Wavemaker Impact’s Partner Steve Melhuish
Climate change is happening at a faster pace than predicted by early climate models. If the current trajectory continues, we will likely experience climate catastrophe, said Steve Melhuish, Partner of Wavemaker Impact.
“Climate change is not hypothetical; the effects are already being felt. Over the last three decades, registered severe weather events have tripled. In the previous two decades, the increase in sea levels has doubled, and the pace of ice loss has also tripled,” he said in an interview with e27.
This year, record heatwaves swept across Europe, North America, and Australia and recorded rainfall in India, Pakistan, China and America, causing devastating floods. If the temperatures rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next ten years, we can expect increasingly intense summer heat, extreme drought, and devastating floods. He also warned that we will see reduced crop yields and food supplies, higher incidents of diseases, rapidly melting ice sheets and surging sea levels.
Melhuish, also the founder of the region’s proptech giant PropertyGuru, believes that many parts of the world will become less hospitable for human habitation, forcing hundreds of millions of people to migrate by 2050.
“We all have a role to play in raising awareness: governments, enterprises, consumers (investors, voters and employees) and, of course, investors. At Wavemaker Impact, we have a responsibility to help raise awareness and educate investors/corporates as well as build solutions to accelerate the transition, especially for SMEs that are, in many cases, ill-equipped to do so,” shared Melhuish, adding that eight of the ten governments in ASEAN have now committed to net zero, with over 85 per cent of the world’s GDP under a net zero commitment.
We continue to see growth in global population levels, urbanisation and middle classes, leading to accelerating emissions — especially in emerging markets like ASEAN. However, to stand any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 and come down about 45 per cent by 2030 relative to 2019 levels.
“Thankfully, we have all the technology we need to reduce emissions by 50 per cent in the next decade. We believe that successful climate tech companies need to solve real business problems that generate real RoI business benefits, leading to rapid adoption/scaling and reducing emissions,” he opined.
He also busted the popular myth that the amount of money being poured into climate tech is low. “Climatetech startups raised US$50 billion from VC/PE in 2021 and already US$30 billion in H1 22. Silicon Valley Bank also recently reported 104 climate exits valued at US$114 billion in 2021,” he said. “In Southeast Asia, US$545 million VC/PE investments were poured into this sector in 2021. There is still a long way to go, but this was a 3x increase over the year before, with 30+ active investors in the climate space. We would expect this trajectory to continue to grow exponentially.”
Also Read: There’s a mismatch of investment and entrepreneur focus in SEA’s climate tech: Steve Melhuish
Increased climate change impacts will also need more investments into adaptation technologies to help the least equipped deal with the effects, for example, microfinance for climate-threatened smallholder farmers. It will also lead to investments in extreme weather protection, e.g. improvements to cities and buildings to protect from more regular and excessive rainfall, floods and high winds.
“There is no bigger problem than tackling climate change and no bigger opportunity,” he said. The investments to decarbonise Southeast Asia will require over US$2 trillion. A recent report highlighted a US$20 billion opportunity in ASEAN in nature-based solutions, US$40 billion in the built environment and US$30 billion in farming. “We are now seeing the transformation in greentech we saw with digitisation over the last 20 years. The next generation of unicorns will be from greentech.”
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Melhuish will speak about climate change at Echelon Asia 2022, which aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event.
e27 has curated and invited key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon. Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here.
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