firm. He and I previously wrote a book together, Connect: How companies succeed by engaging radically with society.
In this conversation with FT columnist and author Gillian Tett, John provides a state of the union on climate change, 25 years on from his historic Stanford speech. They cover everything from climate finance and carbon markets to the role of oil and gas companies in decarbonisation. The episode was recorded shortly before the UN COP climate talks - so you will hear John and Gillian debate the UAE’s controversial role as COP host.
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here.
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