Grant Canary, Founder and CEO, DroneSeed
Avra van der Zee, COO, Elemental Excelerator
Moderator: Nick Lichtenberg, FORTUNE

Impact Initiative 2022 - The Intersection Of Technology And Community

Conferences

The Intersection Of Technology And Community

Welcome back everyone hope everyone enjoyed the networking, but we have some terrific conversations ahead. So we're gonna get right to it. One of the prominent themes at this year's cop 27 was the importance of climate adaptation and funding is starting to flow into technologies which help us thrive in hotter wetter or drier conditions. In our next panel, we're going to hear from an investor at the forefront of this effort. We'll learn how her accelerator is boosting climate impact and speeding progress in our energy transition. We'll also explore the inspiring tech at one of their portfolio companies which uses drones to recede fire damaged forests. Please welcome Abra Vander Zee Ceo of elemental accelerator Grant Canary founder and Ceo of drone seed for a conversation with fortunes. Nick lichtenberg, thank you so much for being here today. Um so Abra I wanted to start with you um, elemental is uh such an interesting firm, can you tell us a little bit about elemental and its purpose and your journey there? Yeah, absolutely. It's so nice to be here in person Grant and unique. Thanks for convening us. Um so elemental is a nonprofit investor. We invest in transformative climate solutions with a focus on social impact and we invest across the climate spectrum. So, you know, transportation, food and act water, energy, circular economy, nature based solutions. And we're really looking for big ideas and transformative technologies that have commercial potential. Um so we're looking, we're looking for the idea that as social impact scales as commercial success scale scales. So too does social impact. Right? So we have now invested in 100 and 50 portfolio companies. Those 100 50 portfolio companies have gone on to raise seven billion in follow on capital. We have our portfolio companies have operations and customers in all 50 states and almost 100 countries. Um, one of the portfolio companies, somebody earlier from, from the fortune team made a joke about carbon negative concrete, you know, we have a carbon negative concrete company in our portfolio. So, um, we're really looking for commercial viability and then embedding social equity. So as a nonprofit, we're able to do things a little bit differently. So two things we do differently. One is we invest in first of a kind appointments and we provide wrap around holistic support. Um, and first of a kind might mean a new customer, a new business model and then to, we work with our companies to embed social equity and community impact into the design of the text appointment and we do that through a framework. We call equity in and equity out. So Equity in is building capacity internally within an organization, within a portfolio company for diversity initiatives and inclusion processes and Equity out. Looks to deploy technologies with a focus on community benefits and what that looks like might be workforce development. It might be incorporating community feedback into both the design of the product and the project. Um, and actually grants and drone seed is a perfect example of this. You don't often get pitches like I'm going to use drones to plant trees. Yeah, that's, that's the first of its kind example. Yeah. First of a kind, Grant was first of a kind in that it was drones to plant seeds. Uh, he wanted to deploy a project that involves carbon credits and he was working to think about increasing workforce diversity. So it's sort of a triple novelty. Yeah. Grant, can you talk about the triple novelty there? And I mean the name is, it says it all drone seed. Um, well yeah, I can, I can start there like as far as kind of what we do and how we got started, it's really as many are aware of size and severity of wildfires is increasing Less aware. Maybe is that natural regeneration where forest burns, forestry grows? Uh, that, that, that is something that is significantly decreasing. So it used to be forest regenerates 90% of the time. We're down to 60%, 40%, 40%. And on the supply chain side it's the, where the materials come from is extremely stressed. So it used to be that the industry had 10 years to respond to a 10,000 acre wildfire, uh, that's obviously no longer the case. So needing technology to be able to respond to that in a much bigger way. We started off with drones and seed. Um, however, it's not very useful to have drones if you have no seed and so going from there, like what we what we've been built out is a one stop shop for reforestation. So if you can imagine a reforestation as a, as a garden hose, uh there are four kinks in that garden hose today. Where does the seed come from? Where does the greenhouse grow space come from? Uh Where does the labor and the tools come from? Which is where we started? Uh And then lastly, how do you pay for it all with carbon offsets? Um So where, what in that process for that first of a kind project where we really wanted to do was demonstrate where where is the capital gonna come from with carbon offsets, but then also how do we, how do we work with communities and not just uh steak, not just our immediate land managers, but also the stakeholders and communities around there. So we hosted a tree seed summit, um that was part of our product development and it's a really good thing we did because we missed the step, we missed the step in our development of how do we collect seed from the wild and then how do we utilize it after a wildfire? And that was a not there was a non obvious step that we missed. Uh and that really changed how we thought about developing our product and our software to be able to increase the supply of seeds. Uh And that wouldn't have come about without convening, uh local travel nations, uh, convening uh private sector consulting foresters that have been working on this problem for decades. Uh, the public sector, uh, that's been continuing to support with academic research and their own work. So without those pieces that that conversation, um, we would have missed a step. And I think like what I can say is that from thinking about it from from uh, from as a Ceo, sometimes there is a drive to have a financial outcome. And then there doesn't feel like there is a permission to work outside of that outcome by having an investor or project funder and a convener with elemental accelerator. We in it was actually sort of because there was light accountability around like this needs to happen. This is one of our metrics, like there was permission to spend time to focus on that and that was really powerful. So making sure that you're gonna hit your target basically. Yeah, it's in less of like less of a less of a oppressive way and much more of a like, hey, this is really important. We've seen this in other portfolio companies that when these steps are not taken, things do get missed. And so like, talk to me about what you're doing, talk to us. And so that's something that having that, it's not like fill out your reports, do the thing, it's more like have a conversation and I'm going to ask you about that and if you know that you're gonna get asked then you're able to, you're, you're able to think through that process. And then there was a lot of tools and support for how do we convene that Tracy summit? Where do we go from there? And that is, you know, you described it once, which I love as friendly accountability and that is exactly what we're hoping to do is provide the framework and then you sort of prove that this is the right way to scale. This is the path to, you know, incorporate by incorporating community voices. You're risking your project and making for better commercial outcomes and better social impact at the same time. So it's exactly what we're hoping for is to provide startups that are earlier in their scale journey, this kind of cover to do that excuse or accountability will call it to do that to do that hard work and show how it works because this is all hard, like everything we're talking about and here we have a video with you today that is this related to what we're talking about or is it more about something else? Yeah. So this is the most powerful thing that we can show which is our land manager customers are landowner customers speaking about how important carbon offsets were to making reforestation possible. And so if the, if the timber resource that was being cultivated Burns, where's the capital come from to reforest. And so this is and that's really coming now from offsets. And so without offsets response to wildfires is does not have a funding source and nature is decreasing so it needs support and it can't be relied upon 100% as it used to be. So alright. Um, so here we have a video. Let's take a look. We lost over 80% of the trees on this property and it was a devastating loss. Land managers who have been affected by fire are looking for solutions when you see your life's work disrupted in a way that you didn't think was possible. It's really, really difficult in that initial moment to think, oh, how am I going to accomplish a task? How am I going to reforest this? And that's where, whether it's seeds, seedlings, drones or being able to pay for it, that's where we can plug them in and help them while doing reforestation better with drone feed, we were able to have a plan of drone application of pucks then to have hand planting seedlings the conventional way. But the other very, very important thing that they did was they brought some carbon financing to the equation. Reforestation is really expensive. It can cost thousands of dollars an acre to really execute on a reforestation project, drone seed partners with landowners to develop a carbon offset projects to finance that expensive upfront cost of reforestation, it feels really good to provide a path forward to forest recovery to let the landowner know that they aren't alone that we're here to help them finding a solution is really what inspires me to come to work every day and do what I do. How many did you do today? 40,060 oh bien bien. I mean how does it feel to see that uh the the part where where the loss every time hurts a little bit So, but as far as what we're able to get out there and accomplish um I mean those drones are those are very large aircraft and so looking at that like it doesn't do it justice in size or about eight ft in diameter. Um, so not something you can get at best buy uh something that we, you know, we fly groups and that's that's one part of the process. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Um I'd like to open it up for questions if anyone has a question about how you plant trees with drones were here. Hi steve Boyle at Rubicon carbon. Um question about the reforestation efforts in the permanence, Have you guys sort of quantified the permanent aspects of these projects? And what is that sort of association would be helpful to know? Yeah, we utilize climate action reserves methodology. Um that methodology we do really good reforestation. Um we utilize for this project here. We utilize eight species their native obviously, but it goes so much more than that. Um We collect seed from what the U. S. Forest service has as seed zones. They're about the size of a county. And so we spend all of that time figuring out how to collect and utilize seed from as close to a fire as possible. So if you can imagine a game of battleship on the west coast where we work Oregon Washington California when there is a fire, there's a county map. And then do we have seed in that in that seed zone or that county uh sort of geographic area. So I may have lost a couple of you, but basically it's very much like we utilize seed from as close to the source as possible. Um And then as part of the project, uh there's a conservation easement that's placed on the land. Um So this is really stringent. Uh it basically allows for monitor funded monitoring for the next 100 plus years uh and utilizes the same accounting that any timber company is used for the last 150 how many tons of carbon are going to be captured as the trees grow over that time period. Um And that's instead of utilizing how many two by fours am I going to get off of an acre? Uh Which is what most timber companies would look at. Instead we're utilizing, we're swapping out two by fours and board feet per hour for tons breaker. So again, I may have lost some of you on that but effectively 100 plus years of monitoring by nationally accredited land trust and uh, that's something and some very, very solid 150 year uh backed projections about what will be captured over that time period. The last thing I'll hit is that it's much lower density. That's what we target. Um which is for fire risk very important. Um, and then climate Action Reserve has an insurance buffer pool. So if there is a reversal in the future and offset buyer knows that it's either coming from that insurance buffer pool, uh and every project contributes to that just like medical or auto insurance. Um there the the offsets are coming from our project or it's coming from that insurance pool. Yeah, I mean, I have a question for you again, abra which we talked about the importance of first of its kind investments and basically you have to come up with a whole new metric for each new company you're investing in. So, um, you know, you have to come up with this map of the wildfire zone that grant was talking about. So what is that process like coming up with a bespoke? Yeah, measurement. Well, it's a great question but you know, we this is where we partner and part of our theory of change write our unit of changes, working with entrepreneurs to scale these much needed technologies. So Grant, unfortunately not me the expert on all of this, these questions. So what we're looking for is is, you know, is the technology transformational, um for a number of reasons, we have an extensive diligence process, you know, we probably look at 1000 portfolio or potential portfolio companies a year and ultimately select between 15 and 20. So um we have an extensive diligence process but it's really about um finding partners that are looking to make the type of transformational change, have the commercial viability and opportunity and have the willingness and to to embrace the equity and equity out framework. So we do some customizing in terms of project deployments, but the customizing is more along this framework of equity in and equity out and we have a number of kind of areas we focus on, it's almost like a internal sort of checklist to think about how can we provide support to this company that might be, you know, working with shipyards um and want to do workforce development there or um it could be a company that's trying to grow and scale right rapidly. How do they build diverse hiring practices into their framework, knowing this sort of meteoric scale that they need to achieve in short order. So we have a number of sort of processes and it grew over time, you know, initially when we started in hawaii and doing business in Hawaii, you need to incorporate the community voice and think about local partnerships and then as we expanded to California and now globally we've created more frameworks to enable us to scale some of these solutions and there's never one size fits all, not even close, but asking the questions, hopefully develop the space for the creative, you know, entrepreneurs to say, well maybe we should think about convening this fairly unique sort of summit and gathering of different voices to help us really understand how we scale this technology. It's a relationship with this is all about how you to talk about this and the other the other stakeholders involved, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, very much so, having attended the ceo summit in Hawaii, um I think what we're really excited about is like with forestry science, we've got 100 and 50 years of prior data. There are other companies with other carbon capture, whether ocean based or otherwise, that are really exciting. And I think we're, what we're really able to do is utilizing that data chart a course for others to follow. Um and that, you know, from from my perspective as someone who's deeply driven by climate and uh very strong concern for our social, political and economic institutions um in a failing ecosystem. I look at that and it's like this is something where there is a community that way I can talk to, but also we're charting a path for others and then we're learning from them as well in the process. So uh beyond the video that we show. We also have a QR code that you brought with you today and that's gonna have a link to a report. Right? Could you talk a little bit about that and what's going to be available on there? Yeah. So what you see there is like what we've talked a little bit about um, of course there's, who are the project stakeholders. Um we've got a little bit about the methodology that's being utilized and the monitoring, reporting and verification systems, uh, the project timeline, how that, how that is thought through as far as by Climate Action Reserve, how they think about the forward looking offsets and what that program looks like. So, some of the pieces there. Um, and then we've also got a little bit about the elemental accelerator process in there as well. Great. I think we have time for a final thought from each of you. Uh, how would you want to sum this up? Exciting challenge. Oh my gosh, okay, so I'm feeling actually tremendous optimism. Um I feel that we're in this unique moment in time. Right? So the innovation is there, you know, like I said about 1000 companies a year. We're seeing technologies are really solving the hardest challenges of our day issues, one of scale and we have the funding, The federal funding, unprecedented unparalleled levels of federal funding um with a focus on community, which is amazing. Um unparalleled levels of private funding. There's now over 180 climate VCS when I cut my teeth as an entrepreneur about 10 years ago, I can name the number of VCS on one hand that were focused on climate. Um plus new forms of capital, right philanthropy is playing a huge role. Um so you've got the innovation, you've got the funding and then you've got this crew, I am having conversations with super senior leaders who are driving sustainability initiatives at the highest levels of, you know, really important corporate and we have a corporate program we developed over time at elemental because we realize the incredible role, the powerful role corporate can play as part of the process of scaling technologies either by creating demand pull as customers, um also as purchasers of carbon credits. And so it's an exciting time based on all of us, it feels really like the time is now. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.