Gautam Bakshi is the Co-Founder & CEO of 15Rock, a world leader in climate risk management and advisory services.

Gautam is liable for the day-to-day oversight of all 15Rock key operating units, including Technology, Research, Product, and Operations.

Could you share your story of while you became concerned with climate change and while you realized you needed to get entangled?

I actually have all the time been curious about history and have been in awe of the challenges humanity has been in a position to resolve with courage. There are various examples of this from the bravery in WW2, to Mandela’s battle against a seemingly unbeatable foe.

Climate change is that foe today and it’s going to touch every aspect of our lives. It’s just not about flooding or heatwaves for people distant. It’s going to catch up with to each one in all us and it ought to be not possible for us to disregard. Countries have gone to war for rather a lot less.

Just like the web transformed the world so will this transition. It’s not possible for humans to proceed to extend the temperature on this planet and survive. As with slavery being banned, I think we’ll enter a degree where high-emitting firms is not going to be allowed to operate. Firms emitting emissions are damaging the planet and in lots of cases the people most impacted are those who’re emitting the least. You might be seeing the anger growing on this planet and the urgency for change is growing every single day.

How did you then transition to launching 15Rock?

I felt that my life in capital markets as a managing director was great for me personally but within the context of the larger picture of world, I could contribute to something greater than myself. I used to be scared to take the jump, so I began the firm while I used to be working at my previous firm. When the time was right, I left as I spotted this was an enormous problem with only a few people actually working on it.

Considered one of the core functionalities of 15Rock is the power to look for an organization to then get an outline of their climate transition plan, what kind of data is obtainable, and the way is that this data collected?

AI can process a firms behaviour at scale. It’s not possible for a human to grasp all the pieces happening in an organization. Imagine an organization that has 20,000 employees, it’s not possible for a single person and even team to know at a operational level what is occurring and what might be done.

Front line staff usually are not enabled to make changes so we’re in a situation where firms just speak about great ideas with generally little or no progress.

At 15Rock we construct actionable decarbonisation plans. We also review firms plans to evaluate what they’re doing. We will compare what is right/easy with what they are literally doing. We normally alert firms, investors and regulators of those gaps. Some call this greenwashing but often we simply see firms aren’t resourced for this task.

Are you able to discuss the kind of forecasting that is obtainable and the way these numbers are calculated?

We conduct many sorts of forecast, we forecast the external cost of carbon, this could be very hard while you consider government policies, emissions from population levels, agricultural yields and customer behaviour. It is extremely hard and I’m shocked individuals are attempting it manually, but scientists welcome our work and we’ve got been open with how we model.

We model firms’ emissions and pathways to lower their emissions. We also use our unique datasets to go so far as to offer pathways (actions) to abating their emissions as well share climate solutions they will use.

For investors who’re looking for climate risk modeling solutions, how does 15Rock assist them?

We will model (and supply existing) climate scenarios, assessments on company pathways, critique their plans, monitor government and industry policies in addition to track climate solutions.

We consider we’re the one AI solution that may go end to finish like this. Our alternative could be very expensive consultants from big firms who simply cannot process the dimensions of information of required.

How is machine learning used to help investors with investing in climate friendly solutions?

We now have been using NLP/LLMs for this for over 2 years. We were inspired by a research paper by Harvard and were engaged by investors to search out climate solutions (or climate leaders/climate opportunities funds).

We now have many funds using our tool to search out firms working on climate solutions. We now have advanced the platform with one in all the most important pension plans on this planet to also search for firms in private markets who’re working on climate solutions. We began using scientific papers from solutions like Project Drawdown, but since we’ve got aligned to varied taxonomies and we are able to adapt fairly quickly to changes they make.

For investors who’re only concerned with maximizing their investment, why should they consider these green investment solutions?

We now have around 60 years of experience in financial markets between our three-person leadership team. We now have experience in a few of the largest firms on this planet, Manulife, TD, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, MSCI, Oracle and plenty of others. We understand the world is motivated by returns.

In investments there are two key aspects. Risk and returns. They’re different edges of the identical sword. Let’s use the web as a example, firms that didn’t adapt think HMV or Blockbuster while others Amazon, Uber, Netflix did thoroughly. We’re seeing a shift on this planet. No matter your belief in climate change – the general public, governments and enormous firms are reacting to this variation. Investors and firms have to adapt too.

Investors are very concerned with firms who don’t adapt because as recent lower emitting alternatives are created it creates recent opportunities. Consider EVs, generally they’ve cheaper operating costs and customers are overwhelming purchasing them. As increasingly more players get into this market, prices will go down making it more cost-effective.

What impact do you hope to see from 15Rock?

I hope that we may also help to be a part of the answer for climate change. We all know that folks are using us to increase the reach of their teams and get monetary savings which allows the economics of addressing the climate issue more cost-effective. We need to make it even more cost-effective and the solutions taken more successful. I deeply hope that others realize that it is feasible to do something and that technology / AI may also help them.

We want people all around the world with domain and regional understandings to maneuver things forward. This might be a world effort and if 15Rock can support those heroes’ efforts, we can be so completely satisfied.

What’s your vision for the long run of enterprises tackling climate change and other existential environmental risks?

It’s going to reach the purpose where firms simply haven’t any alternative but to do their part and firms delaying motion are only giving their competitors possibilities to catch up.

Consider SpaceX vs Lockheed or Uber vs taxis. I’m not totally convinced that a lot of the largest firms that buyers engage with will exist in the long run in the event that they don’t adapt, and climate might be a consider that tipping point.

We live in a time where many individuals are revolutionary and need to unravel the climate crisis problem. Firms will either solve it internally, depend on external partners or likely, get replaced. They’ve a alternative to make but inaction is letting others solve it for them.