Can the fight against climate change be good for business? • FRANCE 24 English

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome to People and Profit, I'm Kate Moody. Can the fight against climate change be good for business? It's one of the questions at this year's Web Summit, a crossroads for cutting-edge technology and environmental actors. France 24's Charles Peregrin has been reporting from the conference. He spoke to Jacob Nathan, co-founder and CEO of EPOC Biodesign. It's a London-based startup which has used artificial intelligence to develop a new enzyme that can recycle plastic and textile waste. It has some big-name backers which are looking to boost their green credentials as well as their bottom lines. [00:00:47] Jacob Nathan: We're super proud to have Inditex and also Lululemon as equity investors in our business. Really for them, both brands have very ambitious publicly stated circularity goals for their materials and so investment is one way for them to be involved in supporting the ecosystem. We can scale up faster because of their investment. But it's also good business sense because they know that there's a limited number of these materials or a limited volume of these materials that are available and help them to get early access to that as well. [00:01:15] Speaker 3: What your company shows as well is that the circular economy can be much bigger than we think the circular economy can be. You've just opened a new facility in Spain that can build, that can produce about 10% of the continent's production of nylon 6-6. [00:01:30] Jacob Nathan: Exactly, I mean circularity is the way forward to be clear, this is no niche industry. This is the future of the materials industry. So with Epoch we believe in that very deeply, we put our money where our mouth is and we actually acquired like 10% of Europe and the Middle East's installed capacity for nylon 6-6. It's 52,000 tonnes per year, which will be transitioning into a fully recycled factory. [00:01:53] Speaker 3: And this is a waste, sustainability, sorry circularity is also a way to protect oneself from geopolitical tensions, higher energy costs as well, right? [00:02:04] Jacob Nathan: Absolutely, I think we've seen over the last few years actually time and time again that we need to find more ways to be resilient. We need to no longer rely on imported hydrocarbon or Russian gas and we can't rely on everything moving smoothly throughout the world as we've seen from the last few months as well. So circularity is an opportunity to use locally sourced material to drive manufacturing. So our process does not rely on imported oil, it uses very little natural gas, which means that we're far less exposed to that volatility. So we can be competitive in a variety of different market environments, whereas a lot of these incumbent processes can struggle. [00:02:41] Speaker 3: And finally COP31 is currently taking place in Turkey. What do you see the role of companies like yours as being in greening the global economy? [00:02:51] Jacob Nathan: Technology is weak. I think it's exceptionally difficult to ask people to spend more money on something that is less good. So we can drive a lot of this change from policy perspective. We need new technology to also support that policy. It's a virtuous cycle. Good policy makes new technology cheaper and good technology allows policy to become cheaper as well. [00:03:12] Speaker 1: So environmental goals very much center stage for startups, but for much of the broader labor market as well. That's the finding from the employment platform LinkedIn and its fifth annual green skills report. And we're joined by Sue Duke, LinkedIn's managing director for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Thank you for joining us on the program today. First of all, explain what LinkedIn means by a green skills job. What what does that concretely look like? [00:03:39] Sue Duke: Green skills are skills that make economic activities more sustainable, typically by either conserving natural resources or by taking out pollution. Operational efficiency is a great example. That's a skill that workers use to reduce waste and to use fewer natural resources in their organizations. Operational efficiency is the fastest growing green skill this year. And that's because not only are many workers applying it in core green jobs, but a whole host of workers are applying it in traditional jobs, jobs not typically considered green jobs. Everything from construction workers to sales assistants to financial professionals. So we see the spread of these green skills throughout the economy across all countries and all sectors. [00:04:25] Speaker 1: So a core green job would be something like a sustainability expert, but you're saying that these skills can be applied to a number of different, more traditional roles. What did your report find about demand for these green skill workers in 2026? [00:04:41] Sue Duke: Demand for green skills continues to surge throughout this year. We have seen a 25% increase in the demand for green skills globally in 2026. And that's against a backdrop of a much more sluggish hiring market, where typically hiring is down somewhere in the double digits in most markets. What we see very interestingly is that three out of every four of workers with these green skills are going not into green roles, but into traditional jobs. As we see companies hiring for these skills and using them not only to combat climate and to meet their climate commitments, but also to ensure that they're building resilience and efficiency and competitiveness across their organizations. All three hugely important in today's business operating environment. [00:05:35] Speaker 1: So the European Union is aiming for net zero emissions by 2050. Your study suggests that Europe is lagging behind when it comes to hiring green workers. What does that mean for Europe's energy transition? [00:05:48] Sue Duke: What we see in Europe and indeed right across the world is that we have a significant and growing green skills gap. And what that means is that if we do not get to grips with the skills gap, if we do not start investing at scale and at speed in the skills that workers need to power this transition, we will not be able to turn that climate ambition into climate action. And that's precisely why LinkedIn is asking the COP presidency to include workforce readiness into the global climate stock take at this year's COP so that we can start to measure and monitor how we're doing in meeting and closing this green skills gap and ensuring that not only do organizations and economies have access to the workers that they need to power this transition. [00:06:36] Speaker 1: You've also found a pretty big gap when it comes to generations younger workers seem to have a better profile for these kinds of jobs, but it's also something that's more important to them personally to have a job where they feel they're contributing to the fight against climate change. [00:07:00] Sue Duke: That's right. The very good news is that when it comes to appetite to work in this area, when it comes about passion and activating your your role in fighting climate, we do not have a problem when it comes to your younger workers. They there is just huge, huge hunger amongst younger workers to get involved and work in this space fully six out of every 10 of them are telling us that they want to work in a job that helps combat climate change. And indeed, three and every 10 of them are telling us that they would, in fact, quit their existing job if it meant they could go and work in a role that would allow them to do just that. However, the problem we have is that they're really struggling to figure out how do I break into this area? How do I get a job in this space? How indeed do I get the skills that will allow me to access these opportunities? And so part of what we need to do is come together as business and government and ensure that we're putting training programs in place for young workers so that they can get these green skills and go and activate their role in the transition. [00:08:03] Speaker 1: And probably something that starts from an educational level as well. So I want to turn to the UN's climate summit, Cup 31. It's taking place in Turkey. We know it draws government figures, although fewer this year than previous years, as well as climate activists and business leaders. Take a listen to the delegation from Nepal, where a deadly flash flood in August killed thousands of people and wiped out infrastructure. [00:08:25] Speaker 5: The whole world has known what it means to climate change to our mountains, you know, the Himalayas. So within 10 minutes, we have lost roughly more than 7,000 people, you know. And it has impacted nearly 10 percent of the GDP and 25 percent of the energy system roughly has been wiped out. You know, you can imagine the whole network and the chain of the energy systems has been destabilized. So this scale of disasters, we have never seen it. [00:08:54] Speaker 1: Quite a stark picture being painted there. Sue, we know that extreme weather patterns are linked to climate change. When we hear about this kind of scale of destruction, does it make an international summit seem more or less relevant, do you think? And can it really accomplish anything concrete? [00:09:12] Sue Duke: Well, COP is the only global forum that brings together policymakers, businesses and sustainability experts to figure out how are we doing on progress and monitoring of climate targets and putting in place the right mechanisms to ensure that we can combat climate change in a collective way. And that's precisely why we are at LinkedIn are calling on the COP presidency to ensure that one of the monitoring mechanisms put in place are focused on workers and skilling. Because without the workers who are going to power this transition, we will not be able to meet those targets. And so it's crucially important that the business community, policymakers and those sustainability experts come together and ensure that we're putting that focus on workers, on talent and on ensuring that we're meeting those climate targets. [00:10:06] Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about the impact of artificial intelligence. It's a very energy intensive technology, but that is being used to help to help push this transition forward. [00:10:19] Sue Duke: Right. There's two key areas where we see AI playing out in this space. The first is that it's creating huge demand for workers with green skills in the AI industry itself as organizations seek to reduce the impact of data center build out. And the training of models. We have seen an enormous increase in the share of workers who are getting green skills in that industry, including amongst data center workers there. We've seen a tripling of the share of workers with green skills, with that all important operational efficiency skill right at the top of the list. Secondly, we are seeing an enormous opportunity emerging with this technology as green workers, start using the technology to combat climate change. We're seeing teams and workers all around the world starting to use the technology to do things like predict more extreme weather events, to optimize energy usage and to accelerate the green innovations and the green technologies that are going to ensure we're in a spot where we can meet these climate targets in the coming years. [00:11:29] Speaker 1: And the other side of that AI coin, if you will, is the threat that it poses to a lot of jobs in many industries. Do you think green jobs are at risk? Could an AI agent, for example, be just as good a sustainability expert as a human worker? [00:11:44] Sue Duke: What we're seeing generally play out in the labour market and specifically when it comes to these green jobs as well, is that AI is transforming the skills that workers need to do their jobs. What we see happening in these green roles is workers bringing together judgment, innovation, team collaboration and working with the technology to get these better results and to drive forward these innovations. So we fully expect to see that, yes, that these roles will continue to evolve and change as the technology is leveraged for climate change. What we see happening in the world is to not only increase, but to expand their impact across organizations and across the economy. [00:12:33] Speaker 1: Sue Duke from LinkedIn, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Pleasure. Thank you for having me. That's all for now. Don't forget, you can find our previous shows on the France 24 website or as a podcast, wherever you usually listen. Until next time, thanks for watching.